Best of China.

China's creative neighborhoods live inside old street grids, not new towers. The two cities we cover approach the pattern from opposite directions, but both reward walking and neither rewards spectacle. Beijing's Gulou is the hutong grid around the Drum Tower, low-rise and Yuan-dynasty in its bones, where Wudaoying and Beiluoguxiang hold the deepest independent music, bookshop, and bar scene in the city. Shanghai's Former French Concession runs on plane-tree blocks along Anfu Lu and Wukang Lu, where 1920s shikumen lane-houses double as the architecture museum and the independent food and design scene. Gulou afternoons run on pour-over coffee and courtyard bars. The Concession runs on Saturday walks between a bakery, a record shop, and a wine bar three lanes over. Different bones, same instinct: keep it low, keep it walkable, keep it on the street.