First-picked Longjing at Meijiawu, West Lake in spring rain, a private boat up to the tea fields.
The first picking of Longjing — picked before Qingming, fired the same afternoon, drunk the same week — lasts about twenty days a year. This journey is timed to it.
You stand in the Meijiawu rows at dawn with the family that tends them, watch the leaves meet the wok by hand, and take the first-fire tea at a master's own table. In between: West Lake by private boat before the first oar, the silk and ceramics ateliers of Hangzhou, and a farmhouse kitchen lunch in the hills.
Five days in the greenest weeks Jiangnan has — private, all-inclusive, priced openly.
Courtyard stay inside the village lanes of Amanfayun; welcome dinner of spring river produce.
Into the rows before the light with the tea family; hand-firing watched at the wok; first-fire tasting at the master's table.
The lake by private boat before the first oar; afternoon in the silk atelier and the museum of tea.
A walk between the Nine Creeks' pools; lunch cooked in a farmhouse kitchen; evening guqin in a temple courtyard.
Morning market walk with the chef's shopping list; departure after.
Pre-Qingming rows at dawn with the family that tends them.
The firing watched from arm's length — and graded with the master.
West Lake by private boat while the water is still empty.
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.
The 3,000-metre summer: Songtsam lodges, alpine meadows, a monastery library above the clouds.
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.