In this study we aimed to capture the characteristics of Chinese high-quality lessons from a lesson structure perspective, specifically addressing the elements of teaching activity and their sequence. Sixteen videotaped middle school mathematics lessons were selected from 224 daily lessons collected from urban districts in five cities located in the east, north, west, south, and center of China, approved by three independent parties (based on the scores of an instruction quality assessment and ratings by two experts). We found the following five common features among most mathematics lessons: (a) most lessons began with a review; (b) pure learning of mathematical knowledge was emphasized; (c) recurrent teaching activities related to mathematics problems ran throughout the lesson; (d) highlighting and summarizing important points during the lesson and summarizing the entire lesson at the end of the class were frequently used; and (e) teaching activities were dense and large in volume. The research findings paint a broad picture of high quality instruction (deepening our understanding of high-quality teaching in different cultures) and provide multiple choices for teachers.