Beijing or Hangzhou?

Neither city is a beach destination, and both have only a distant, imperfect option. From Beijing, the fast train to Beidaihe on the Bohai Sea takes about two hours and leads to grey, crowded shallows. From Hangzhou, the guarded swimming areas at Qiandao Lake are a similar distance away, but the setting is a freshwater lake among islands rather than the sea.

Beijing eats better and more widely. Alongside roast duck and the northern kitchen of wheat noodles, dumplings and lamb hotpot, it draws strong Sichuan, Yunnan, Xinjiang and Cantonese cooking from across the country, and the business districts add fine dining.

Hangzhou's cooking is narrower and gentler, built around lake fish in vinegar sauce, Dongpo pork and shrimp with Longjing tea leaves. It comes into its own when you drink the spring tea harvest in the hill villages where it is grown, but anyone wanting chilli heat or variety will find more in the capital.

Beijing has far more monuments to see. The Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and the Lama Temple all lie within one city. The National Museum holds a great collection of Chinese art, and the hutong lanes still show how people lived in courtyard houses. Expect each site to take most of a morning.

Hangzhou's heritage lies mainly in its landscape. The causeways and pagodas of West Lake, Lingyin Temple and the Feilai Feng carvings are superb, and the silk and tea museums are excellent. But the old streets around Hefang are mostly rebuilt, and there is no imperial palace quarter to build a stay around.

Beijing has the bigger night out. Sanlitun's clubs near the Workers' Stadium keep going into the early hours, and the courtyard and rooftop bars around Gulou suit a slower evening. In Hangzhou, a typical evening is a walk along the lit lakeshore followed by a drink near Hubin, and keen night owls tend to head to Shanghai.

Hangzhou puts green country within reach on foot. The tea terraces of Longjing, the bamboo and streams of the Nine Creeks valley and the Xixi wetland are all a half-day outing from the lake, and the bike ride round the shore at dawn costs nothing.

Beijing's outdoors is more rugged but takes more effort to reach. The best of it is hiking the unrestored Great Wall along the Yanshan ridges, autumn maples in the Fragrant Hills and winter skiing at Yanqing, but dusty springs and smog can spoil the views.

Both cities make excellent bases, but the outings are very different. From Beijing, most trips are to one monumental place at a time: Great Wall sections such as Mutianyu or Jinshanling, the Ming and Qing tombs, or Chengde's summer palace and Tibetan-style temples by fast train.

Hangzhou works more as a hub for a whole region. Shaoxing is under half an hour away, Shanghai and Suzhou's gardens are each an easy train ride, and the canal towns of Wuzhen and Xitang are an hour or so by road, so several days of short outings are easy to fill.

Beijing has a little more for children: Universal Beijing Resort, the pandas at the zoo, the science museum's hands-on galleries and the Mutianyu toboggan. Hangzhou is easier to enjoy without a plan, with pedal boats, scooter paths along the lake and a polar aquarium with beluga whales. Beijing's distances and vast sites are harder on small legs, while in Hangzhou the bigger obstacle is that little English is spoken.

Both cities depend on clean, inexpensive metros and mobile payment, so getting around is equally manageable, but the experience differs. In Beijing, the main effort is distance: ring roads, wide avenues, long changes between lines and bag checks at every station.

Hangzhou is more compact around its centre, and shared bikes along the lake cycle lanes carry much of the sightseeing. Once you leave the metro, though, English signs disappear and taxi drivers rarely speak it.

Beijing gives a shopper more to hunt for. Early mornings at the Panjiayuan antiques market, bargaining for silk and pearls, and Liulichang's shops of brushes, ink and paper sit alongside the big malls of Guomao and Sanlitun. Hangzhou's shopping is focused on two things it produces itself: silk in its market district and Longjing tea bought straight from the growers, plus fans and parasols around Hefang Street.

Day to day, both cities are inexpensive, with cheap noodles, transport and modest entry fees, and Hangzhou is slightly the gentler on a budget. The lake, the causeways and most hill walks are free, although room rates jump during the national festival weeks. In Beijing, the spending climbs on duck banquets, Sanlitun cocktails and private drivers to the Great Wall.

Beijing's stage is far deeper. Peking opera runs nightly in historic guild halls with subtitles, acrobatics and kung fu shows need no language, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts brings in ballet and orchestral seasons. Gulou adds local rock and folk.

In Hangzhou, the performances most visitors see are tourist spectaculars, staged on West Lake itself or at the Song-dynasty theme parks. Its local Yue opera is sung in dialect and rarely surtitled.

The two cities are about even for rest, but they offer different kinds of it. Beijing's version is indoor and around the clock, with huge bathhouses offering hot pools, scrubs and sleeping halls, plus hot springs at Xiaotangshan.

Hangzhou has no bathing culture to speak of, but its everyday rhythm is slower. Tai chi under the willows at dawn, long pots of Longjing in hillside teahouses and retreat spas in the tea valleys make it the calmer place to unwind, as long as you avoid weekends by the lake.