Overview
I must confess that while China was always on my travel bucket list, it was not in the top 10-somewhere I wanted to go, but not as a priority. However, life sometimes gives you unexpected opportunities and when my husband’s company planned a corporate meet in China I thought, why not?
For me the process of planning a trip is almost as exciting as the trip itself and I end up spending days researching places to go, things to do, where and what to eat etc…. this was no different. Over the next few days I read loads of blogs, visited several websites and scoured TripAdvisor and finally came to a decision. Keeping in mind the amount of leave my husband could take, I figured that this trip could be 21 days long at most. As his conference was in Shanghai, this would be our obvious base and I narrowed in on 3 other cities to visit as well - Beijing, Xian and Zhangjiajie.
Travel and Booking Options
Transport wise we opted for a flight to Shanghai, bullet trains to Beijing and Xian and a local flight to and from Zhangjiajie. We could have flown all the sectors as all the cities have airports, but I really enjoy train travel and try to include it in all our trips!
Time had now come to make all the bookings. 1st hiccup. While international flights were easy, domestic travel posed a challenge- most sites were only in Chinese. This was the same for attraction tickets. Online booking information in English was scarce and all the reviews I read advised booking through travel agencies.
Sensing a major language problem especially in the smaller cities, I decided the best option was to ask the hotel concierges to book our train tickets (I provided the train numbers from the website) and work with a travel agency to organize our Xian and Zhangjiajie visits. In fact, I decided to splurge a little and do all our sightseeing as private tours so that we had better control of our itinerary- best decision ever. We would have wasted days figuring out the tickets, entrances and routes etc. as there were limited to no signs in English even at the main tourist spots.
Even with our guides we found that English proficiency was a matter of luck. We had a great guide, a good one and a downright awful one but at least they organized all the tickets and helped us navigate the enormous crowds everywhere.
So my biggest piece of advice- partner with a travel agency. See fewer places but see them well. There are many tour options online to suit various budgets so do your research and book ahead.
Warning!
Another VERY important fact for people who rely on google or google maps etc- Internet censorship is tightly implemented in China and social websites like Gmail, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and others are blocked. One solution to this is to take a roaming package from your home country, which is what we did, and this allows you full access as international numbers are exempt from the ban. I believe you can also take a special VPN before you travel but I’m not familiar with that process.
Finally with bookings all done, tours organized, cell roaming activated, all that was left was to wait for the journey to begin!!!
Local Transport Choices
We landed in Shanghai Pudong Airport early morning to a lovely clear day and refreshing cool weather (14’ or so) and made our way to the hotel -filled with excitement and eager to explore! As we knew nothing of China and had a fair amount of luggage, we opted to take a private car to our hotel. It turned out to be super expensive but at that time we knew no better!
We discovered later that transport options in China were many and these are highlighted below for your reference.
Maglev (magnetic levitation train which travels at 300km/hr)- only in Shanghai and is like an airport express. Useful if you have less luggage only as this takes you up to a point-then it’s the metro or taxi to your destination
Private car- expensive
Taxi at airports/train stations - long queues but best option for tourists.
Taxis in the city- hard to hail, difficult to communicate with and often refuse fares or ask for exorbitant amounts. Most locals use the DIDI app to call for transport (it’s the Chinese equivalent to Uber).
Metro- cheapest option, well connected and once you get the hang of it easy to navigate
Bus- Unless you speak Chinese or have used the system before probably not an option.
Finally, it was time to explore!
"*" denotes my favourite places!
Recommended visit durations are in red and are approximates only. They exclude travel times unless stated. They also exclude wait times in ticket queues and entrance lines.