Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong, mainland period dramas, viral-variety filming spots — what's still there, what's been demolished.
Hero's most famous duel was filmed among the golden desert poplars of Ejina, in Inner Mongolia. This is how the forest, its grove of dead trees and a ruined city work for visitors now. CN: 额济纳胡杨林：《英雄》里那片转红的金色树林
Outside Yinchuan, two crumbling frontier forts became a working film set. A walk through the gate tower from A Chinese Odyssey, the Red Sorghum yard, and the Helan foothills beyond. CN: 镇北堡西部影城：把荒凉卖给电影的宁夏古堡
A river port in western Hunan played a fictional town in a 1980s film, then kept the name. What the camera used, what came later, and the rice tofu in between. CN: 芙蓉镇：因一部电影改名的瀑布小镇
The fictional Jinghai of The Knockout is mostly Jiangmen's arcade quarter. A ground-level walk through what the crew dressed, what was already there, and the older film towns nearby. CN: 江门演京海：走进《狂飙》借来的骑楼老街
When the coaches leave, Xitang's misty-rain corridor belongs to tripods and costumed extras. A walk through the Zhejiang water town that film and short-video crews frame after dark. CN: 西塘：剧组借走的黄昏水乡
An hour from the Bund, a whole 1930s Shanghai stands built to be filmed, not lived on — trams, shophouses and a riverfront that repaints itself between shoots. CN: 车墩：镜头借来的老上海
Fenyang and Pingyao, two Shanxi towns an hour apart, sit behind two decades of Jia Zhangke's films. Most of what the camera saw is still easy to find. CN: 贾樟柯的山西：一座塔、一段城墙与一个县城
Wong Kar-wai's first television series sent viewers into Shanghai with the script open on their phones. Three places from it are still easy to walk. CN: 《繁花》的上海：黄河路、进贤路与和平饭店
The bamboo-top duel in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was no set. It was the living groves of Anji, in northern Zhejiang — and the ridges are still there to walk. CN: 安吉大竹海：卧虎藏龙的那片竹林
The clips that trend on Monday morning were taped in one district of Changsha. The stages are closed, but the streets the cameras borrow are open and free. CN: 综艺住在长沙：马栏山与它借来的街道
The city most filmed in China is not doubling for anywhere else. A short walk through the stations, stairs and cable crossings that keep turning up on screen. CN: 重庆不替任何城市出演
China's biggest film town rebuilds its dynasties every few weeks. What is permanent in Hengdian, what is redressed between shoots, and where the genuinely old building stands nearby. CN: 横店的宫殿不到三十年：为镜头而建的城
A dense cluster of 1960s blocks in Quarry Bay became a film backdrop and a photo pilgrimage. Here is how to see it — and why the residents ask you to keep quiet. CN: 鲗鱼涌怪兽大厦，电影捧红的住宅天井
Above Hollywood Road sits a flat shelf of 1950s tenements that a small film, and a Berlin prize, kept off the demolition list. What is still there, and what the cameras only borrowed. CN: 永利街：一部电影救下的香港唐楼
Two collapsing rammed-earth forts on the road to the Helan Mountains were never restored, because a film crew arrived first and decided the ruin was the point. CN: 镇北堡：电影没有拆走的黄土城
China's largest soundstage complex sits on a Qingdao bay that was empty a decade ago. You can walk its edges, tour a film museum, and eat clams by the sea — but the stages themselves stay shut. CN: 青岛东方影都：旅人能看见的一半
Changsha's Malanshan district makes much of China's variety television. What a visitor can actually see is exteriors, one adjacent culture park, and a mall built like a 1980s street. CN: 长沙马栏山：综艺之城的可见部分
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
A walled city on Lake Tai, built for a 1990s television adaptation and still booked by crews. How a thirty-year-old set ages, and how to read one. CN: 无锡三国城：一座三十岁的电视布景
One Kowloon block has stood in for a hundred films — the night market, the 1930 theatre, the fruit stalls that work at 3am. What to see in Yau Ma Tei, by day and after dark. CN: 油麻地：香港电影一再取景的九龙街区
A Ming walled city in Shanxi that crews rent instead of rebuilding — the draft banks of West Street, a festival palace in a diesel factory, and the beef everyone carries home. CN: 平遥不拆城墙，镜头便来了
Hong Kong's Central–Mid-Levels escalator runs downhill until ten, then climbs until midnight — past Staunton Street, SoHo and the lanes Wong Kar-wai filmed until the frame felt like home. CN: 王家卫的中环：半山扶梯与《重庆森林》的街
Two ruined frontier forts northwest of Yinchuan became a film studio in 1993. Red Sorghum and A Chinese Odyssey shot here, and the walls are still the set. CN: 镇北堡：土墙垒出的中国电影
In Qi County, Shanxi, the merchant courtyard where Zhang Yimou filmed Raise the Red Lantern still stands in austere grey brick — and the red lanterns you photograph were the film's invention. CN: 乔家大院，红灯笼其实是电影虚构的
Shanghai's most-filmed 1930s street sits thirty kilometres from the Bund, in Chedun. It is a backlot, it is still working, and you can walk it while a crew shoots. CN: 车墩：仍在开机的1930年代南京路
Forty minutes northwest of Yinchuan, two collapsed frontier forts became a film set and stayed collapsed on purpose. What the wind did, the camera kept. CN: 镇北堡：一座从不修墙的影城
Twenty years after a Hollywood crew filmed its lanes, Xitang is still wet, still covered, still ladling wine from the jar — what's there now, and how to see it after the day-trippers leave. CN: 西塘：镜头之外的那座水乡
The Tsim Sha Tsui building Wong Kar-wai turned into a blur in Chungking Express is still open — a bazaar of curry houses, money changers and cheap rooms, five minutes from the harbour. CN: 重庆大厦，王家卫镜头里那栋仍在营业的楼
The Hong Kong of mainland period drama sits in a landlocked Zhejiang county — tram rails, traditional-character signage, and shopfronts you can cross in three steps. CN: 横店的香港街：只有一间房深
In the Ningxia desert, two forts the Ming and Qing armies left behind became a working film studio. The walls are four centuries old; the doorframes are plywood. CN: 镇北堡：先有废墟，后有片场
State television built a Three Kingdoms set on the shore of Lake Tai and, unusually, never took it down. Thirty years on, the warships and the palace are still there, and still filming. CN: 太湖边的三国城，拍完没拆的片场
The green sea where Ang Lee's fighters balanced on bending bamboo is a real ridge in Anji, two hours from Hangzhou — and still a working farm. CN: 在安吉竹海走进《卧虎藏龙》的树梢
The Longest Day in Chang'an built a Tang capital in the hills of coastal Zhejiang. Most of it is still standing, and you can walk its main avenue before the tour groups arrive. CN: 在象山，长安还能走一遍
A nineteenth-century Pearl River waterfront was built from scratch for one 1997 film, then never dismantled. How to read the seams — and reach it. CN: 横店广州街·香港街：为一部电影建的城，没拆
An hour southwest of the Bund, a working backlot keeps 1930s Shanghai in better repair than the city that lived it — façades, a tram, and no one to renovate the lanes away. CN: 车墩：为老上海重建的一条街
Two hours inland from Hangzhou, Hengdian rebuilt a full-scale Forbidden City and a dozen other centuries in concrete. Most days, cameras are still rolling inside them. CN: 横店：为拍摄而生的小镇