Hutongs, hand-pulled noodles, and the cities a guidebook never quite reaches.
In a Chinese group chat, money moves in two different envelopes — and picking the wrong one says the wrong thing. A field guide to WeChat hongbao. CN: 红包不是转账：微信里的钱与礼
At a Chinese table, seating, rim height and spout direction are settled before anyone speaks. A field guide to the quiet codes, including refusals that sound like agreement. CN: 杯沿、壶嘴，与那把对着门的椅子
Long before the words, a pack of cigarettes slides across the table. A field guide to 敬烟 — how it is offered, what the brand means, and how to decline without going cold. CN: 先递烟，后说话：中国的敬烟
Skipped on the way to Xiamen's islands, Fujian's capital feeds itself in fish-ball bowls, litchi pork, and dishes stained the colour of red rice-wine lees — food it never bothered to translate. CN: 福州红糟：一座省城的小碟江湖
An hour from Guangzhou, Shunde eats double-skin milk with a spoon and raw pond fish by the slice — a Cantonese food town that never learned to advertise in English. CN: 顺德：把鱼和奶做成手艺的小城
In Shaoxing the afternoon belongs to warm rice wine and a saucer of fennel beans. A ground-level guide to huangjiu, the drunken dishes, and the three stinks locals never translate for you. CN: 绍兴：温一壶黄酒，配三臭
Chinese city transit assumes three small competencies of everyone who uses it. None are difficult, and none are explained to you at the turnstile. CN: 乘车码、安检、出口字母：中国地铁的三个习惯
Almost every gate in a Chinese station is built for a resident ID card. Here is where a passport goes instead, and how the five-minute rule works. CN: 人工通道：拿护照过站的走法
China's rail gates read a chip and a face, neither of which a passport carries. The staffed lane, the 12306 identity check, and the metro's own grammar — before you reach the platform. CN: 刷脸闸机之外：护照走人工通道
A half-day walk through Fujian's old port city, from a Buddhist courtyard with Hindu columns to a roofless mosque and the sea-goddess hall at the south gate. CN: 泉州西街两公里：四种信仰的门牌
In Chongqing the staircases are not scenery, they are infrastructure. A half-day route from the old water tower to the stone road up Nanshan. CN: 重庆的梯坎：半天走完渝中半岛
Northeast Shanghai turned five kilometres of coal wharves and cotton mills into a walkable riverbank. Start at a Victorian waterworks, end on a two-yuan ferry. CN: 步行杨浦滨江：工业岸线的一整个下午
One block behind Jianghan Road's shopping crowds, Hankou's 1930s lane-house compounds still hang laundry and boil kettles. A walk through the lifen most guidebooks never name. CN: 汉口里份：仍有人住的红砖老巷
In 1940 a small Sichuan river town offered to house a displaced university. The lanes that took the desks are still standing, still pouring tea, still cutting pork thin. CN: 李庄：战时的书桌，未改的巷子
Iron mooring rings in the columns, doorways on the second floor that open onto air. Wuzhou built a shopping street that expects the river to come in. CN: 梧州骑楼城：铁环、水门与六堡茶
Not a backlot and not a replica. On Hongqi Street, the Changchun Film Studio's original halls still hold their sound stages — and the rooms that gave foreign films a Mandarin voice. CN: 长影旧址：把世界配成中文的摄影棚
Nine-storey towers rising straight from the paddy, half fortress and half Chicago bank. Kaiping's diaolou lent Let the Bullets Fly its skyline — here's what still stands, and how to reach it. CN: 开平碉楼，《让子弹飞》借走的那片天
Zhenbeibu is a film city built inside two ruined garrison forts north-west of Yinchuan, where the sets are rebuilt season by season and only the earth walls are permanent. CN: 镇北堡：夯土墙上轮番上演的朝代