The Ice Festival before the gates open, Siberian tigers at feeding hour, a hotpot that thaws you whole.
Harbin in deep winter is the most improbable city in China — a Russian-built boulevard at minus twenty-five, and out in the suburbs, a city of ice raised block by block every December.
This journey puts you inside the Ice Festival before the gates open: the sculptors still working, the light show run for you alone. Then the fire half of the equation — Siberian tigers at the feeding hour, a snow-village night in a log cabin, and the hotpot that thaws you whole.
Five days of the coldest, warmest China — private, all-inclusive, priced openly.
Central Street and St. Sophia at dusk; a dumpling and stew welcome dinner.
Into the festival grounds before the public — sculptors at work, lights run for you; the full illumination at night.
The Siberian tiger park at feeding hour; the Jewish quarter's architecture with a historian; evening hotpot.
East to a log-cabin village under metre-deep snow; lantern-lit evening, kang-heated night.
A market morning at minus twenty-five; departure after.
The festival grounds while the sculptors still carve.
The Siberian park in its only lively hour.
A heated-brick log-cabin night in the snow village.
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 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.
A named tailor replies within 12 hours. Your first proposal within 24.