10 Travel Tips for Traveling in China in 2023/2024 (That will actually help you)

Welcome back to our channel. We are James and Kelly and we lived in China for four years. During our four years we traveled to 17 different provinces within mainland China. China is full of incredible landscapes and amazing history and is definitely a place worth visiting. We compiled a list of tips to help make traveling in China a little bit easier for you. These tips are in no particular order just piled together to help you as much as possible. Our first two tips are pretty simple and something that every person that has lived in China or visited China is going to recommend to you and that is to get a VPN downloaded to your device. The VPN is going to be helpful because you are going to want to access your Facebook, Instagram, any western social media so you can post your beautiful pictures of China online. However, those are all blocked in China so that is why you need a VPN. Over the four years we've tried so many different VPNs so we know the ones that work the best. The free ones might be okay but they're not going to be 100% reliable. You're going to want to get either Astral or Express VPN because these two are often the ones that are going to get their servers back up and running soon after they shut down. Both Astral and Express have free trials available so you can click the link in the description below if you're not going for too long and can save yourself some money. If not, we definitely recommend getting one of those subscriptions for your time there. The next two apps that you really need are WeChat and Alipay. WeChat is going to be your main form of communication with a lot of added features that are going to help you in China. Because our Chinese is not very strong, we were always having to rely on a translator app to communicate with people and that is why we just started to add people on WeChat to help the communication process so much easier. They can type in Chinese, I can type in English, and we can translate so we are able to understand each other and it's a lot quicker than playing the pass the phone game. Because China is an online society, they do rely on mostly paying via WeChat or Alipay. While we were living in China, WeChat did not allow us to add an international bank card but they do say that they are coming out with a new feature to allow that. But we do know that Alipay allows you to add an international bank card and you can use that to pay for everything in China. Now that you know the top three apps that you need to have while in China, let's go into our traveling tips for China. Tip number three is to learn some basic Chinese and to get a really good translation app. Now I know learning a new language can be very difficult and Kelly and I both struggled at learning Chinese but knowing just a little bit of Chinese in China goes a really long way. We suggest learning some basic phrases, the numbers, and some important words like passport, exit, and of course the most important word to know is ting budong which means I don't understand. Next, the translation app that we suggest getting is Baidu Translate. It has been the best translation app that we have used while living in China and we've tried lots of them. We don't suggest using Google or Apple because they tend to have kind of poor translations when it comes to certain things especially food. Baidu Translate has some really good features. It has a camera feature so you can take pictures of something and get a translation. You can also type out messages and you can also take screenshots on your phone and put it into the app. One thing when using a translation app is to make sure you're using simple and direct questions. The more words you use in your question the harder it is for the translation to be and do not be afraid to use your translation app when you're trying to ask questions with someone. We have pulled it out many times and it's definitely been the most effective way of getting, you know, information or learning what something is and finding the best translation. We migrated from the north to the south because of the war. Tip number four is going to be the thing that has helped us plan all of our trips in China which is The Lonely Planning Book of China. This has been our go-to for any planning of our trips that we did in China. It helped us with our Silk Road trip. It helped us when we went to Mogenshan, Yunnan, Guilin. Pretty much everywhere that we went we relied on this book to give us suggestions of where to stay, what to do, and how to get there. And as you can see we've pinned it all and we've marked everywhere that we've been. All the provinces that we've been we've highlighted. You don't have to have the fiscal book if you don't want to carry this weight around in your luggage. You can buy the book online or there are a bunch of free resources available but we definitely recommend making this purchase. Try to get the most recent one because we found that with our 2017 version by 2021 some of the things were outdated, times were off, or businesses were actually closed because of the pandemic. So just try to get the most recent up-to-date information for your travels. You do not need a tour agency to plan your trips in China. If you do want one that's totally okay and you can do it but it is possible to travel in China by yourself. So The Lonely Planet it gives you the top 30 places that you should visit and then it also gave us great itineraries for us to use on our trips. The first itinerary that The Lonely Planet helped us use was our long silk road trip. We basically just followed everywhere