Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong, mainland period dramas, viral-variety filming spots — what's still there, what's been demolished.
Forty minutes northwest of Yinchuan, two collapsed frontier forts became a film set and stayed collapsed on purpose. What the wind did, the camera kept. CN: 镇北堡：一座从不修墙的影城
Twenty years after a Hollywood crew filmed its lanes, Xitang is still wet, still covered, still ladling wine from the jar — what's there now, and how to see it after the day-trippers leave. CN: 西塘：镜头之外的那座水乡
The Tsim Sha Tsui building Wong Kar-wai turned into a blur in Chungking Express is still open — a bazaar of curry houses, money changers and cheap rooms, five minutes from the harbour. CN: 重庆大厦，王家卫镜头里那栋仍在营业的楼
The Hong Kong of mainland period drama sits in a landlocked Zhejiang county — tram rails, traditional-character signage, and shopfronts you can cross in three steps. CN: 横店的香港街：只有一间房深
In the Ningxia desert, two forts the Ming and Qing armies left behind became a working film studio. The walls are four centuries old; the doorframes are plywood. CN: 镇北堡：先有废墟，后有片场
State television built a Three Kingdoms set on the shore of Lake Tai and, unusually, never took it down. Thirty years on, the warships and the palace are still there, and still filming. CN: 太湖边的三国城，拍完没拆的片场
The green sea where Ang Lee's fighters balanced on bending bamboo is a real ridge in Anji, two hours from Hangzhou — and still a working farm. CN: 在安吉竹海走进《卧虎藏龙》的树梢
The Longest Day in Chang'an built a Tang capital in the hills of coastal Zhejiang. Most of it is still standing, and you can walk its main avenue before the tour groups arrive. CN: 在象山，长安还能走一遍
A nineteenth-century Pearl River waterfront was built from scratch for one 1997 film, then never dismantled. How to read the seams — and reach it. CN: 横店广州街·香港街：为一部电影建的城，没拆
An hour southwest of the Bund, a working backlot keeps 1930s Shanghai in better repair than the city that lived it — façades, a tram, and no one to renovate the lanes away. CN: 车墩：为老上海重建的一条街
Two hours inland from Hangzhou, Hengdian rebuilt a full-scale Forbidden City and a dozen other centuries in concrete. Most days, cameras are still rolling inside them. CN: 横店：为拍摄而生的小镇