China's 'coolest' summer spots

With the thermometer flirting with 40 C outside, Michael Shedd, a Chicago native, made his way to a hotpot restaurant hidden inside a former air-raid shelter in Southwest China's Chongqing. Before him sat a bubbling, tongue-numbing spicy broth, yet the heat and humidity didn't seem to b other him at all.

"I feel it's cool as I get inside, just like there are air conditioners, but there are not. This is amazing," Shedd says.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the city carved thousands of air-raid shelters into its mountainous terrain. Once serving as sanctuaries for civilians during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), these spaces have now been repurposed as hotpot restaurants, teahouses and venues for Sichuan Opera performances, providing refreshing coolness while also preserving the city's living memories.

"The temperature inside the shelters remains around 25 C all year round," explains Wang Jing, marketing director of the restaurant. On summer weekends, the restaurant serves more than 300 tables a day, with about one in every six diners from overseas.

"I feel like I'm eating in history. The food is also good. You are never gonna find something like this anywhere in the world," says Shedd, describing the restaurant as "legendary".

This summer, as a relentless heat wave sweeps across the globe, these unique cool escapes are turning "China Cool" into the latest buzzword on overseas social media, hot on the heels of "China Travel". By late July, bookings for inbound summer trips had jumped more than 20 percent from a year earlier.

Data from Trip.com show that among the top 20 source markets for inbound travel to China this summer, European countries accounted for 30 percent, with orders surging by 275 percent year-on-year and ticket sales rocketing by over 2,000 percent.

Natural retreats

With its vast expanse and climatic diversity, ranging from high-altitude plateaus and forested mountains to coastal shores, China offers an abundance of natural cooling destinations that are drawing international visitors in search of summer relief.

Huangshizhai, a scenic area within Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Central China's Hunan province, sits at an elevation of over 1,200 meters, where dense forests and mountain winds keep the temperature naturally pleasant. Data over the past five years show that average summer temperatures from June to August at the major tourist sites of the park have ranged between 16 and 25 C.

"For me, it's been a wonderful trip. I'm here with my family, surrounded by nature and spending time with Chinese friends. It feels great," says French tourist Isabelle Sala Jaboule as she walks along a trail in Huangshizhai. "It's very hot in France right now, but here we can breathe fresh air and feel so much cooler."

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park recorded more than 100,000 inbound tourist arrivals in July, a year-on-year increase of 46.78 percent, with travelers from 148 countries and regions, according to local authorities.

The same surge is unfolding in China's northeast. At the Changbai Mountain Scenic Area in Jilin province, perched on the "golden summer escape" belt at 42 degrees north latitude, daily visitors have topped 30,000 since the summer rush began in July, with the total number of overseas tourists up 38 percent from the same period last year.