21 places to live differently

China's most intact walled county town from the Ming-Qing era

Home of the world's oldest and tallest wooden pagoda

China's thousand-year porcelain capital where craft meets creative youth culture.

The last hidden valley of Jiangnan — China's "second home" experiment

Land of a thousand stone towers on the Dadu River

A riverside ancient town — quieter than Fenghuang, deeper than you'd expect

A returned-overseas-Chinese town where Southeast Asian coffee culture meets Hainan.

The quietest of the rich canal towns — silk wealth without the crowds

China's capital of slow living — pandas, hot pot, and unhurried days.

The world's first tea cultural heritage — a millennium-old forest of ancient tea trees

The foremost town of Wu — a garden water town in the heart of Jiangnan.

Shanghai's finest water town — a Jiangnan escape just beyond the city.

Where Shanghai meets Zhejiang — a canal town of folk art and riverside life

A Ming-era merchant-fortress village just beyond Pingyao's walls

Where Danxia peaks meet centuries-old rock tea culture

Arcaded streets, midnight congee, and the homeland of the Teochew diaspora

A millennium-old crossroads where dialects from a hundred family names still echo

A Ming-Qing canal town still untouched by mass tourism

1,600 years of Teochew culture, best savored one street-snack at a time.

A Buyi village built entirely of stone slabs, beside Huangguoshu Falls

Home to China's finest suspended clay sculpture — made famous by Black Myth