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China is definitely one of the best places in the world for ancient history, I’ve only made one trip there and yet it already contains more than half of my favourite historical sites. And this is coming from someone who’s travelled quite abundantly. Shanxi province, in particular, is probably the part of East Asia with the most preserved history.
Though I will say if you ever go, brush up on that Mandarin Chinese, that will be an obstacle. Barely anybody speaks anything but Sinitic languages and it's likely you'll have to use a translate app at many points. Also, be flexible, be tolerant and don’t take shit too seriously. This is good advice for travelling anywhere, but China in particular has a tendency to induce culture shock.
Thank you, that's very flattering. The Great Wall picture is one of my favourites of the entire trip, I devoted about an entire day to getting all the colours right.
There's another photo I really want to work on involving a vendor perched on a plank on the side of the wall, far above the valley below, but I've been holding off because it'll probably involve yet another marathon editing session.
It was exceptional. Not always an easy travel, but the immense sense of age and scale you get in China is just unparalleled anywhere else in East Asia. There's also a whole lot of culture and it's not difficult at all to find active religious and ritual practice (Yonghe Temple in particular had so many chanting monks inside its halls).
I keep meaning to write a longform post about it but just get busy and sidetracked. Someday soon, maybe.
Been trying my hand at proper photo editing this week. Over Christmas I took thousands of shots in RAW format, whittled them down to a chosen hundred, and am now only starting to edit them properly. I've been taking it quite seriously, checking the histogram as I go along for dynamic range, trying to do proper colour balancing, and so on. It's quite surprising how long it takes; it's not uncommon for me to spend hours on a photo before I'm satisfied.
Here is an album of my completed photos thus far. There's not much there yet due to how time-consuming the process is; currently I have seven photos down, with ninety-three more to go.
So I'm making this with the disclaimer that the countries I have travelled to at this point include the following: Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Northern Italy (so, no Rome and Sicily), Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, and Northern China. Note I cannot comment on other areas like Egypt, the UK, Spain, Greece, Southern China, Japan, India, or Cambodia.
With all that out of the way here's my list of favourite historical things I've seen (that are not in China, if you include the China ones the list becomes a good bit longer). It's a small list of favourites because I'm picky.
1: Sainte-Chapelle, France. I need to provide the disclaimer that I was not generally very impressed by Paris - it was rather chaotic and seedy, far from the romantic vibe it attempts to cultivate in tourist adverts, and I hear things have only gotten worse since I visited. But Sainte-Chapelle is the one thing in the city I really think justifies travelling there, and it does so stunningly; it's a 1238 Gothic cathedral with a lower and upper chapel, the latter of which is covered from top to toe in stained glass depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ, Ezekiel and Job, Genesis and so on. When the light hits the chapel at the right angle the interior looks positively kaleidoscopic. It's a small chapel, it's not large at all compared to many of the others in Europe, but it's so good I would say that if you travel to any historic site in Europe you should make it this one.
2: Changdeokgung Palace, South Korea. This is a rather out-of-left-field one, I don't think most people would put the Seoul palaces on the top of their list, but I would. I even prefer it to the Forbidden City, to be honest, which I don't think is a popular opinion. I went here in winter and had the palace grounds almost entirely to myself. It's an elegant, mazelike early 17th century palace painted in bright red and teal, with a throne hall that's adorned with paintings of uniquely Korean iconography such as pear blossoms and the Irworobongdo five peaks. But what really sold this one for me was the hidden garden at the back of the palace that I don't think most people ever find their way to; you have to pay an extra fee to go there, but it adds a lot of depth to the experience. It's so big it represents 60% of the palace, it's full of very naturalistic garden design and gorgeously framed pavilions and ponds, it contains what used to be the Korean royal library, and it's also full of cats (supposedly they have been there ever since a Joseon Dynasty king became an inverterate cat lover, I'm not joking). It's worth it if you can see this one off peak season, it needs to be serene.
3: Mausoleum of Emperor Khai Dinh, Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the most overstimulating and chaotic places I've been to, it is not for the faint-hearted, but it's also got some incredible things. This mausoleum is by far the youngest historical site on the list, hailing from the early 20th century during the final tumultuous years of the Nguyen Dynasty, and it was built as the tomb of an emperor who was largely a puppet of the French. But it's on here largely because its architectural style is one of the most unique things I've seen, and you will never find it anywhere else in the world. It's an eclectic East-meets-West hybrid of French and Vietnamese architecture, and it doesn't do so by mixing in French and Vietnamese-styled structures into the same complex, rather the whole mausoleum looks like a perfect midpoint between the two disparate architectural styles. It also features more modern construction techniques such as the usage of concrete and steel, and somehow makes all of it work seamlessly. Elements like neoclassical pilasters, pillars and arches sit comfortably alongside reliefs and paintings of dragons, Asian tomb statues, carved Confucian sayings and porcelain mosaics. The dragon-and-cloud mural on the ceiling of the mausoleum is a particular highlight, it's quite incredible.
If including China, include the Great Wall, Yungang Grottoes, Shuanglin Temple, and Terracotta Army. There are a few others that nearly make it but don't. For example Venice might have made it on here, but ultimately I thought it was too touristy and shoulder-to-shoulder crowded for me to be able to truthfully say that it was experientially special for me. It was very beautiful but it also felt like being in an ant farm, which degraded the experience. I would still say to visit because it's Venice, you have to, but it still won't be on the list.
I'll end this with another disclaimer - other people probably won't agree with my list and this kind of thing is obviously rather subjective. Ultimately the best way to refine your travel list is to just research a lot.
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