The Great Wall's Jinshanling section.   (Photo: George Steinmetz)

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)

The Escapee:
Julien Florez, 9, third-grader
“I would like to escape my teacher who gives us really hard homework; she’s very strict. I want to go see the Great Wall of China with my best friends Martin and Rocco. I’m not afraid of heights; I wanted to climb the pyramids in Chichén Itzá, in Mexico, but I wasn’t allowed to. I want to see the big temple where Bruce Lee trains. I used to do martial arts at Tiger Schulmann’s, so I could protect myself from bullies.”

The Escape: Beijing
The Shaolin Temple where Lee trained isn’t in Beijing, but there’s some pretty great kung fu to be seen in The Legend of Kung Fu, an hour and a half of martial arts that runs nightly at the Red Theatre. The Great Wall is divided into sections; Badaling is closest to the city, but overcrowded. Family-travel expert Leslie Overton of Absolute Travel (absolutetravel .com) suggests the Mutianyu, where you can experience the wall on foot or camel, or the Simatai, which has a zip line. Refuel at Beijing Dadong Kaoya Dian, a Peking-duck restaurant with a tourist-friendly picture menu. Don’t miss the Beijing Aquarium, or the scene of Michael Phelps’s triumph—a.k.a. the Water Cube—which offers a pretty spectacular tour. Book a Grand Deluxe two-bedroom at the Grand Hyatt in Beijing (from $300; beijing.grand.hyatt.com). It’s big enough for a family, and the concierge can help leap language barriers.

Vancouver, as seen from Granville Island.   (Photo: Robert E. Klein/AP)

The Escapee:
Luqman A. Magied, 69, CEO of an international consulting organization
“I’m involved in a perpetual love affair with New York, but I just want to get away for a while. I’m bored of it. It’s not that I’m affected by the economy. My company raises money for commercial-real-estate initiatives in the United Arab Emirates, and let’s just say I know what I have to do for a client. If I was going to relocate, Vancouver would be the place. It’s very peaceful, and you have the best of both worlds—the wildlife and the city. I stayed there five days once, and I didn’t hear a single siren—not from an ambulance, fire trucks, or cop car—and I thought, Wow. This is great.”

The Escape: Vancouver
Already green Vancouver is getting even more so with the near-complete construction of the Carrall Street Greenway, a twelve-mile pedestrian pathway that wends its way around the entire city. Navigate the loop on foot or rent a tandem bike at Spokes Bicycle Rentals, near the entrance to Stanley Park. Take the Aquabus across False Creek to Granville Island, which has an excellent public market. For a more urban experience, splurge on a Premier View room at the recently revamped Four Seasons (from $254, third night free through the end of April; fourseasons.com/vancouver), and take the new Canada Line metro to the country’s (and some say the continent’s) best Chinatown, in suburban Richmond. Show up early for lunch at the tiny Chen’s Shanghai Kitchen; ask for xiao-long bao (soup buns), the house specialty.