Destinations

Places with stories worth hearing

Each guide is adapted from a LoreLens audio narration — the same stories the app tells you on location, in article form for your planning.

Chongqing · Yangtze River

Qutang Gorge: The Landscape on the 10-Yuan Note

Start with the mountain gate on China's 10-yuan note, then follow eight kilometres of river through imperial history, two defining poems and the traces of the old cliff road.

10 min read

Chongqing · Yangtze River

Fengdu Ghost City: Visit the Afterlife, Come Back Alive

Walk the Chinese afterlife as a complete journey—from the Bridge of Helplessness and the Gate of Ghosts to the last look home and the final court of judgment.

10 min read

Chongqing · City

Liziba: The Train That Runs Through an Apartment Building

See Chongqing's monorail enter a 19-storey residential tower, understand why the station and building were designed together, and frame the classic view safely.

9 min read

Chongqing · Yangtze River

The Hanging Coffins of the Yangtze

Find real wooden coffins high in the cliffs, meet the ancient river communities associated with them, and separate what archaeology knows from the legends below.

9 min read

Shandong · Sacred Mountains

Mount Tai: The Mountain Emperors Climbed to Talk to Heaven

Follow China's most politically charged mountain from Dai Temple to the summit, through imperial sacrifice, cliff inscriptions, midnight climbers and the uncertain reward of sunrise.

10 min read

Beijing · Great Wall

Juyongguan: The Great Wall's Front Door to Beijing

Read the Great Wall as a valley-wide defence system, trace the Mongol and Ming struggle for Beijing's northern door, and stop at a six-script Buddhist monument.

10 min read

Hubei · Yangtze River

Three Gorges Dam: How to Read the Wall Across the Yangtze

Stand above the world's largest hydropower station and read more than its record-breaking scale: a century of ambition, flood control, ship lifts, submerged towns and 1.3 million changed lives.

10 min read

Guangxi · Dong Villages

Chengyang Eight Villages: Cross the Bridge into Dong Life

Begin with Chengyang's roofed Wind and Rain Bridge, then walk beyond the postcard into eight living Dong villages shaped by drum towers, rice fields, timber craft and songs carried without a conductor.

10 min read

Beijing · Dongcheng

Forbidden City: Read Beijing's Imperial Center

Walk from Meridian Gate to the Imperial Garden and learn how courtyards, thresholds and sightlines turned a 720,000-square-metre palace into a working map of imperial power.

10 min read

Beijing · Dongcheng

Temple of Heaven: Reading Beijing's Architecture of the Sky

Walk from a white-marble altar to the blue-roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and discover how emperors, craftsmen and today's park-goers have each given meaning to Beijing's great ritual landscape.

10 min read

Beijing · Haidian

Summer Palace: Read Beijing's Imperial Landscape

Follow Kunming Lake from the painted Long Corridor to Longevity Hill, and discover how an imperial retreat became a record of beauty, destruction, contested rebuilding and public memory.

10 min read

Beijing · Haidian

Old Summer Palace: Read the Ruins Beyond the Marble

Begin with the map, not the famous stone façades: Yuanmingyuan was a vast three-garden world of lakes, timber halls and imperial government before looting, fire and decades of further loss.

10 min read

Showing 1–12 of 246 guides