Most important
Visas & entry
China's entry rules have changed repeatedly since 2023 and continue to be extended, expanded and adjusted — usually in the traveller's…
Practical guides
These are the pages you will actually open while you are in China. Each one is written from the perspective of a foreign passport holder with a foreign phone number and a foreign bank card — the three things that make China different.
Set up before you fly
Money & payments
The currency is the renminbi (RMB, "the people's currency"); the unit you count in is the yuan, written ¥ or CNY and spoken as kuài in…
Internet, VPN & apps
What is blocked Mainland China filters a large part of the foreign internet. As of 2026 the practical list of things that will not load on…
Trains, metros & flights
High-speed rail: the default China's high-speed network exceeds 48,000 km — more than the rest of the world combined — and it has quietly…
Accommodation
The rule nobody warns you about Chinese hotels must register every guest with the local Public Security Bureau. Many small, budget and…
Health & safety
How safe is China, really Very. Violent crime against foreigners is rare, cities are extensively policed and camera-monitored, and it is…
Shopping & bargaining
What is actually worth buying Skip the mass-produced souvenir. The things worth carrying home are the ones China makes better, cheaper or…
Solo & female travel
The safety question Solo travellers, including women, consistently report that Chinese cities feel safer than European or North American…
Accessible travel
Accessibility in China is not one condition, it is two, sitting next to each other. A high-speed station built in 2019 is level, lifted and…
LGBT travel
Same-sex activity between adults is legal in mainland China, it is not policed, and no visa question, entry form or hotel check-in asks…
Business travel
If you hold a passport from one of the countries covered by China's 30-day visa-free scheme, a short business trip almost certainly…
Halal travel
China has somewhere in the region of 20–25 million Muslims, principally the Chinese-speaking Hui, who are dispersed nationwide, and the…
Hiking
China has extraordinary mountain landscape and a deep tradition of walking in it, and a visitor who arrives expecting to hike the way they…
Theme parks
Shanghai Disneyland opened on 16 June 2016 and Universal Beijing Resort entered full operation on 20 September 2021. Both are enormous,…
Watching sport
Going to a match is one of the more rewarding evenings a visitor can have in China, and one of the least attempted. Tickets are…
Luggage & storage
Chinese intercity rail behaves nothing like flying. There is no check-in desk, no baggage hold and no carousel: you walk your suitcase…
Shipping things home
Two things make posting purchases home appealing in China. Buying is cheap, and Chinese trains have no baggage hold, so an extra suitcase…
Booking attractions
For a few years the rule for China was simple and unforgiving: everything needed booking, days ahead, or you did not get in. A lot of…
Laundry
Any China trip beyond about ten days runs into the same problem, and almost no guidance addresses it: at some point you have to wash your…
Smoking & vaping
Two things are true at once in China, and most guidance picks one and drops the other. A visitor who spends a week in central Beijing or…
Theft & lost passport
China is a low-crime place to travel and the honest answer on how safe it is says so. But pickpocketing exists, bags get left on trains,…
Missed trains & refunds
The gate closes three to five minutes before departure, and it closes properly: arriving at a Chinese station is a lesson most visitors…
Flight delays
Summer thunderstorms across eastern China cascade through the network, and Beijing and Shanghai are where the queue backs up. That much…
Long-distance buses
Rail covers most of China and flying covers the rest, which is why the transport guide gives the coach a single paragraph. But in the…
Driving
Almost every other page on this site, when the destination is awkward to reach, ends up recommending the same thing: hire a car with a…
Typhoons
"Typhoon-prone" is a phrase this site uses about Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Sanya and the summer months generally, and it has never been cashed…
Scenic areas
Almost every attraction in China worth the name is a 景区 (jǐngqū, scenic area): a defined, gated, ticketed and actively managed site rather…
Lost property
Two neighbouring situations are already covered here. If your passport has gone, that is a specific procedure with a specific order and you…
Injuries
Two neighbouring cases are already covered here. If something is life-threatening, the four emergency numbers and how to get the call…
Sleeper trains
An overnight train in China is not one product. It is a set of fare classes that differ more from each other than economy and business…
