How to Plan an International Trip: Travel Tales and Tips : How to Plan a Trip to China

China with its rich 5000 year old culture has always been fascinating.

We took the plunge this March and had a fabulous 16 day vacation, March 16-31; 2018. All planning and execution was on our own without help from any tour agent.

We usually learn some travel vocabulary for the countries we visit; for Russia, we learnt the Cyrillic alphabet and were able to read the signs and get by easily. Chinese script posed a daunting prospect! We did learn a few words though.

We had a lovely variety of experiences as you can see from these pics.

Here's the Great wall at Badaling

Imperial Treasury at Forbidden city, Beijing

Jade at Forbidden City

Marble boat, Summer Palace, Beijing

Pingyao ancient city temple

Following few pics are all from Pingyao ancient city

Pingyao, the Wall Street of ancient China

Wang family courtyard near Pingyao

Xi'an Wild Goose Pagoda north square

AWESOME jade all round

Terracotta Warriors

Drum tower, Xi'an

Grand Mosque, Xi'an

Temples were not crowded... this is the International section in White horse temple, Luoyang, day trip from Xi'an

Luoyang Longmen Grottos with 100000 Buddhas carved into the hill side...

Guilin was not too rainy

Great wall was snowy though...

The kind Sun did melt away the snow as the day progressed..

Spring was in sway...Flowers were in full bloom

Suzhou Humble administrator garden

Peach blossom everywhere...

Suzhou Humble administrator garden

West Lake, Hangzhou

well manicured petunia flower beds

West Lake, Hangzhou

Leifung Pagoda, Hangzhou

Shanghai People's Park

SHANGHAI Bund

Topiary at Elephant trunk park, Guilin

Longji Rice terraces presented a lovely sight

Lujia village near Guilin looked picturesque and we were so glad we stayed there.

Suzhou was a little underwhelming for us.

Water town Tongli was also meh...probably our expectation from the UNESCO Heritage town was too high

West Lake at Hangzhou was great.

Shanghai Bund was shrouded in mist on the last day we could spare, but no complaints. We had had awesome weather everywhere else!

Craftsmanship skills displayed through out were AWESOME, be it ceramics, wood carving, jade work or textiles

Shanghai Jade Buddha

WHEN TO GO?

April and May, September and October are recommended as good months to visit China. Spring and autumn are the preferred seasons when most of the popular places have their most tourism-friendly weather.

AVOID Chinese National Day holiday week October 1–7 and other Chinese holidays like May Labor day week.

We planned for a May vacation and looked at the actual temperatures for places of our interest during that period in 2017. We found it quite hot. We found March more conducive.

China's winter low travel season is from November to March. In the low season, although the weather is colder, you can save money on hotels, flights, and entry tickets, all our entry tickets were priced at half the usual fares.

We decided to use the Easter holiday, later realized Qingming Festival (also known as Tomb-sweeping Day), falls on either April 4th or 5th of the solar calendar. 2018 Qingming Festival falls on April 5. We pushed our holiday forward a bit and arrived at dates Mar 16-31

WHAT TO SEE?

The Golden Triangle: Beijing – Xi'an – Shanghai suggests itself to the first timers.

Pingyao got tagged in between Beijing – Xi'an.

Guilin/Yangshuo added itself between Xi'an – Shanghai as a scenic wonder for the Karst mountains along Li river and the scenic rice terraces at Longji.

Our choices are circled in the maps below.

We had an open jaw flight flying into Beijing and out of Shanghai. We could have done it the other way around as temperatures up north in Beijing, Pingyao would have become less cold at the fag end of March. But we wanted to savor the classic flavor of Beijing and its imperial highlights and Great wall first. So we took our call. No regrets.

Beijing – Pingyao – Xi'an –Guilin – Shanghai were our bases.

NOTABLE MISSES:

Zhangjiajie, Yunnan ( Kunming, Lijiang, Dali, and the legendary Shangri-la ) Huangshan, Chengdu pandas, Leshan Giant Buddha as well as the earthquake hit Jiuzhaigou had to be missed for paucity of time.

OUR ITINERARY:

March 16-20: Beijing, 4 nights.

HOTEL: Imperial courtyard hotel

March 20-22: Pingyao, 2 nights (7.44 am high speed train D2001 from Beijing West to Pingyao; 4 hours trip)

(day trip to Wang family courtyard and Shuanglin Temple )

HOTEL: Pingyao Cheng Jia Hotel

March 22-25: Xi'an 3 nights (D 2505; 8.40 AM; ticket was from starting station Taiyuan south Taiyuan south (Pingyao old town) to Xian north)

(Terracotta warriors, day trip to Luoyang Longmen grottos and White Horse temple)

HOTEL: Grand Soluxe International Hotel

March 25-27: Lujia village near Guilin 2 nights (10.35 am flight Xi'an -Guilin 12.35)

(Day trip to Jinkeng and Pingan rice terraces)

HOTEL: Secret Courtyard Resort Hotel

March 27-29: Shanghai Bund 3 nights, (7.15 am flight Guilin-Shanghai Pudong 9.30 am)
(day trip to Suzhou gardens and onward to water town Tongli one day and another day trip to Hangzhou West Lake)

HOTEL: Shanghai Fish Inn Bund

March 30-31: Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport 1 night (flight to Beijing and onward home)

HOTEL: Boyue Shanghai Hongqiao Airport Hotel inside Terminal 2

This is the map I marked up for our trip,

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TYACxkyniekrPHKh5Q2AkGBXXilv7VoB&usp=sharing

you can zoom in and read the bubbles for my notes.

