When Derek Poskin first arrived in the historic canal city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, in 2016, he was tracing a poem by Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Li Bai and developing a growing appreciation for Chinese tea culture.
On an ancient road in Sichuan province, Sandra Dorothy Carpenter presses her palm against a one-thousand-year-old cypress tree, the scent of cypress filling the air around her.
Alice Sara Ott closed her eyes for a moment before touching the piano keys, feeling the quiet energy of the Forbidden City Concert Hall around her. The German-Japanese pianist was back in Beijing on March 29 to share the music that had captivated her during the long months of lockdown in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic: the luminous nocturnes of John Field and the powerful, architectural landscapes of Beethoven. Each note was a personal story, each pause a space for connection with an audience that had waited as long as she had.
NANJING — On a brisk spring morning, thousands of runners in peach-blossom-themed shirts created a sea of pink, setting off along a 10-kilometer course winding through peach orchards, farmhouses and the soft glow of the season.
LANZHOU — With swift, practiced hands, 42-year-old Peng Jingjing twists, stretches, and folds dough into slender strands before a dozen students at the I. E. S. Hotel Escuela in Madrid, bringing the art of hand-pulled noodles to life.
Tucked behind the gray-brick facades of Beijing's Dafangjia hutong (alleyway), a heavy wooden door opens into stillness. Inside Under Clouds Green, a plant-based Yunnan cuisine restaurant, the city's noise dissolves almost instantly.
Ice begins to melt at Xinhua Lake in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, as migratory birds return with the season, bringing life to the quiet winter waters.
Flower-viewing tours, rural trips and consumer demand for "experiences" reached a peak during the recent three-day Qingming Festival holiday.
China's porcelain legacy spans millennia. The nation itself bears its name, and through it, the world came to know China.
While China was changing at an extraordinary pace, I remained in one place long enough to grow alongside it.