Cities for every pace.

The capital is vast, formal and surprisingly gentle once you step off the ring roads. Give it four days: one for the palaces, one for the Wall, two for wandering.

Chengdu is the unhurried capital of China. People sit in teahouses for whole afternoons, dinner takes three hours, and nobody minds. Three days in the city, then the mountains.

The landscape on the twenty-yuan note. Use Guilin city as the gateway, drift down the river, and stay in the countryside around Yangshuo.

Shanghai is the easy entry point: signage in English, a metro that goes everywhere, and neighbourhoods built for walking. Three days is enough for the city; add Suzhou or Hangzhou as day trips.

The old capital of thirteen dynasties has one world-famous sight and a lot of quieter ones. Two full days covers it; a third lets you slow down.

Guangzhou is Canton: the old trading port at the head of the Pearl River delta, with a food culture that starts at dawn. Skip the skyline, stay in the old west of the city, and eat.

Yangshuo is the countryside south of Guilin where the karst peaks stand in rice fields and every road is worth cycling. The town is noisy; the villages along the Yulong River, ten minutes away, are the slowest days in China.

Shenzhen was a county of villages and oyster beds until the zone was drawn in 1980; it now holds eighteen million people, almost none of them born here. Give it two days: one for the coast and the old walled towns the city grew around, one for markets, art and the crossing to Hong Kong.