InterContinental Grand Hotel is a five-star hotel that offers incredible views of Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong. It’s located nearby to the Hong Kong area attractions, including Museum of Art and Space Museum, Harbor City and Hong Kong Museum of History. InterContinental Hotel features a variety of services – there is a full-service spa center, outdoor swimming pool, six superior restaurants and wedding services. The hotel provides the highest levels of service and it’s among the internationally acclaimed best hotels for business travelers.

InterContinental Hong Kong Hotel provides excellent accommodation options for hotel guests. All of the 579 luxury guestrooms present the best harbor views of any of the five star hotels in the city. They are equipped with a range of business and leisure facilities, such as high-speed Internet access, dual-line telephones with voicemail, work desk, in-room safes, bathrobes and hair dryers. 

The Intercontinental Hong Kong holds the most impressive selection of restaurants of any hotel in the city. NOBU InterContinental Hong Kong features modern Japanese cuisine of world-famous chef Nobu Matsuhisa, with a stunning interior design by David Rockwell.

The luxurious Banyan Tree Sanya is located at Luhuitou Bay, Hainan island, China. The hotel has 49 lavish pool villas set in the tropical lagoon of the Sanya vacation resort, this 5 star hotel in Sanya features a spa and hydrotherapy development, signature dining outlets, and extensive conference facilities.

Planning for an event? The ideal setting for a wedding, meeting or family reunion, Banyan Tree Sanya creates an atmosphere of congenial warmth amid tranquil surrounds, making for wonderful memories of your stay to bring home.

Like the tropical and sacred tree from which it got its name, the Banyan Tree Spa offers guests a sanctuary for the senses – a place for physical, mental and spiritual renewal. To achieve this, the Spa focuses on a non-clinical and holistic approach based on traditional Eastern healing therapies. It emphasises on a ‘high-touch, low-tech’ approach that celebrates the human touch and the use of natural herbs and spices.

Let your resort hosts enlighten you on the birthplaces and stories behind traditional folklore, as you savour epicurean cuisines or enjoy a revitalizing spa treatment amidst the tropical beauty of Sanya, and see first-hand why many bill this land as the Hawaii of the Orient.

The Aman Summer Palace merges seamlessly with some of the original buildings, gardens and gazebos of Beijing’s old imperial residence. It offers a sanctuary in which to take sumptuous refuge from the Beijing bustle, only 15 km from the city centre. The rooms and suites that surround the internal courtyard, formal gardens, and pathways evoke the elegance of the Ming dynasty. There is a sense of mystery throughout: a feeling of looking back to a different, more tranquil time.

All the rooms glow with polished clay floors and have cocooning four-poster beds and Ming-style armoires. The soft, muted colors and refined furnishings blend the simplicity of the past with the luxury of the new.

In the world-class spa, imperial Chinese techniques are combined with modern therapies. In the hands of skilled practitioners, you can retreat into a state of pure tranquility. Afterward, a short walk will take you beyond the willow-draped pond to the music pavilion where, on warm evenings, silk-clad musicians strum the erhu and guzheng to embellish the serenity of the setting. You can dine on delicious Cantonese fare in the Chinese restaurant, whereas succulent Peking duck or more unusual imperial dishes can be enjoyed in one of six small private dining rooms.

After a dinner you might like to wander over the bar. It overlooks the beautiful Chinese pond and garden and is the perfect place to relax. You might also be tempted to step out farther. You are after all within moments of some of China’s most iconic sites: the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City.

Honeycomb’ is located in a commercial complex building that includes a movie theatre, shops and a skate rink in Shenzhen, China. The restaurants is mainly for young couple and families, people from 20 to 35 years old. During the weekends there are a lot of couples and families in this complex. This restaurant has a lot of private rooms to accept all those people.

Dishes are very delicious and creative. Tableware are chosen carefully to fit with the space design. They use oval shaped dishes and they look like flower when they are served on the table. All the items in the restaurant such as logo, menu, chopsticks rest, napkins, business card, staff uniform, matches, umbrella, plates are specially designed.

The cones in the restaurant are divided into two-floor dining areas. Each floor is reached by tiny elevating system. The restaurant using transparent glass surface as a whole theme, providing spectacular view over the city. The ‘Honeycomb’ presented the idea where customers can enjoy their meal and the space at the same time.

Bug Dome is a small covered dome for underground bands, poetry reading, and discussions, inspired by insects. The building is constructed in wasteland of a ruined building site in-between the Shenzhen City Hall and an illegal workers camp, intended to reveal the human connection with nature. The architectural control has been given up in order to let the nature step in. The materials of which the cocoon is made of are bamboo, wood, gravel, recycled concrete.