that they went. We didn't go into Xinjiang though unfortunately and we just followed it using the advice that they gave. They have itineraries for four weeks, two weeks, a month, everything that you need. You can find it here and this was our baby for China travels and we will probably use Lonely Planet for all of our future travels as well. Tip number five is to use WeChat or Trip.com when booking your train tickets. Now we lived in China so we set up our WeChat to be able to book train tickets and flights but it took a little bit of time to set up because we needed to go through a government website. If you are just traveling through China we suggest using Trip.com because it has been one of the best travel services we have used while traveling through China. It also has a Chinese version called Ctrip but both versions have an excellent English customer service that understands the issues that you might have while traveling through China. When using these apps to book your train tickets you do not need to print out your ticket. All you need to do is to bring your passport to the train station and that will get you into the train station and onto your train. Tip number six. This is all about train stations and how to navigate it. Trains are one of your most reliable sources of transportation in China if you're not looking to fly everywhere. There are high-speed trains all throughout China. They're pretty quick and very easy to utilize. We filmed some videos on our last trip in China to help you navigate the train station. So let's go back to Kelly in the past to help you navigate the trains. When you're trying to find your train here in China all the train station boards pretty much look the same and they don't always have English. So you're going to see on the board there's the red that means your train has passed. It's boarded. You can't enter anymore. Green means it's boarding now. So the green one right now is actually our train that we need to get on. It's from Shanghai to another city and we're just to stop going to Suzhou. You have the time and then your gate number which is five. So we need to go to gate five and look up your train by the train number. So our train number is D3056. Pretty easy, pretty simple. Just look for that train number and the boarding hall that you have to go to. And all train stations in China use this same format. Once you enter the hall you're going to see that your number may change. Ours now says four. That means what side of the train you're going to go on to. So normally there are two trains entering the station at a time. Most likely only one. So you just need to make sure to go to the correct train and not end up on the wrong one. We have seen that happen to a couple Chinese people before. As a foreign tourist you are going to need to go to the manual channel which is just some person working at the desk. You give them your passport and they're going to scan you in. Very easy. Don't wait in the long queues. You're going to just try your best to get to the far end to the manual channel. One tip that I forgot to mention was if you miss a train you might be able to get a free ticket to get on the next train out. Both the times that we missed the train was in a short time span of about 30 minutes to an hour and we were able to get an exchange. However if you miss it by a long period of time we're not too sure about this service. But it is worth a shot if you go up to the customer service representative and just ask, hey I missed my train what can you do to help? You are going to need a translator for that if they do not speak English so just keep that in mind. Tip number seven is to take your time while traveling in China. Now we know that there is tons of accessible transportation in China to get you from point A to point B but it might take you a little bit longer than expected when traveling through China especially if you get lost and you need to pull out your translation app to ask people where to go. Let's go back to me in the past to show you some easy modes of transportation that you can use while in China. Another travel tip is looking up the metro lines in each city that you go to. The metro is a very affordable way to get around the city and it goes to most popular locations. You can use the app Metro Man to look up the metro lines to help you navigate through the city. If the location you are going to is too close to use the metro you can always hop on a public bike. Public bikes are also very inexpensive and are placed all over the city. We prefer to use the Blue Alley pay bikes because it accepts foreign passports and credit cards. It's super easy to use all you do is scan it with the app and click to unlock. While traveling in China Kelly and I have realized that your plans don't always go the way you want them to and it's best to spread out all the things you want to do through multiple days to make sure you have time to get all of them done. With all of this awesome transportation that China has it still can be time consuming to get to all the places you want to go so make sure you take your time. Tip number eight is to avoid traveling during Chinese national holidays. During Chinese national holidays it feels like the whole country is out and traveling. Most Chinese families tend to use this time to go back to their hometowns to visit family. This means that train stations and airports and most tourist attractions are going to be packed full of people. We have gone to several places during Chinese national holidays and you are literally shoulder to shoulder with other people and it can be a little bit hectic and uncomfortable. In order