Shenzhen or Suzhou?

Shenzhen has real beaches and Suzhou has none. Xichong's wide curve of sand at the tip of the Dapeng peninsula, and the busier public stretches at Dameisha and Xiaomeisha, make a proper day by a warm sea, even though getting there takes an hour or more from the centre.

Suzhou's lakes and canals are scenery, not places to swim, and the nearby Yangtze estuary shore is mud. Anyone who wants to get in the water there will be using the hotel pool.

Both cities eat well, but in opposite ways. Shenzhen is a city of migrants, so the pleasure is in the range: Chaoshan beef hotpot, Hakka salt-baked chicken, Hunan chilli and northern dumplings, plus seafood picked from the tanks at Nan'ao or Shekou. Most of it is eaten in malls and residential streets.

Suzhou has a cuisine of its own, sweet, delicate and tied to the seasons. It runs from the morning bowl of Suzhou noodles to squirrel-shaped mandarin fish and the autumn hairy crabs of Yangcheng Lake, eaten in old-town lanes around Pingjiang Road. Come to Suzhou for a regional tradition and to Shenzhen for variety and international choice.

This is where Suzhou pulls far ahead. Its classical gardens, among them the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Master of the Nets, are some of the most admired places in China. Tiger Hill's leaning pagoda, the Panmen gate and I. M. Pei's Suzhou Museum are enough for several more days.

Shenzhen's story is a short one, told through the Ping An tower, the galleries of OCT Loft and the copy-painters of Dafen. Nantou old town and the Hakka walled villages are worth the trip out, but they are an extra rather than a reason to come.

Shenzhen has more of a night out, though neither city is built for one. The big clubs around Coco Park, the pub terraces of Shekou and the late-night KTV rooms offer a choice of styles, spread out across the city in malls and towers.

Suzhou's evenings are gentler: a lantern-lit walk along Shantang Street, a drink in one of the small bars on Shiquan Street, perhaps a rooftop lounge by Jinji Lake. For anything later, people take the train to Shanghai.

Shenzhen has the more varied outdoors. Wutong Mountain is a proper climb with views towards Hong Kong, and the Dapeng coastal trail runs past headlands and coves, with kayaking and paddleboarding on the same coast. The Shenzhen Bay mangroves add winter birdwatching inside the city.

Suzhou's landscape is flat farming country. There are tea terraces and orchards on the Lake Tai peninsulas, good lakeside cycling and short climbs on Lingyan Hill. It is pleasant rather than dramatic, with no high ground and no open sea.

Suzhou has the longer list of day trips, but Shenzhen's single best one is hard to beat. Hong Kong is under half an hour away by fast train, and Guangzhou's Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and Macau's Portuguese old town also make easy days out. Beyond those the choice thins, and a day in Hong Kong or Macau needs the right passport and entry arrangements to get back into the mainland afterwards.

From Suzhou, high-speed trains reach Shanghai in about half an hour, the Ming walls of Nanjing in an hour and Hangzhou's West Lake in about an hour and a half, with Yangzhou's gardens not much further. Closer in, the canal towns of Tongli and Luzhi are under an hour away. They are alike enough that one or two will do.

Shenzhen is the easier city with children. The OCT theme parks, Happy Valley, Window of the World and Splendid China, sit together in Nanshan, and the safari park, the marine park at Xiaomeisha and the beaches add more.

Suzhou welcomes families, but its main attraction, the gardens, bores small children quickly. Canal boat rides, the parks around Jinji Lake and the amusement parks in the western districts fill the gap. Summer heat is hard work in both cities.

Both have clean metros with English signs, and in both everything runs on mobile payments. The difference is shape. Shenzhen stretches some 80km from end to end, so getting from Shekou to the eastern beaches takes a morning, and walking is pleasant only within districts such as Futian or OCT.

Suzhou has a genuinely walkable heart inside the moat, where canal lanes link the gardens on foot or by bike. Tiger Hill and Lake Tai are taxi rides out.

Shenzhen has the more unusual shopping. Its highlight is the electronics towers of Huaqiangbei, with phones, drones and components on floor after floor, and there are also Luohu's tailors and plenty of large malls.

Suzhou's strength is silk and embroidery: double-sided needlework from the workshops of Zhenhu, and scarves and quilts along Guanqian Street. It is the better place to find a traditional craft to take home, but beyond that there is less, and serious fashion shoppers wait for Shanghai.

Both are good value. They are prosperous Chinese cities that still cost far less than big Western ones, with cheap metros and cheap noodles. The costs bite in different places: in Shenzhen at the theme parks and on imported drinks in Shekou and Coco Park, and in Suzhou at the garden gates, which add up over a day, at hairy crab dinners and in hotel rates during the national festival weeks.

Suzhou has a living tradition of its own. It is the home of Kunqu opera, sung in garden pavilions on summer evenings and at the Kunqu Opera Museum, and of pingtan storytelling in teahouses. Visitors who don't speak Chinese enjoy both best as atmosphere.

Shenzhen offers a modern programme at the Concert Hall and the Grand Theatre, mostly touring shows, plus some indie bands around OCT Loft. It makes a good evening, but little you could not see elsewhere.

Shenzhen is the place for serious pampering. Its huge all-night bathhouses, with pools, saunas, sleeping halls and massage rooms over several floors, draw people from across the region, and there are hot-spring resorts in the nearby hills.

Rest in Suzhou is quieter and less organised: an early hour in a garden, a pot of Biluochun in a canal-side teahouse, a cheap foot massage or a spa hotel on Lake Tai. It has no bathing culture to match Shenzhen's.