The 3,000-metre summer: Songtsam lodges, alpine meadows, a monastery library above the clouds.
When the lowland cities push past 35 degrees, the valleys of northwest Yunnan sit in their true season — high, dry, luminous. This is the summer China keeps in the mountains.
You climb from Lijiang's old quarters through the Tiger Leaping Gorges to Shangri-La, sleeping in Songtsam lodges along the way. Mornings go to the monastery — tea with the monks of Songzanlin, the library above the clouds — afternoons to the meadows, the black-clay pottery kilns of Nixi, and a Tibetan family's dinner table.
Six days at three thousand metres, where June feels like October elsewhere — private, all-inclusive, priced openly.
Old-town courtyard at dusk; Naxi dinner by the canals.
Tiger Leaping Gorges below the road; over the pass to Shangri-La, into the Songtsam lodge.
Tea and the library with the monks; afternoon in the old town's prayer-wheel lane.
Horseback or on foot across the alpine meadows; black-clay pottery thrown in a Nixi family kiln.
Napa Lake wetlands with a birding guide; dinner in a Tibetan family's kitchen.
Mountain mornings last longest; departure after.
Songzanlin's scriptural library and tea, in the monks' own hour.
Throw black clay beside the family who has fired it for four generations.
Butter tea and barley in a Tibetan kitchen, not a restaurant.
Everyone sees the Wall. Almost no one has it to themselves.
Follow one leaf across a thousand years.
Our home ground. Nobody hosts Chengdu better than the people who live it.
Two Chinas in one week: the skyline that out-dreams fiction, and the lake that taught China poetry.
First-picked Longjing at Meijiawu, West Lake in spring rain, a private boat up to the tea fields.
The Wall in its best coat, golden ginkgo in the Forbidden City's courts, a duck feast after the day-trippers leave.
The Ice Festival before the gates open, Siberian tigers at feeding hour, a hotpot that thaws you whole.
A named tailor replies within 12 hours. Your first proposal within 24.