THINGS TO PREPLAN:

MAIN FLIGHTS:

We bought the main open jaw flights ourselves from the Air China site. No issues.

INTERNAL FLIGHTS:

Where bullet trains are not available, we settled for flights. We kept checking the flight fares for our 2 internal flights on the site of the airlines, but found that agents ctrip offered better prices. We bought Xi'an-Guilin flight and Guilin-Shanghai flight from them. They informed that our flight timings had been pushed forward for the 1^st one. No worries!

TRAINS

Video of our train rides is here:

China Trains:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tYTcAQXhpygoacb3A

G, C, D are all bullet trains, D is less fast than others.

G is abb. of Chinese Gaosu/高速 meaning extreme fast.

C is Chengji/城际 meaning shuttling inter-city.

D is Dongche/动车 meaning exactly bullet trains.

Among the three:

G and C run only on specially built high speed line.

D runs on high speed rail as well as normal rail .

The official website is : www.12306.cn

Tickets go on sale online 30 days before date of travel and need Chinese card and phone number for booking. We used www.china-diy-travel.com for 2 sets of high speed train tickets, provided details and our passport numbers and paid them 10usd commission per ticket. We checked the price of the tickets and they were quoted right. We made the payment thru Paypal and received confirmation numbers. These have to be presented at a railway station and converted to tickets, showing all the passports.

We got all our tickets at one go from Beijing main station on the 1st day of our tour. This saved us time and aggravation on the day of travel. There was NO extra charge for collection at a station which is not our departure station though some people had said there will be a 5 CNY charge per ticket.

We can enter a train station only with a ticket and ID. For collection of already bought tickets and for buying new tickets there is a separate building with adequate signage near the regular entrance.

Here's a sample of our tickets, I've circled our train number G1896, time 08.40 follows the date; 15 is our coach number, 04C is our seat.
Our passport number, names are at the bottom

There were lines outside waiting to enter the station at the Beijing main station in the evening and they do have short line for those whose train is within a few minutes. We opted for early trains and did not encounter lines to enter. As one enters we need to put baggage if any on the Xray machine and walk for a personal wanding, then collect our bags. They man this op so well, bags arrive only when the person does, no piling of bags or backlog of people. I was worried about some one else picking up our bags and we kept our valuables on us, no issues!

For day trips I had wanted to buy tickets a day or 2 in advance. I had already got the timings of suitable trains from the ctrip site for all our day trips and noted return trip timings as well

In Xi'an I wanted tickets to Luoyang Longmen bought the previous day at 6 pm from the main railway station near our hotel but son did not oblige! We arrived at Xi'an north the next day by 7.20 am and wasted 30 minutes in the line to buy tickets and could board only a train at 8.40. Waste of time! Obviously it'll be impractical to not have a return ticket. Earlier I had thought we'll just buy tickets at the station when we are thru with the attraction but trains come in from far off destinations and are full. We saw a western couple travel standing from Hangzhou!

So in Shanghai, we went to the Shanghai main station and bought tickets for Suzhou day trip for the next day. We also bought Shanghai Hongqiao to Hangzhou East and return tickets also for the 29^th.

The station can sell tickets for trains starting at another station in the city. The counter girl said our option of 7am train has only standing room tickets. We opted for 6.54 train which had seats!

This saved us so much time and energy on the day of travel.

We need to enter the station showing our ticket and ID, put our bags thru the machine, collect them, look at the electronic board for our train number, departure time.

We see the waiting room number and wait there till 15 min before our departure.

When the announcement is made in Chinese for checking in, we scan our ticket at the turnstile and go down the escalator to our platform

We line up at the platform at the place our coach number is marked

Clear display with train number, time etc at the platform

Train aligns with the platform, easy to roll in bags

Seats recline, there is ample leg room

G trains go at 300 km/h, D trains around 250 km/h

Speed display

HOTELS

Video of all our hotels is here:

China hotels:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MWC3i12Hn9c7Urux8

We booked all our hotels online ourselves after checking reviews.

All hotels have to get passport, visa info of foreign guests and register with the police. Foreigners have reported being denied rooms even after arriving with confirmed booking from sites like Booking.com. Be aware.

All except Lujia village were close to public transport and subway and convenience stores.

