Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong, mainland period dramas, viral-variety filming spots — what's still there, what's been demolished.
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