Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou: China beyond the headlines
Seventeen days over New Year in Shanghai, Chongqing and Hangzhou: huge cities, a hotpot that made our Chinese friend cry, and people kinder than the headlines.
From 26 December 2025 to 11 January 2026 I travelled through China with two friends. We flew from Geneva with a stop in Xi'an, spent ten days in Shanghai and five in Chongqing, took the high-speed train out to Hangzhou, then flew home to Geneva.
Why China
We wanted a country completely different from ours: few Western tourists, and food we had never really eaten. A good friend I met in Sweden lives there now, which made the decision easy.
I also wanted to show it differently. From Europe, China mostly reaches us as a headline: politics, a rival, the world's factory. What I found first was the size. Cities that keep going in every direction, very modern, with a lot of nature around them. Then all the small differences that tell you you're far from home: other cars on the road, other trees, other kinds of buildings. Fashion everywhere. And technology in every gesture of the day: you pay with WeChat or Alipay, call a car from your phone, and robots are part of the scenery.
Shanghai
Shanghai was our base. By day we walked the French Concession, the West Bund and Suzhou Creek, and found the Louis Vuitton ship moored between the towers of Nanjing West Road. At Jing'an Temple, golden lions sit on the roof with a glass skyscraper right behind them, and that is the whole city for me: traditional temples and architecture standing alongside the modern towers. Qibao, the old water town, gave us canals, a tea house and a refined garden. The moment I remember most from those days is the Long Museum.
AlbumDaylight in Shanghai
I had seen 1933 Old Millfun in a series of pictures on Instagram. Inside it was empty and silent, a concrete labyrinth on many levels. I shot it in black and white with hard contrast; a few separate versions keep colour only where the lights were.
Album1933 OLD MILLFUN
At night, winter kept things quiet, but it was fun, and people were friendly and shared their drinks with us. My favourite place was an underground food court full of restaurants and neon, bowls of skewers steaming in red broth. Most of the city's light is LED now, not neon like Hong Kong, so the few real tubes left are worth looking for.
AlbumDark side of Hù
Chongqing
Our first night was in a hotel with a hot spring in the city, then we moved to a hotel in a tower. Chongqing is a city of hills and stairs, demanding to walk, at a heavy BPM. The neon, the food, the new cars, the tech everywhere, the street performers: it really felt like a cyberpunk city. We watched the metro go straight through a building.
One day we tried to reach a mountain temple outside the city and got lost. We went from 20 degrees to minus 7, into snow, with mountain horses around us.
AlbumChongqing lights
Hangzhou
A high-speed train, then a DiDi, took us to the Qingshan Reservoir: a forest standing in water turned green by duckweed, with wild black swans and mallards between the trunks. We discovered by chance that you could take a boat, and it turned out to be a very fast one, all the way around the lake. Incredible.
AlbumMatcha lake
Food
Every region had its own: Shanghai and Hangzhou dishes, Uyghur food, and the spices of Chongqing. We ate hotpot in both cities, most of all in Shanghai. Once, our Chinese friend took us to a very spicy one and tried to trap us with the heat. She ended up crying. We handled it better. Food is so good, and cheap compared to alcohol.
What changed my mind
People are kind and friendly, even though English is not commonly spoken. They are open and curious about foreigners, and a translation app did the rest. The spitting you hear about? Only some old men, and most Chinese find it disrespectful too. Almost everybody smokes, and smokers share and trade cigarettes with each other.
I travelled light, an X-T5 with two primes, a 25mm f/1.7 and a 56mm f/1.8.
Practical tips
- Get a VPN before you land, set up and tested.
- Buy an eSIM so you are connected from the airport.
- Install WeChat and Alipay and connect them before you leave: that's how you pay for almost everything.
- Download an offline translation app. English is not commonly spoken.
- Pack for two climates in winter: the mountains around Chongqing went down to −7°C when the city was at 20.
