Detour is an irregular column highlighting offbeat travel spots. It assumes at least a vague familiarity with traveling in China and how to get around, and is more of a spotlight on an interesting or unusual place or way to travel than a detailed guide.

Most people that come to Yanji jump straight in a waiting tour bus and head west. Changbaishan awaits; the ever-white mountains, with their alpine meadows and extortionate entrance fees. Tour groups gather atop the namesake volcano, drowning in oversize raincoats, waiting for a break in the clouds and a chance to peer down into the caldera lake, and over to North Korea on the opposite shore. Here's a slideshow. Most people, though, don't come to Yanji at all. Perhaps if they did, the charms of the city itself, and the fact that the really interesting excursions are to the east, would be better known. Yanji is the capital of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, a subarctic subdivision of Jilin Province that runs along the North Korean border in Dongbei's far east. Although the proportion of ethnic Koreans in the region is falling (economic prospects here are grim, and young Koreans overperform at school meaning they mostly go on to better things elsewhere), they still make up a third of the population. You can spot them by their sharper haircuts. The young folk that are still kicking around insist they're Chinese first, Korean second. But carving out their own identity is clearly still important: there's a vibrant beatboxing scene, and the huge church that stands on the banks of the Yanji River (one of two that cut a huge cross through downtown) runs youth choirs and bible study classes in Korean. The entrance policy to the city's grand Yanbian University is weighted in their favor, and even if they don't take up scholarships to Seoul, plenty of graduates go on to work for South Korean firms. The university soccer team is one of the best in the country. That's not to say it's an always upbeat, happy-clappy kind of town. Outward migration has taken its toll in the form of broken homes, rising crime rates, and drug abuse. Having a bankrupt, famine state within spitting distance doesn't help. (Though things on this side of the line have improved since the mid-90s, when refugees could (or couldn't) be found hiding in holes in the ground in the surrounding countryside, and Nork agents raided that riverside church.) But there's a lingering optimism to the place – on show late into the night at the raucous riverside fairground – and a hint of the exotic that together make it a great base from which to venture further east along the border. (It's not just the Korean newspapers, bathhouses, and singsong kamsa hamnidas that lend it a foreign air. There are a good number of Russians in Yanji too; some of them daytripping across their own border to buy cheap flatscreens, others studying Mandarin.) I spent a few days there, knocking back Bingchuan beers on the waterfront with a group of uni students. (“Cold River” is apt; in the winter, temperatures fall below 40 degrees Fahrenheit and ice skating takes over from soccer as the pastime of choice.) They taught me a few things, too: Dog Meat Street is overpriced Gou Rou Jie is the colloquial name for the stretch of Hailan Lu between Juzi Jie and Jinxue Jie (海兰路近局子街和进学街), but the restaurants cater mostly to rich South Korean tourists. Better, and cheaper, to go to Jin Da Lai (42 Hailan Lu; 海兰路42号; 0433 251 3634), for a huge bowl of buckwheat Korean noodles, served over ice, and buried beneath thick-sliced beef, pickled cabbage, quail eggs, goji berries, and chunks of half-frozen Korean pear. (Sidenote: At one of the city's biggest barbecue chains, I was told that South Koreans travel to Yanji just to eat cheap meat. They certainly do visit – Changbaishan looms large in their country's founding myth, and there's a won-built golf course just outside the city.) Everyone knows that nearby Hat Hill looks more like a breast A popular picnic destination, shapely Mao'er Shan is twenty minutes south of the city. A new observation deck has just gone up on the summit, peering pertly out over the city and, on a clear day, further south to North Korea. It takes only a quarter of an hour to walk up the thickly-wooded slopes from the huge stone tiger at the gate. (Although nearby Hunchun launched a tiger festival late last year, you've little chance of seeing the real thing.) To make a mint, tout telescopes, sell speedboat rides Some of the best-dressed folk in border towns like Tumen are the people renting telescopes or offering speedboat rides to tourists eager to peer across the river at the stagnation on the other side. (It's the same story in better-known Dandong, all the way at the other end of the North Korean border.) Yanji airport even sells remote-controlled boats and toy binoculars, alongside the powdered Changbai deer antler. Otherwise, Tumen itself is a depressingly deprived place (and home to a notorious detention center). It was near here that the two American journalists were nabbed when they crossed the river last year. Protocol is everything when peeing near the border The “Frontier Travel Scenic Spot” of Fangchuan sits on a thin triangle of land, helmed by soldiers and seagulls, backed by giant golden sand-dunes, and wedged between North Korea on one side (the one stripped bare of trees) and Russia on the other. But if you're caught short, it's considered good form to pee in the direction of the Sea of Japan, just nine miles away across the marsh. (China ceded the land to Russia a century ago. The fact that Yanbian comes so close and yet so far from access to the sea still rankles.) It's easy to sleep through a nuclear earthquake One of my new-found friends (let's call him Johnny, since that's his name) only found out later in the day that the rest of the city had been shaken awake by the North Korean nuke test, which took place 180 kilometers from Yanji back in May. Again, here's a slideshow. The Details Flights from Shanghai to Yanji route via either Qingdao or Yantai, and take 3.5–4 hours. Cheapest return flights hover around 1,500rmb. Tumen is an hour and 13rmb away from Yanji by bus; Hunchun is another two hours and 15rmb further east. The fastest way to Fangchuan is to get yourself to Hunchun, then hire a cab (150-200rmb return) to the place “where you can hear a dog bark in three countries.” Total journey time from Yanji: 4-5 hours one-way. Set off early and it's possible to do it as a day-trip. Or else overnight in Hunchun. Despite the suspect name, Ai Jia rents clean studio apartments by the night, for 108, 128 or 168rmb. (Tower B, Wuqiong Huacheng, Zhanqian Jie; 站前街无琼花城B座门市; 0433 611 2666)