Cities for every pace.

Chongqing stacks itself up the hillsides where the Yangtze meets the Jialing. It is disorienting, dramatic and delicious. Two days, and eat hot pot on the first night.

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.

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.

Wuhan is the crossroads of China: every train passes through, and the river that made it is still the point. Come for the breakfast culture, the old concessions of Hankou, the East Lake greenway, and the ferry across the Yangtze at dusk.

Changsha is Hunan's capital and its kitchen: chillies, stinky tofu, crayfish and milk tea, eaten late. By day there is a museum with a 2,100-year-old woman in it and a wooded mountain across the river with a thousand-year-old academy.

Harbin grew up around a Russian railway and still looks it: onion domes, cobbled Central Street, sausage and black bread. In winter the river freezes and the city builds a town out of ice. Summer is green and mild and nobody comes, which is its own argument.

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.