Read about our trip to China

On Your Way There

• If possible, avoid a stopover in Narita International Airport in Tokyo. On our way to and back from China, we made a stopover in Tokyo, and both times the airport had terrible crowd management. There were long lines at every checkpoint — check-in counter, security check, immigration, and customs. Or, if you must make a stopover there, make sure to leave yourself ample time between flights. After our unscheduled overnight stay in Tokyo en route to Beijing, we arrived at Narita International Airport about an hour and a half before takeoff, and we ended up having to convince someone to cut to the front of the line at the immigration check point and then dashing to the gate. It wasn’t even that the airport was ridiculously crowded. There just were many more empty kiosks than staff at each check point, thus creating bottlenecks throughout the airport.

Transportation

Flying

• Compared to Tokyo, airport procedures in China were surprisingly smooth. There was never a shortage of staff and very few lines, and what lines there were moved briskly.
• If you are taking domestic flights in China, be aware that the luggage weight limits are a few pounds lower than what they are in the U.S. The overweight luggage fee is a small percentage of the cost of the plane ticket. Of course, given the exchange rate and the relatively short flights between most tourist destinations in China, that means your overweight luggage fee probably comes out to about $10, which isn’t bad and well worth it for hauling around precious souvenirs.
• For me, flying in China was actually a more enjoyable experience than flying in the U.S. The seats are about an inch or so narrower, but aside from that, just about everything else on the plane was an improvement. You get free headphones. You are served a meal on most flights lasting more than a couple hours, and even when we took a 45-minute flight, the attendants still handed out snacks and bottled water even though they had barely enough time to do so between the time spent for liftoff and landing. There are TV programs on every flight, including some clever cartoons that don’t require even one line of dialogue, so your kids don’t need to know Chinese to enjoy it.

Land Transportation

• First and most importantly: DON’T DRIVE!! Chinese traffic make the worst offenders in America look like model drivers.
• When traveling longer distances in a city, taxis are likely your best bet. They are extremely cheap. While in Xi’an, we got a cab to take us to the city wall. It was about a 10-15-minute drive each way, and we asked the driver to wait at the wall for us for 30-some minutes. So we had our own personal cab for an hour and it only cost us about $20.
• If you stay at a decent hotel, chances are they will give you cards with your hotel address on it, in Chinese and English. In some cases, these cards also have some of the most popular tourist destinations in the city, so you can just check the location you want to go to and show the card to your cab driver.
• Unless you are feeling adventurous, it’s probably best to stay off the public buses. They look nice (many even have TV screens to keep you entertained), but they tend to be jam-packed, especially during rush hour. Besides, do you really want to try to figure out bus lines in a totally different language?
• In contrast, the subway systems are very foreigner-friendly. Everything is in Chinese and English, including announcement of upcoming stops. The signage in the stations and on the cars are easy to understand, and traveling by subway is quick and cheap.
• We did travel by train once, a short trip from Guangzhou to Shenzhen. If you want to take a train, get a soft-seater if you can. It’s pretty affordable by American standards, and it keeps you out of the noisy, not-always-clean hard-seat cars that the working class occupy (unless, of course, you want that experience). One word of warning: It gets very chaotic in the station when it’s time to board. At the Guangzhou station, when they announced that our train had started boarding, everyone in the waiting room flocked toward the boarding gate, which led to a long, winding, narrow corridor that led up an equally narrow escalator that took you up to the platform. Once we started walking toward the boarding gate, we just got swept up by the river of humanity and couldn’t catch our breath until the river had pushed us all the way out onto the platform.

General Tips While You Are in China

• If you are planning to go to China, I’m sure you’ve been told to bring your own toilet paper (which you can buy at just about every shop or stall in China). That’s a definite must, but you may want to have a small stack of paper towels with you as well. Most of the public restrooms we went into had no paper towels, and though some had hand dryers, they only worked about half the time. It’s kind of funny: Many of the public restrooms had these cute counter-top wash basins, but lacked amenities like toilet paper and paper towels.
• More about restrooms: The ones in the touristy areas are pretty decent, but many only offer squat toilets. Get used to it. As for public restrooms away from the tourist areas, let’s just say it’s a jungle out there. Bring plenty of hand sanitizer.
• Why did the tourist cross the road? To tempt fate. Crossing intersections in Chinese cities is kind of an extreme sport. Even when the pedestrian signal is green, that doesn’t mean the drivers waiting to make a turn would yield. Cross in groups — there is safety in numbers.

We caused quite a stir in this KFC in Shanghai when we tried to snap a picture.

• The Chinese people are generally more reserved, at least in public, than Westerners, and they aren’t as open to strangers snapping pictures of them. So use some discretion when you are photographing street life and such. Don’t just shove a camera in somebody’s face.
• Cell phones are pretty cheap in China, so you can pick one up locally when you arrive. Be aware, however, that the chip you buy in one city may not necessarily work in another, depending on how far you go. There are also cell phone rental services that will drop off a cell phone at your hotel upon arrival and pick it up at departure.