The shelter is a retreat for the modern man to escape from the strength of the exploding urbanism in the city. The architects of the building share their thoughts  ‘To design is not enough. Design should not replace reality. The building must grow from the site; it must react for its surroundings, it must reflect life and it must let to be itself, like any other living creature‘. They also share the vision of their construction workers, which were sensitive, creative and responsible. They knew how to construct nature as insects do.

It will be great if we might be able to make the our cities to be part of nature. Location: Shenzhen, China. Photos by: Marco Casagrande. For a complete photo set click here

The Harbin Festival is one of the largest ice festivals in the world, along with Sapporo Snow Festival and Quebec Winter Carnival. The festival covers 400,000 sq. m and uses 120,000 m³ of ice and snow on Sun Island on the Songhua River in Harbin. It is held annually from January 5 and lasts for over one month. During this period the temperature can drop down to as low as -30°C. One of most popular winter destinations in China, Harbin attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world brave the sub-zero temperatures to admire the ice sculptures.

The inspiration for the ice and snow sculptures there usually is derived from traditional Chinese fairy tales or world famous architectures such as the Great Wall, Canada’s Niagara Falls, the Egyptian Pyramids, etc. Some of the structures are created by piling ice blocks up to make huge models of buildings. Lights are frozen in the middle of the blocks.

In 2007 the event included a Guinness World Record for the largest snow sculpture which stood at 250 m long, 9 meters high, and which was built with over 13 000 m³ of snow. The 26th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival began on January 5, 2010 and if you are in China during this period, it really should not be missed.

For more photos – click here

Lies over 3,000 m above sea level in Minshan Mountains the Huang Long Valley is one of China’s natural heritage sites. Huang Long Valley means Yellow Dragon Valley in English and covers an area of about 700 sq. km. The area includes colorful lakes, Snow Mountains, spectacular glaciers, limestone formations, waterfalls, hot springs valleys and virgin forest. Remarkable for its landscapes it was included in the UNESCO world heritage list in 1992.  

Huang Long is famous for its colored terrace ponds of different sizes and shapes that follow the hiking paths up from the valley floor. Due to varied depth of the ponds and all kinds of mineral pigments and deposits on the bottom, the water reflects a variety of charming colors. The golden and greenish minerals give magical colors to the water. The valley has also waterfalls, stalactite caves and 3 ancient temples at its higher sections. With so many wonderful views gathered in one place, Huang Long is not only the treasure of China, but also the treasure of the world.

While there are no mountains to climb in the city of Shanghai, you can have a heightened experience climbing Lupu Bridge. Choose a clear, sunny day and hop in a taxi to the bridge that straddles the Huangpu River. This is longest arch bridge in the world with its 550-meter-long arch span is 32 meters longer. The length of on-site welding totals more than 40,000 meters—comparable to the total length of the inner-city elevated freeway of Shanghai.

In order to complete the climb, you need to be healthy and capable to climb unaided, because the experience includes climbing 367 steps at high altitude and exposing under the weather. All cardiopulmonary diseases (including hypertension), dizziness, and equilibrium disorder may affect your climbing safety.

Hand-carried bags and other stuff are not allowed on the bridge. Climbers will be asked to remove them and leave them at the depost, They also must pass through a metal-detector.

Once you reach the top, take in the vast panoramic view, which now includes a good shot of the future site of the Shanghai World Expo 2010. Remember to bring your camera along and take advantage of the great many snapshot opportunities.

If you’ve been to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) there is no need to see any other mountain. Situated in eastern China’s Anhui Province and popular with its breathtaking sweeping landscapes and misty peaks, the Yellow Mountain offers extraordinary scenes and views from what can look like the edge of the world.

Whether you look there are oddly-shaped pine trees and rock formations. Huangshan is actually an entire range of mountains and valleys, jutting rocks, shimmering pools, gurgling water falls and the ephemeral clouds. As an international ecotourism point of interest, UNESCO listed the mountain as an official World Cultural Heritage Site in 1990.

The trees of Mount Huangshan occupy an especially important place in China’s botanical research. Here you will find century-old pines, firs, ginkgoes, actinidia, Chinese torreyas and camphor woods– remnants of the glacial era. The Huangshan Mountain Range also provides a natural habitat for a wide variety of creatures. Among the mountain-dwellers are monkeys, goats, deer, pangolin and squirrels, in addition to an active bird population. The climate there is mild and humid, and the temperature is agreeable during all four seasons.

Getting there: Huangshan is accessible from Shanghai by overnight train, a five-hour bus ride or one hour by air. Expect expensive accommodation and food in the mountains everything is transported up the mountain by man-power: witness tough workers carrying live chickens or flats of coke cans in buckets hanging from wooden beams over their shoulders, and still making it up the mountain faster than you.

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Hainan is China’s Hawaii. It’s on the same latitude, with a highly developed agricultural economy, roads and infrastructure. It’s China’s smallest province, divided by a 1.5 km strait from Guangdong, and nestled between the Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea. Like Hawaii it has the beaches, hills, forests, wildlife, and recreational roster. 

