All -

I will have to layover in Zhuhai again on an upcoming trip. As usual I try to get in some sightseeing on these off weekends. But since this is the 5th trip to Zhuhai in 4 months, I think I have seen enough of Macau and Hong Kong. Any recommendations for a destination within a 3 hour flight of HKG?

Thanks,
Jim

Shanghai is impressive..

Shanghai's a great city, but not really all that different from Hong Kong.

You can get many, many places in China within a 3hr flight (at least those places with nonstop service, which if you can leave from CAN is a LOT of places).

Some suggestions:

Go to Guilin (KWL) and take a boat down the Li river to Yangshuo for a change of scenery. Yangshuo transformed from a fun backpacker town to a cheesy Disney-China 5-6 years ago (and Guilin gave up on having any identity other than as a tourist attraction a decade before that), but the boat ride remains one of the classic must-dos on any China itinerary. You can also rent a bicycle in Yangshuo and pedal through rice paddies surrounded by bizarre limestone peaks (or hire a pedicab or moto-rickshaw if you're not up for biking). It's absolutely beautiful.

You can get 1hr nonstop flights for under $200 roundtrip from SZX or CAN (several flights a day) or even ZUH (on some days). I think there's a nonstop from HKG on some days, too, but it's more expensive.

The Terracotta Soldiers in Xi'an (XIY) are on most must-see lists. The tourist guantlets that surround the excavations are horrid, but the soldiers themselves are very impressive, and Xi'an is an interesting city to wander.

Of course Beijing (PEK) offers tons of sightseeing opportunities. Between the big things (like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall) and the sheer fascination of the varied street scenes in different parts of the city (from the twisted hutongs to the massive Stalinist boulevards to the quaint campus of Peking University).

I'm partial to Nanjing (NKG), since I lived there for a year. It doesn't have the world famous tourist sites of some of the above suggestions, but it's a beautiful, pleasant city, quite unlike the industrial nightmares of Shenzhen and Zhuhai and whatnot. And there are definitely things to do.

Bottom line: go to your local bookstore and browse through the China books in the travel section. See what interests you. You're bound to find something.

I'd do PEK - very interesting city, good shopping (though not like PVG), very good nighlife and only ~3 hours from HKG. Note that you can use UA miles for CA F for a fairly cheap.

Lijiang (LJG) is a nice old town on the edge of the Tibet Plateau. The majority population is the Chinese monority Naxi. There are many foreigners there. If you have read Lost Horizon, you can go from LJG to Shangri-la area at 13000 feet above sea level, but it takes a few days.

I second Lijiang. My wife and I were just there and loved it. The old town is pretty well preserved and has been turned into a tourist destination. There's lots of activity and energy at night. The rest of the City is a dump, so don't bother, but the old city should keep you occupied. The Tiger Leap gorge is worth seeing, but requires almost a full day driving back and forth.

Don't bother trying to arrange a hotel there, you can just show up and there are lots of guest houses in the old city.

In a couple of more hours you can get to Lhasa, which is an amazing place. Xian is worth seeing, Hangzhou is not.

I'd do Xi'an, Beijing or Guilin, in that order. Xi'an is probably at outer limits of your flight length, Beijing is over. Still, if you haven't been to any of those places, I think Xi'an and Beijing are definite must sees. Xi'an is more "doable" on a weekend, I think Beijing could use more time. The Li River cuise is the thing to do in Guilin, as others have mentioned, however, you have to check on when you are going as the water level drops in the summer months and that might hamper or even cancel the cruises; city is also interesting to walk around, not as frantic as other Chinese cities, at least on weekends.

I don't agree, I think Shanghai is completely different from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is basically a capitalist enclave that built up from its unique position as the only place to do business back when China was closed. It's still a big port, but the center of gravity of the Chinese economy is moving decisively away.

Shanghai, on the other hand, is an ancient trading city held back during communist rule but now allowed to develop again. The entire city is under construction and there is all sorts of stuff going on. It sits at the main access to the biggest commercial river in China, which serves the agricultural heart of china and scads of industrial development. The Pearl just can't compare.

