Nanjing

The Ming built their first capital here in the fourteenth century and the wall they raised is still mostly standing, the longest city wall in the world. Inside it the city is green and low, its avenues planted with plane trees by the Republican government in the 1920s, and the old villa quarter around Yihe Road is one of the pleasantest places to walk in China.

Purple Mountain holds the Ming tombs, Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum and a forest of paths between them. Give it a full day and take the cable car or a bus back down.

Nanjing is also where the 1937 massacre happened, and the memorial is a serious, well-made place that most visitors should see. Summers are famously hot; spring and autumn are the seasons.

Nanjing South is the high-speed hub on metro lines 1, 3 and S1: Shanghai in about an hour and a quarter, Suzhou under an hour, Hangzhou about an hour and a quarter, Beijing three and a half to four hours. The older Nanjing station on Xuanwu Lake also takes some fast trains. Lukou (NKG) airport is 40 kilometres south; metro line S1 to South station takes about 35 minutes.

Duck, in every form: salted duck cold with a beer, duck blood and vermicelli soup at any hour, duck-oil pastries. Tangbao soup dumplings and pan-fried guotie for breakfast, pidu noodles with pork rind, and sesame cakes from the ovens around the Confucius Temple. Nanjing food is gentle and a little sweet, Jiangsu style.