to avoid huge crowds make sure that you travel during non-holidays and try to avoid the weekends as well because during the week most tourist attractions are going to not have as many people. Tip number nine be prepared to book things in advance. So we learned this the hard way when going to the Forbidden City in Beijing for the very first time we did not know that you needed to book things in advance. We finally found the entrance. The guy allowed us to come in to go to the service window to ask for help. They told us we can't buy tickets we have to use online. We were like hey well we don't know how to do that and then they finally helped us and we got to the app. The next available time is October 21st in a week and we're not going to be here. So if you are coming to Beijing especially during this time buy your tickets in advance for the Forbidden City. They sell 80,000 tickets a day and they're booked for six days straight without any tickets available which is pretty impressive. We were pretty disappointed because this is one of the things that James really wanted to do. We later learned that you need to book in advance and they only give out tickets a certain amount of time in advance. Just do your research and plan ahead. Brings me to tip number 10 which is to bring your passport everywhere you go. Hotels do require your passport upon check-in so that they can make copies of your entry stamp and your passport page that they can check you into the police. Some tourist spots may also require you to bring your passport to check you in to allow you to buy a ticket. We experienced this quite a bit of times in our four years. We're not really sure if this was due to the pandemic in China or if it's always been the case but it is best to be prepared and to just carry your passport with you. They don't always accept a copy or a picture on your phone. We've learned that the hard way too so just be prepared. We do know if you're traveling in Beijing they have a lot of street security that you are going to need to have your passport to get in into the area especially around Tiananmen Square so keep it in your pocket safe and sound. No one's going to steal anything from you in China. Tip number 11 is to be prepared to get many pictures taken of you. Lots of Chinese people do not see foreigners often so when they do they tend to want to get a picture. Most of them will be very polite and will come up to you asking to take a picture normally through kind of a picture taking motion. The word for to take a picture and they will normally ask you so you can always say yes or no to them. It can be a little bit uncomfortable when they don't ask and they just start taking pictures of you but you kind of have to be open-minded about it. They do not see foreigners often so they get very excited when they do see I tend to take this as a compliment because they tend to say very nice things to you when they take pictures like you're very beautiful so it can be kind of fun but no when you do not want a picture you can say I do not want a picture the words you might use would be and most people will understand and will not take pictures of you. I tend to say yes to all pictures which can sometimes end up in a line of people wanting to take a picture of me. I do have the blue eyes and blonde hair so I do stand out the most. I tend to take it as a compliment because they always say nice things to me at the end like you're so handsome or you have pretty eyes so it kind of boosts my confidence and I don't mind it. Now here are two extra tips that I just think are super helpful for you to know if you plan to travel in China. The first is to get Dianping. Dianping is an app that's all in Chinese but it's going to be super resourceful for you if you plan to go around China and you're looking for more local things to do. Dianping is like Google and Yelp where it has all the places in the area with reviews so you're going to be able to find restaurants, things to do, and potentially get discounts if you use the app. If we were ever in a new area not knowing where to go eat we would take our translator put whatever we want into it and then put it into Dianping and search and then we would get a variety of different places that we could go to and we would just base it upon the reviews. This led us to try some amazing local food while we were traveling in different areas especially in Chengdu. So I would highly recommend getting Dianping if you are willing to try some new foods and seeing new things that you might not get in just the tourist areas. The next tip is something that I made on our last day in China which is going to be something you're going to need to remember so let's go back to Kelly in the past. If you're out walking around in China you're more than likely going to have to use the restroom at some point. There are plenty of public restrooms around but they will not have toilet paper so you need to make sure you bring your own. Sometimes you might be lucky and be able to pay for some at the entrance of the public restrooms but it's not always the case and if you're going to the restrooms don't be shocked when you go in and you see a squatter toilet. A toilet with a view. The squatter potties might look a little bit scary at first but trust me they're not that bad. We hope that these tips will help you during your travels in China and if you have any extra tips make sure to leave them below in the comments. Thank you so much for watching our video and if you enjoyed watching it make sure to give it a like and subscribe to our channel so you can see more of our future travels. See you in the next one! See ya!