Beautiful China

From grain to Great Wall: A loving grandson in north China's Shanxi Province recreated the Great Wall in an impressive ground display using sorghum as a gift for his grandma. One grain at a time, the magnificent landscape comes to life!

More than a performance! Chinese and Russian youth celebrate culture exchange As part of the China-Russia Years of Education, the Confucius Institute at Russia's Far Eastern Federal University celebrated its 20th anniversary on Oct. 30 in Vladivostok. Read full: en.people.cn/n3/2026/1106/c9…

Bathed in a warm golden glow, birds flap their wings and settle atop the flying eaves of the Palace Museum in Beijing, lending a soft touch of joy to the city's solemn grandeur.

As Lidong, or Beginning of Winter, the first solar term of winter, arrives on November 7, we bid farewell to autumn 2026 with this collection of posters celebrating the six autumn solar terms, from Liqiu (Beginning of Autumn) to Shuangjiang (Frost's Descent). May the season of harvest bring abundant blessings and a fruitful end to the year!

China's second domestically built large cruise ship, the Adora Flora City, was delivered on Friday in east China's Shanghai. Measuring 341 meters in length, with a gross tonnage of 141,900, the cruise ship boasts 2,130 cabins and suites, with a passenger capacity of 5,232. It is scheduled to set sail for its maiden voyage from south China's Guangzhou on November 22.

Feast your eyes on Guilin in south China's Guangxi, where the vista unfolds like a masterpiece painted by nature.

Tourists enjoy the autumn scenery at the ancient buildings along Beijing's central axis, where trees are bathed in vibrant foliage, creating a picturesque scene.

The future is here | An Italian unlocks futuristic daily life in Shenzhen Driverless taxis, food delivered from the sky, and robots serving meals in restaurants. Scenes straight out of a sci-fi movie have become part of everyday life in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. These emerging smart experiences are not just showcases of technological progress; they are gradually weaving themselves into people's everyday lives. Curious to see how technology is shaping the city, an Italian sets off to explore it. A string of vivid futuristic encounters keeps reshaping his understanding of Shenzhen. Here, sci-fi imagination is no longer confined to the screen.

Shuanghe Cave in Suiyang county, southwest China's Guizhou Province, is the world's third-longest cave system and Asia's longest, spanning 481.5 kilometers. This geological marvel holds the distinction of being the longest dolomite cave with the largest celestine area in the world, and has been dubbed a "karst natural cave museum." The cave features interconnected passages with underground rivers, waterfalls, stalactites, and gypsum crystals. Since the late 1980s, Chinese and international speleologists have explored extensively, discovering ancient fossils, including those of giant pandas, that reveal paleoclimate and evolutionary insights. Shuanghe Cave was added to China's tentative list for World Heritage status in 2025. The cave is managed for tourism, and visitors can explore marked pathways, boat through underground rivers, or attempt the via ferrata, a protected climbing route with steel handrails and safety cables. A popular coffee shop awaits atop the cliff after the climb, offering stunning views. Even inexperienced climbers can safely tackle the terrain with proper equipment. The site prioritizes sustainable tourism while maintaining rigorous geological and ecological conservation.

Take in the splendid night views at the Wujiangzhai scenic spot in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, where distinctive buildings are illuminated by warm-toned lights against the mountains.

China has designated a marine area of 335.43 square kilometers off Weizhou Island in Beihai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, as its first key habitat for Bryde's whales, with fishing banned for 8.5 months of the year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The designation fills a gap in the protection of large whale habitats in China's coastal waters and is expected to help conserve marine biodiversity and protect marine fisheries ecosystems, the ministry said. Bryde's whales are migratory marine mammals and are listed as a first-class nationally protected wild animal in China. Since monitoring began in 2018, researchers have identified more than 70 individual Bryde's whales in the waters around Weizhou Island.

Beneath the night sky, a nearly 400-meter "golden dragon" of 46 bamboo rafts glided along the Lijiang River in Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with 78 local rafters paddling in unison.

A giant orange cat installation appears among the golden ginkgo leaves and red walls at Zhongshan Park in Beijing, drawing visitors eager to snap photos as the trees reach their autumn peak.

Cheers ring across the fields as farmers compete in a lively rice-cutting and threshing contest in Daxin County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Are AI-generated short dramas a waste of computing power? Recently, a set of figures on the share of token consumption by large artificial intelligence (AI) models has drawn considerable public attention in China. According to the figures, short dramas and video generation account for 55 percent of domestic token consumption, e-commerce and marketing 24 percent, and software development only 15 percent. Some have contrasted this with the claim that "58 percent of US tokens go to writing code and enterprise automation," giving rise to the catchy narrative that "China uses computing power to chase entertaining short dramas, while the US uses it to build the future." Set against the current international discourse surrounding China-US competition in AI, the comparison is certainly attention-grabbing. Yet it does not withstand even the most basic fact-checking or scrutiny. The claim that "AI short dramas and video generation account for 55 percent" originated from an industry assessment, which circulates online and is contained in the investor-relations records of a listed company that is itself heavily invested in AI-generated short dramas. It is not a comprehensive calculation based on any authoritative statistical framework. Doubao has also recently clarified that the computing-power figures are "somewhat unreliable" and that, at ByteDance itself, only about 10 percent of the company's total compute is used for training and inference of video-generation models. As for the claim that "58 percent of the US token go to writing code," no authoritative source for the figure can be found at all. Tokens are units used to measure and bill AI model usage, reflecting workload and computing consumption. They are neither a measure of productivity nor an equivalent of GDP, and therefore cannot be used directly to gauge the value of a country's AI industry. Meanwhile, video generation is a computationally intensive use case, while code generation is relatively low in token intensity but highly efficient. Comparing the two simply on the basis of token consumption is therefore methodologically unsound. Read full: en.people.cn/n3/2026/1028/c9…

Qinzhou: Bridging rivers and seas, opening to the world Situated on the Beibu Gulf coast in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Qinzhou has served as a maritime gateway since ancient times, linking inland waterways with the open sea. Today, propelled by the expansion of the Beibu Gulf International Gateway Port, the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, and the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park, the city is forging a dynamic new path toward deeper maritime engagement and global integration. Read full: en.people.cn/n3/2026/1105/c9…

The future is here | Future ideas turn into reality in Shenzhen In Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, futuristic visions are already an everyday reality. Drone deliveries drop right into your hands. Robots serve meals straight to your table. Driverless delivery vehicles weave through busy streets, while a simple scan of your palm handles the payment. Fitness gets a high-tech upgrade with interactive screens, and self-driving cars are on the road, picking up orders. These vivid slices of daily life define Shenzhen's unique vibe. What's still on the drawing board elsewhere has already come to life here—bringing the dividends of technology within arm's reach.

So, You're Interested in China? | My first baijiu tasting and blending class For many newcomers, a small glass of baijiu, or "white liquor," at a Chinese dinner table raises an obvious question: what exactly is the right way to drink it? A tasting and blending activity hosted by Xijiu in southwest China's Guizhou Province offered a proper answer, with one of the company's professional tasters guiding participants through the basics. Read full: en.people.cn/n3/2026/1104/c9…

A ride through a sea of autumn colors! A train winds its way through the vibrant forests of the Lesser Khingan Mountains in Yichun, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, offering a picture-perfect view of fall foliage.

A giant Monkey King sculpture made from dead branches in Dongying, east China’s Shandong Province, is going viral online, racking up millions of likes and drawing crowds of visitors. Local creator Fan Lijie spent more than two months collecting branches and building the sculpture, whose intricate details and lifelike expression have helped make it an online sensation.