Tours and shopping stops
The shopping stop is the most predictable feature of a cheap organised tour in China, and travellers generally treat it as an irritation to…
Mini-programmes
Almost every practical instruction on this site eventually arrives at the same place: open WeChat or Alipay, find the venue's…
Jade and certificates
The advice on this site is to leave jade alone unless you know the market, and nothing below changes it. The mark-ups in tourist-facing…
Marked prices
The site's advice on prices is consistent and correct: negotiate at a market stall, never in a shop with a price on the label. It is…
Hotels and foreign guests
A foreign visitor to China is told, correctly, that some hotels will not take them. The usual explanation — that the hotel lacks a licence…
Taxis and the meter
"Insist on the meter" is sound advice and this site gives it repeatedly. What it never says is where the obligation comes from, and the…
Riding the metro
The metro is the piece of Chinese infrastructure a visitor uses most, and this site treats it as two problems: how to pay, and what the bag…
Hotel star ratings
"Five-star" turns up on this site five times, always as a shorthand — a five-star hotel is where the porter expects a tip, where the…
Tour guides
Guides turn up all over this site. You are told to tip a private guide, warned that a guide steering you into a jade factory is on…
City buses
The metro gets a guide on this site. The bus gets three instructions — take the public bus to Mutianyu, take the green 306 to the…
Hygiene certificates
Chinese premises put a surprising amount of paper on the wall, and a visitor reads none of it. This site has already unpacked two of those…
Concerts and live shows
Live music in China is enormous — stadium tours, arena residencies, festivals in cities most visitors have never heard of — and a traveller…
Food delivery
This site tells you which apps replace the ones you use at home, and food delivery gets one line in that table: Meituan or Ele.me, cheap…
Ride-hailing rules
Ride-hailing is the single most useful piece of infrastructure a visitor to China touches, and this site has covered it as software: which…
Hotel fire safety
Two pages on this site give the same small instruction. The accommodation guide suggests a glance at the evacuation plan on the back of the…
Cable cars and rides
Count the cable cars on this site and you get twenty-three pages: three of them at Huangshan, one 7.5 km long above Zhangjiajie City, one…
Prepaid cards
Walk into a Chinese foot-massage shop, hairdresser or gym and you will, at some point in the hour, be offered a card. Pay ten sessions up…
Business licences
Count the times this site tells you to prefer something licensed and you reach thirty-five pages. A licensed agency for Tibet. A licensed…
Sold a fake
Read this site on shopping and a pattern emerges. Avoid jade unless you are an expert. Treat the tour stop as a scheduled break rather than…
Heat warnings
The summer advice on this site is a number. The Yangtze cities are "traditionally called the three furnaces, regularly exceeding 38°C".…
Air quality
"Check an AQI app" appears on four pages of this site. Three of them add that northern cities can pass 150 for days at a stretch in winter.…
Cosmetics & skincare
Two pages here brush against Chinese cosmetics and neither explains them. The packing list observes that sunscreen is available but often…
Sport you do yourself
There is a gap in this site shaped like a swimming pool. Watching sport is covered — how to get a ticket, which leagues are worth it.…
Rain and fog warnings
This site explains China's weather-warning colours in two places already. The typhoon guide sets out the four-colour scale and the…
Sandstorm and cold warnings
This site has now set out four of China's colour-coded weather warnings: typhoons, heat, and rain and fog. Every one of them belongs to the…
Snow and road ice
Six of China's weather warning colours are set out on this site: typhoons, heat, rain and fog, and sandstorms and cold waves. Snow and road…
Cross-boundary trains
Every page here that mentions the crossing says the same true and incomplete thing: fifty minutes from Guangzhou South, both borders…
Gale & thunderstorm
This site has now set out eight of China's weather warning colours — typhoons, heat, rain and fog, sandstorms and cold waves and snow and…
Express delivery
Parcels turn up on this site in passing and never as a subject. The blind box page quotes a rule barring the sale of express items that can…
Fireworks
The festivals page says people set off fireworks at new year where permitted. The seasons page offers temple fairs, lanterns and fireworks…
Bikes & e-bikes
The mistakes page puts it bluntly: traffic is the most likely way a tourist gets hurt in China, and electric scooters are silent, fast,…