China holidays

What are the best ways to discover China?

Despite the dizzying speed and scale of development in China, the venerable capital Beijing - your likely starting point on a luxury holiday to China - has a certain comforting sense of permanency. Granted, at a cool 20 million souls Beijing is a city of Dutch population proportions, but one that took rather longer to evolve than the pop-up cities elsewhere in the country. 3,000 years longer, to be precise. Not to imply that this a staid or backwards looking city; far from it - that big a population equates to a whole heap of ideas, ambition and creative energy, the flames of which are being fanned by the government's new found light(ish) touch 'state capitalism'. Speaking of capitalism, guess what? Yup, The Chinese invented that too, way back in the Song Dynasty.

Away from the capital the country contains a similarly diverse range of landscapes, plus renowned cultural treasures such as the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an. Han Chinese make up most of the population, but there are 55 other major ethnic groups, notably the Uighurs in Xinjiang province and, of course, the Tibetans, both of whom have been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Depending on the length of your stay, after Beijing the next most important place to visit would arguably be Xi'an and those staggering terracotta troops, but the buzzing city of Shanghai is also well worth a look. Other smaller but equally memorable places to consider - although realistically only for anyone with ten days or more to spare - would be the pandas and Sichuan cuisine in Chengdu; Lijiang, Dali and Shangri-La, the fabled cities of Yunnan Province; the staggering limestone pinnacles of Guilin and Yangshuo, and the architectural marvel that is Pingyao, a city seemingly untouched since the Ming Dynasty in the 1300s. Finally, for anyone who can forgive China's policies in the disputed territory of Tibet, then Lhasa and the high Tibetan plateau are genuinely staggering places to visit, best reached by one of the world's most amazing train journeys from Beijing to Lhasa.

On the subject of journeys, there's no denying China can be a tricky place to get around, so it is best done in conjunction with a tour operator who knows the country well, and uses the best people on the ground. Like us, for example. Several of the Original Travel team have travelled in this fascinating destination so can talk you through what is best to do in a fast-changing land.