From the Tagus to the Pearl River Delta

Afternoon and evening. Pick-up at the airport or at the Hong Kong ferry terminal and crossing by ferry. Check in on the peninsula and a first short walk through Senate Square with the lights already on.

Macau has no intercontinental flights to Europe, so arrival is normally through Hong Kong: direct ferry from the airport or over the Bay bridge. In either case allow two to three hours between landing and the hotel — which is why the first day has no programme.

Meal. Welcome dinner of minchi and African chicken.

Meals: dinner.

Morning. Ruins of St Paul’s at 8:30, before the queues. Senate Square, the Leal Senado and Rua da Felicidade, the old district of green-doored houses.

The Portuguese pavement of Senate Square is one of the few things still exactly as it was sixty years ago, and it is where we start: a black and white wave pattern laid by Macau paviors; it survives the tropics better than one would expect and is still repaired with stone brought from Portugal.

Afternoon. Mount Fortress and lighthouse, with the view over the peninsula. Lunch at a historic Macanese restaurant. Evening. Arranged conversation with members of the Macanese community and a light dinner on Taipa.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Taipa village and its twentieth-century houses; cinnamon egg tarts straight from the oven. Afternoon. Coloane and the fishing village facing the Zhuhai channel. Crossing to the mainland over the bridge or through the Border Gate, depending on traffic. Evening. Check-in in Guangzhou and dinner of Cantonese food in the old district.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. The Shamian district, the island of the foreign concessions, with the consular houses where the Portuguese had a factory. Walk on to the Qingping market. Afternoon. Guangzhou’s oldest food street and then morning tea — the Cantonese yum cha, with steamer baskets. It is the same ritual the Portuguese encountered and adapted.

It was in Guangzhou, not Macau, that Europeans were allowed to trade for more than two centuries: first in the Thirteen Factories district, on a strip of riverbank a few hundred metres long, and later on Shamian island, where the concessions built consular houses, churches and clubs. The two places are twenty minutes apart and read as two consecutive pages of the same process. It is also here that you understand Cantonese morning tea has little to do with afternoon tea: it is steamer baskets, large tables and long conversation.

Evening. Seafood dinner, chosen live at the door.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. Chan Clan Temple and the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, with its eleventh-century pagoda. Last tea purchases on the spice street. Afternoon. High-speed train to Shanghai, about seven hours in first class, with lunch served on board.

On this crossing the country changes latitude and language: Cantonese is left behind for the Mandarin of the Yangtze, and the delta stops being periphery and becomes the economic engine of China. The train journey is long but comfortable, and it serves as a rest. Evening. Arrival and a first walk along the lit-up Bund, reading the colonial buildings one by one.

The Bund walk reads better by day and is repeated at night: for centuries this is where the banks, the shipping companies and the foreign trading houses operated, including Macau firms with offices in the city. The names erased from the façades can still be made out in the stone.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. The Bund at 6:30, with the tai chi practitioners. Then Yu Garden at 8:30. Afternoon. French Concession on foot: Wukang Road, the Wukang Building and the former French club headquarters. Late afternoon free for Xintiandi. Evening. Dinner of Shanghai cooking and up the Shanghai Tower, if visibility allows.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Thirty-minute train to Suzhou and the Humble Administrator’s Garden. The Suzhou Museum, by I.M. Pei. Afternoon. Canals of the Pingjiang district and a boat ride. Back to Shanghai at the end of the day.

Suzhou is on the programme not because it is picturesque: it is there because it is the city Shanghai replaced. For centuries it was the centre of silk and of the scholar’s garden, and it is where urban China before the nineteenth century survives whole — which is why the gardens of Suzhou are on the world heritage list. Evening. Dinner at leisure and last night in the city.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Morning. Shanghai Museum, at People’s Square, with the reservation made by us. The focus is the ritual bronze, which is where China becomes legible. Afternoon. High-speed train Shanghai–Beijing, 4h18 to 6h. Evening. Arrival in Beijing and Peking duck dinner in Dongcheng.

Meals: breakfast and dinner.

Morning. Forbidden City at 8:30, and the Portuguese trail in northern China: the former Jesuit observatory, where Adam Schall worked, and the cathedral Tomás Pereira helped raise.

In the Jesuit cemetery are the graves of Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest, next to a row of Portuguese priests: it is one of the few places in China where the European presence at the court can be seen in stone. The visit is made with prior authorisation and within a short time slot, which means arriving in Beijing the day before, with time to arrange it.

Afternoon. Depending on the flight time, lunch and transfer to Beijing airport, or an extension to the Wall.

Meals: breakfast.