Sightseeing

• If you are planning to do a group tour, try to find one that would give you some leisure time to explore the cities on your own. When we were on our group tour, every day was jam-packed. We were up at 6:30 a.m. most days and didn’t get back to the hotel until as late as 10 p.m. The group tried to pack in as many tourist locations as possible, especially in Beijing. It made for a hurried and frenetic experience, and we definitely flew through some of the places. At the Summer Palace, for instance, the tour guides had originally only planned to take us through half the grounds and then turn back, skipping some important sights such as the marble boat at the other end of the premises. It was only upon my father’s insistence that they took the group through the whole grounds. If you just follow the tour, chances are you will miss a lot of what China has to offer. Find time to take a stroll through the streets.
• If you are booking your own hotel, get one near at least some of the main attractions you’re planning to see. Many of China’s tourist-heavy cities are huge, and getting from one place to another can take more time than it may look on a map.
• If you are doing a group tour, be prepared to be taken to some “attractions” that are basically glorified stops for souvenir shopping. The Chinese agencies that organize the tours have relationships with places like Chinese pharmacies and factory outlet stores, and they get kickbacks from the sales made from the busloads of tourists they bring to these places. This is one way the agencies try to make money, as the cost of the tour is often barely covered by the price of the package. When you go to one of these places, be prepared for some hard-sale efforts. The salespeople at these places are under tremendous pressure to fleece the tourists, and the tour guides are obligated to stay for at least an X amount of time and, in some cases, until somebody in the group buys something. In fact, both the salespeople and the tour guides get a stain on their records if no one buys anything. This is less of an issue if you are in a big group, as somebody is likely to buy something. But if you are on a private tour, they might put pressure on you to buy. This can be annoying, as we found out in the pearl factory store in Wuxi. In some cases, the best thing to do is to just buy a little something. There’s plenty of cheap merchandise at these places.

Shopping

• Aside from the high-end department stores, be sure to haggle at most shops you visit. It’s an expected part of business transactions in China. When haggling, make an opening offer that’s half the asking price, if not less. Again, this is expected. Don’t be hesitant to keep haggling just because a price sounds good after you convert to American dollars (and most will sound very cheap). Most shopkeepers in the touristy cities know enough English to haggle, or they communicate with pad and paper or punching out prices on a calculator.
• As a foreigner, get used to merchants’ internal sirens going off as soon as they spot you. When we walked into a bazaar in Hangzhou, the minute the saleswoman at a shoe stall saw Courtney, she yelled out “Shoes! Shoes!” We got similar reactions elsewhere, too.
• When you are buying stuff from roadside stalls, quality should not be an important criteria for you. Don’t believe tags on clothes that say they are silk or some other fancy material. Those 10-yuan DVDs are likely pirated copies. However, these stalls are a good place to pick up little knickknacks as small souvenirs.
• When you get off the bus at any major tourist attraction, you will likely be swarmed by souvenir merchants. Just keep moving, smile, and say, “No, thank you.” (Bu yao. Xie xie.) If you are not interested in buying anything, don’t feign interest, or you’ll just make the merchants even more persistent. Also, keep a tight grip and close eye on your bags. We were told by one of our tour guides that people have been known to have the bottom of their bags slit and their belongings stolen while they were engulfed and distracted by the swarm.

Nanjing Road, the famous shopping district in Shanghai.

• There are famous shopping districts in various major cities in China, such as Nanjing Road in Shanghai. However, we found these locales to be mostly disappointing. If you are looking for something Chinese, look elsewhere, as these shopping districts tend to only house Western department stores. If you are looking for a good deal on something from these stores, think again. Because Western brands are seen as status symbols in China, the merchandise in these shopping districts tend to be very expensive, even by Western standards. For instance, a pair of Calvin Klein jeans in a store in Nanjing Road cost $200. If you want to see authentic China in  your spare time, these shopping districts are not the place to go.

Dining

• All the big restaurants we went to have English-speaking staff, so you can manage without too much trouble.
• Be prepared for freshness like you’ve never seen. The Chinese value fresh food, as in alive. That goes for more than just lobsters or fish, so you’ll see live animals on display in many restaurants.

A freshly dispatched gator awaits hungry patrons at a restaurant in Guangzhou.

• Be adventurous while eating out in China. The country has so many different styles of cuisine, each with a dazzling array of culinary delights. Some of them will appear strange, but most of them are delicious. Being squeamish will make you miss out on some real treats. Try everything at least once.
• Yes, the Chinese do eat dog, and in some restaurants, it is prominently advertised (one restaurant we went to had a big poster with a picture of a dog and giant characters that said “fragrant dog meat”). Just be prepared for this, and remind yourself that beef is a taboo in India.
• If you really need some Western food to remind you of  home during your trip, there are plenty of Western fastfood chains in major and not so major cities. Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut seemed to be the most popular Western chains, and of course there is McDonald’s. But really, you are in China for a week or two. Should you really waste a meal on fastfood you can get back home?

A sign outside an expat pub/coffeehouse in the tiny mountain hamlet of Yangshuo.

• Coffee: For you caffeine addicts, there are actually a fair number of Starbucks locations in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and even some of the medium-sized cities, too. In addition, there are other coffee shops scattered around the city as well. The trick, however, is finding one near where you are staying, which can be difficult depending on where your hotel is located. Also, outside of Starbucks, the quality of coffee in China is kind of hit-or-miss. If you absolutely cannot get going without a cup of Joe in the morning, you might want to bring your own. Get yourself a travel coffee maker (like the one we brought with us to feed Courtney’s caffeine habit) and a can/bag of ground coffee.
• Sample the street food. Yes, the tour guides and tour books will tell you they aren’t sanitary, but hey, millions of Chinese eat at these stalls every day. Just make sure the stuff is well-cooked. Also, bring some alcohol wipes with you and wipe down the utensils when you go into a hole-in-the-wall eatery, just to be on the safe side.
• Some items that you must try:
  • Beijing: Beijing roast duck
  • Shanghai: Hairy crab, giant sturgeon, little dragon buns from a stall in this precinct
  • Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi area: Freshwater fish from the local lakes, Dongpo pork in Hangzhou
  • Xi’an: A dumplings feast
  • Guangzhou: Cantonese roast duck, plain steamed chicken (Chinese chickens actually have a nice, natural flavor, unlike their mass-raised American counterparts); freshwater fish and shellfish.