A couple of visits to Hong Kong and I had pretty much seen it . . . it's a financial district surrounded by suburbs. Nice and civilized, to be sure, but boring. And the civilized veneer is wearing away as the memory of British rule fades. Soon there will be just as much spitting in the streets, yelling, pushing and shoving as in any other large city. The gap between Hong Kong and Guangzhou is wealth, and that gap is closing.

Anyway, Shanghai is so much more, it feels like a dynamic urban center with all the attendant tensions and interests. Definitely go, I think you will agree it's no Hong Kong. Right before the handover of Hong Kong the central government said that Hong Kong would be Frankfurt to Shanghai's London. The Hong Kongers were furious, but I think the analogy is apt.

How about Hainan island. A different experience, to be sure, but a lot closer.

Just go to Lan Kwai Fong. Who needs airplanes when you can drink yourself silly and then break bottles on the cobblestone streets in overwhelming nighttime humidity?

Obligatory United reference: United flies to Hong Kong.

I fully agree that Shanghai is becoming much more dynamic than HK. In a few decades, I expect it will all but kill HK (particularly once direct trading starts between the Mainland and Taiwan). But your history is a bit off. Shanghai was a small inconsequential fishing village (not unlike HK) until foreign traders built it into a financial center in the 19th century (not unlike HK). The only real difference between HK and SH historically is that HK was a British Colony until 1997 while Shanghai has changed control a number of times (Colonialist, ROC, Japanese, PRC) and suffered greatly as a result. Today Shanghai is a much more exciting city than HK, but it's still far more similar to HK than the other 99% of China. Cities like Xi'an, Guilin and Lijiang offer a much greater contrast to HK than Shanghai does (albeit a somewhat disneyfied experience). I'm not saying people shouldn't visit Shanghai. It's a great city with plenty to do, good people, good food, great lodging, good shopping, and the excitement and ambition of the city is absolutely pervasive. But its history is not ancient and if the OP is sick of HK, I think there are other places to go to get something different. Xi'an if you want ancient. Guilin if you want scenery. Lijiang if you want Disney-quaint. Beijing if you want displays of power.

I also really enjoyed my travels near Lijiang, but I think you have to change planes in Kunming to get there from HKG/SZX/ZUH/CAN, so that may rule it out for the OP.

If the big cruising boats aren't able to navigate the river, there should still be speedboats (with drivers) you can hire to take you down the river. I actually prefer the speedboats. The big boats turn the cruise into a show. You eat a mediocre lunch on board while a tour guide blares through a megaphone about the names of the different hills and which poet/painter committed suicide on which peak and whatnot. The speedboats zip down the river much faster, giving you the same scenic views without the megaphone fatigue (if you want to know the "history" get yourself a good guidebook), and allowing you to spend time in Yangshuo, which despite its disneyfication is still a pretty fun town (or at least still was still fun last time I was there in 2002, when it had been completely remade since my 1998 visit, when it was even more fun).

Try Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province. About 2 hours from HK. The Yandang Mountain sceneries is a great wonder. Plenty of waterfalls and the view from the top is just splendid. Cool mountain air even in the summer.

I wonder if I'm alone in detecting an oxymoron here, as the situation at Lijiang, the town being recommended, demonstrates very well:

There was much rebuilding following an earthquake, but the officials took the opportunity to invent a king's palace and build it in place of some of the housing that had collapsed.

Such vernacular housing as was rebuilt was neither built to match the original style nor in proper materials. Lines scored in cement replace the original pattern of brick for instance.

The authorities have demolished other buildings and rebuilt them 'in the style of the Ming dynasty.'

Two thirds of the households living in the town have been resettled elsewhere.

Just about every business is now a souvenir shop.

There is a row of pizza restaurants along one stretch which is known to locals as Yangren Jie, or 'Foreigner Street'. Tour guides with megaphones lead groups of Chinese tourists past the restaurants, inviting them to look at the foreigners being traditionally foreign.

The traditional Naxi ethnic minority costume tour guides and others wear has been redesigned by the Han Chinese authorities to make it more attractive to visitors and to encourage young people to wear it. It is compulsory for anyone working in the hospitality industry to wear it, regardless of their ethnic group.

Back in 1996 Lijiang had 3000-5000 visitors per annum. In 2005 it had 4.3 million.

From being a quiet historic village Lijiang has now become little more than a theme park. It is not 'well preserved'. It's a travesty of its former self.

Peter N-H