In the central highlands, the descendants of the Li, Miao and Han wear tribal dress in the villages, and ancient Chinese poetry proclaims the beauty of the waterfalls, gorges, lush forests with chattering monkeys – and the same coconut, banana, pepper and fruit fields you can see, if on a different scale. This is where to join the annual Water-Splashing Festival. 

Sanya, Hainan’s second city in the south, is the centre of beach life, and focal point of all tourism. Xiao Dongtian, to the west at Yazhou Bay is spectacularly pretty, with beauty spots alongside regular beach and countryside facilities. 

When to go: Year-round. Population: 8,200,000. How to get there: By air from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan, to Haikou or Sanya; by train and rail-ferry, from Guangzhou in Guangdong, to Haikou; by boat from several Chinese ports, to Haikou or Sanya. Photos by: Alfred(??) in Shanghai

The Mogao Caves(Caves of the Thousand Buddhas , or Caves of Dunhuang ) are a system of Buddhist cave temples near the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province, China. “Mogao” means high up in the desert. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years.

According to Tang Dynasty records, a monk had witnessed on-site a vision of thousand Buddhas under showers of golden rays. He started the caves construction work that spanned ten dynasties.Other pilgrims and travelers followed for the next thousand years.

The Mogao Grottoes contain priceless paintings, sculptures, some 50,000 Buddhist scriptures, historical documents, textiles, and other relics. The styles applied are typically from Indian-Buddhist schools.

Some sutras as big as 65 square metres, and encompassing a whole wall.

Despite erosion and man-made destruction, the 492 caves are well preserved, with frescoes covering an area of 45,000 square metres, more than 2,000 colored sculptured figures and five wooden eaves overhanging the caves.

Today, 220 of the Tang caves remain.  Today, the site is an important tourist attraction and the subject of an ongoing archaeological project.

The Mogao Caves became one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1987.

Located in Hunan Province in China,  Zhangjiajie Forest Geo-park covers a total area of 9,600 sq. k?, 1.1000 of China’s territory. This scenic area which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. In the area many scenic spots such as Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Baofeng Lake, Suoxiyu Valley, Tianzi Mountain, Yangjiajie Nature Reserve – together with Huanglong Cave (Asia’s largest cave), and many beautiful bridges, brooks and waterfalls. The area is a rare natural museum and famous tourist scenic spot.

The most attractive scene that Zhangjiajie features is the mysterious mountain covered with dense, primeval forests. It is said that 23 species of tare animals and more than 3,000 species of plants are living in the misty world. Many rocks are shaped like animals and fairies, and each is given its own legend.

This Linked Hybrid complex sited adjacent to the city of old city wall of Beijing. The Linked Hybrid is also called an ”open city within a city” project. The huge structure linked together 750 apartments, a public green space, commercial zones, a hotel, a cinema, a kinder garden, Montessori school and an underground parking. The buildings on the ground, under the ground and over the ground are fused together.

The ground level offers a number of open for all people (residents and visitors) to walk around. The space ensure some kind of micro-urbanisms of small scale. All public functions have connections with greenery.

From the 12th and18th floor, a multi-functional of skybridges with a swimming pool, a fitness room, a cafe, a gallery, auditorium and a minisalon connects the eight residential towers and the hotel tower and offer breathtaking view over the city.

Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong is located in the heart of Kowloon’s business and entertainment district, overlooking the Victoria Harbour. Situated in the city center, the hotel is only a short distance from all major shops and attractions. The Hotel is famous for its fleet of Rolls-Royce limousines, which are used to transport guests in style to various locations throughout the territory.

Rooms and suites are extremely spacious, ranging from about 450 square feet. Guests have a choice of rooms and suites in either the grand, historic Main Building or the more contemporary floors of The Peninsula Tower.

Room Facilities: Air conditioning, Cable/satellite TV, Multi-line phone, silent fax machines, valet-call buttons and outside temperature and humidity indicator.

The hotel includes one of the best French restaurants in Asia-Gaddi’s, and equally mouthwatering is the authentic Cantonese food served in the Lobby.

The hotel features a state-of-the-art fitness centre and a huge Roman-style swimming pool.  The Peninsula Spa is one of Hong Kong’s most luxurious hotel spa facilities, complete with a state-of-the-art Health Club.

Baekdu Mountain is a volcanic mountain on the border between China and North Korea. At 2,744 m, it is the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula. The area is a known habitat for tigers, bears, leopards, wolves, and wild boars. One of the highest crater lakes in the world, Heaven Lake, is at the top of the mountain. It has a circumference of 14 km, with an average depth of 213 m and maximum depth of 384 m. From mid-October to mid-June, the lake is covered with ice.