You could take cheap flights to China every year for 20 years and still not even scratch the surface of this fascinating country.
The vast People's Republic of China, one-and-a-quarter times bigger than Australia and with 65 times as many inhabitants, borders 14 countries. Its landscapes take in forest steppes, deserts, rugged mountains, jungle, subtropical forests and soft-sandy beaches, and then there are those cities.
Synonymous with hyper-growth, parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong appear to be under an almost permanent canopy of cranes. The population in cities and towns accounts for only about a third of the Chinese population however, about 70 per cent live in rural areas. While the global cities climb higher and higher, in the small villages life carries on much as it has for hundreds of years.