Luxury China Voyages

Hainan is China's tropical secret, palm-fringed Yalong Bay, jade-green shallows and a warmth that feels a world away from the mainland. Head out to Yalong Bay to swim or kayak from the beach concession. Ashore, stand beneath the towering Guanyin statue at Nanshan, soak in mineral hot springs, then sip fresh coconut on sands most Western travellers never reach. It is the resort coast the guidebooks forget.

A garden island just offshore, Gulangyu, bans cars entirely and instead offers colonial-era mansions, hidden courtyards and more pianos per capita than anywhere else in China, a legacy of the missionaries and merchants who settled here a century ago. Xiamen's own waterfront promenade and university campus, regularly named the country's most beautiful, back onto beaches busy with egrets and terns. A seafood-heavy Hokkien dining scene, built on the same strait that has linked this coast to Taiwan and beyond for centuries, rounds out one of China's most livable port cities.