China

Before my first time in China, I worried about cultural differences. Instead, I found QR-code payments, a stubborn firewall, barely any English, robots using lifts — and a system that somehow became completely normal within three days.I had travelled long-haul before, but only once, to New York. So China was not my first encounter with a seriously

My first trip to China had all the technology I expected. The surprise was how comfortable they had made it. Shanghai had already given me a very different kind of speed: 300 kilometres per hour while floating above the track on magnetic levitation, an experience that still feels unlike almost anything else in the railway world. By the time I was

I arrived knowing almost nothing about Hangzhou. Between water lilies, pagodas, Buddhist temples and old streets, I found the China I had imagined — and discovered that reality was even more captivating than I had expected. I arrived in Hangzhou from Shanghai on the afternoon of 15 May, after less than an hour on the high-speed train from Shangha

I arrived in Hangzhou knowing almost nothing about its most famous craft. By the time I left, silk had followed me from museums and markets all the way into my suitcase. The old man and I had no language in common. My Chinese was nonexistent, his English was no better, and whatever conversation we were having depended on a translation app, a calc

A levitating train, a room above the city, ancient temples beneath skyscrapers—and the moment China stopped looking simple. Shanghai lay beneath me, and I recognised absolutely nothing. From the upper floors of the Shanghai Marriott Marquis City Centre, the city stretched beneath me in every direction: towers, parks, roads and blocks of buildings