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So I'm planning a trip to China this December. It's a gigantic place with a lot of history and I find myself a bit paralysed with indecision as to where I should go, I've drawn up about five or six different plans in multiple different parts of the country and can't choose between them.
I'm not sure how many people on this forum have actually visited China at all (there's at least one I guess), but anybody here have any recommendations to share? Any parts of the country in particular stand out to you?
Don't focus too much on the cities. The cultural revolution destroyed a ton of history all across the nation, and the development boom finished the job on a lot more. They all have a lot less to see than equivalent cities of their size and history in other nations. You can go to one big city - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. - and you'll have seen them all.
Since you're going in December, how much does weather matter to you? You might be able to catch Harbin Ice Festival if you're willing to bear -20 or lower temperatures.
A nitpick, but after having done some really deep digging I would actually say China has the richest historical sites of all of Asia, even if much of it is terribly marketed to international tourists (the Cultural Revolution was bad, but there's so much history in China that it's impossible to Thanos-snap most of it away in a relatively short period, and other countries in Asia have also had somewhat analogous periods of cultural destruction like the Meiji Restoration).
I'll definitely agree that most of the really big Tier-1s like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are historical deserts, but that's in part because these cities got big relatively recently; they're nowhere near the core of historical Chinese civilisation. Shanghai was a small agricultural community for most of Chinese history and only really came into its own in the 1930s, and Shenzhen barely even existed until 1979. Most megacities in China are relatively history-poor, but that's in part because there wasn't that much history there to protect in the first place - the cities that are global hubs in China today are, for the most part, not the cities that were historically important. OTOH many of the older cities like Beijing, Chengde, Xi'an, Suzhou, Luoyang etc seem to have way more historical sites than your modal Asian city, not less. And Pingyao looks insane. I do plan to incorporate a lot of areas outside of the cities into my itinerary though.
Weather doesn't really matter that much to me, though -20 is pushing it a little bit and I'm mostly going to China to see history and culture (Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces are very attractive in that regard). I've heard of the Harbin Ice Festival before; have you gone yourself and would you recommend it?
I didn't claim that China lacked historical sites, rather that the cities themselves were somewhat lacking. The issue is that all the sites are dispersed throughout a continent-sized nation, making it very difficult to plan a trip - as you've discovered. Personally Suzhou, Luoyang, and Chengdu did not stand out as markedly different from the tier 1 cities in being composed of vast sprawls of communist blocks and a small handful of proper history. At least everyone likes Xi'an, but that seems to be the exception to the rule.
I lived in Harbin for a short period, so it's more that I passed through while the ice festival happened than I visited. Certainly it's very unique, and Harbin isn't a bad city as some of the Russian influences have still remained. But I recommended it more because much of China is quite grim to visit in December, particularly further south: I moved from Harbin to Shanghai in January, and found it worse in the 0-5C of Shanghai to the -20C of Harbin just because so many places lacked proper heating.
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