We contacted hotel at Lujia and arranged airport transfers both ways (120 CNY for pickup, 180 CNY for drop off (5am pickup at hotel) for 7.15 am flight)and taxi for day trip to rice terraces (650CNY) 2 weeks ahead of our trip.

Our Pingyao hotel arranged a taxi for day trip (250 CNY) and also drop off at high speed train station (30 CNY)

Our Taxi guy and our red car at Longji rice terrace cable car station

In Xi'an the bell desk hailed us taxis for airport drop as well as a taxi to Xi'an North train station

In Beijing we knew they did not have English speaking staff and there will be no taxi assistance. We took the airport taxi to hotel; used subway and buses thru out

All our hotels had authentic Chinese décor, in fact Beijing and Pingyao were heritage family courtyard properties.

We LOVED all our choices.

SUBWAY

Video of metro rides is here:

China metro and maglev from Pudong airport:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CD7CMfVKLxwxSowD7

We read up on subway rules in our bases Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai and even day trips like Hangzhou and Suzhou, downloaded and printed out maps. We marked up all relevant stations. It was an interesting experience.

Subway signs are there on streets as seen below in Shanghai...

Self service ticket machines are easy to use as anywhere else in the world.

Clear signage everywhere

Our subway station is labelled and rest of the line and direction is also clearly displayed bilingual

waiting for the metro

This is how we found the metro as we travel early; Ha, ha, aren't you surprised?

We traveled all the way to Tongli on metro from Suzhou and bought the ticket to water town at the Tongli metro station and got a free ride on the shuttle!

At Shanghai line 13 to Jade Buddha we ran into problem trying a transfer from Line 2, wasted extra tickets when one attendant misguided us; another attendant showed a laminated card explaining this is a new line and needs tickets bought outside!

Also when we took the subway line 2 to Shanghai Hongqiao airport to stay at our airport hotel for the last night, the subway terminated at an earlier station. Thankfully we had taen or bags at 6 am in the morning on the same line and kept them at the hotel. We had to get down, wait there itself and take another train which arrived. Quite surprising!

There are plenty of stairs to climb, escalators are only up at exits/entrances. Transfers also involve long walks and stairs. Be aware if you are planning to carry bags!

TAXIS

Interestingly, one can rent a car in China only after taking a driving test there and getting a license. Driving license from otjer countries does not work!

Excepting Shanghai, taxis were reasonably priced and ran on meter

We had addresses/ names in Chinese characters written and printed in a word file along with common phrases.

We had no problem getting taxis from the official ranks at Beijing airport, Xi'an North train station. Beijing airport to hotal near Andingmen station 78 CNY plus toll 10 cny. Xi'an North train station to hotel was 58 CNY, the taxi got rear ended and they spent some 5 minutes exchanging info/money on their phones!

Next day taxi from hotel to Xi'an north was just 42 CNY

Pingyao gucheng station was a little disorderly but we managed a taxi after confirming 40 CNY to our hotel near North gate.

For our day trip to Luoyang Longmen grottos and White horse temple, a taxi guy approached at the station car park, quoted 250 CNY for the whole day taking us first to White horse temple and then to the grottos. Even the peony gardens was on his list.

Our Taxi guy

We could have released him at the grottos and got our taxi back to train station but we stuck with him. Our train back to xi'an north was at 4.44 . He had a great translation app. We did find taxis waiting at both Luoyang Longmen grottos and White horse temple.

MONEY

US credit cards were not accepted at any attraction/railway ticket counter. We paid cash. ATMs were fine. We found our debit card not working in Shanghai Pudong airport ground floor, a tout informed us only Chinese cards work there. We asked at Info and went up and found ATMs on 3rd floor which dispensed cash for us

ENTRY TICKETS

Some attraction tickets like Forbidden city need Passport for foreigners. We carried our passports everywhere. There are separate counters for foreigners at both Forbidden city right in near the entrance on the right hand side and Badaling Great wall where you have to climb up after the regular counters. Even foreigners above 60 have discounts or free passage in many places! All our tickets were at reduced price for off season. Regular prices start on Apri1

TOILETS:

Had read so much about squat toilets but we did not encounter any problems. All sites we visited had a sparkling clean western toilet at one corner. No TP or hand sanitizer/soap dispenser though. We took our own, no worries!

INTERNET:

Google etc are blocked in China and people use VPN. We always use the wifi at hotels, airports etc and don't need data. We set up a qq mail account and set up forwarding from our gmails. It worked fine.

I managed to get street view for all our hotels on the qq map... map.qq.com. Came in mighty useful
http://map.qq.com/#pano=10011007131129103341400&heading=119&pitch=20&zoom=1
is our Beijing hotel hutong
http://map.qq.com/#pano=10011007140115125832500&heading=189&pitch=4&zoom=2
is 877 Badaling great wall bus stop

LANGUAGE /COMMUNICATION:

We had downloaded google translate app for offline use. We also had a word file with common phrases we need. Ditie...dee ti eh for subway worked very well.

Same thing with gu cheng zhan or gu gong, stuff like that. We showed the chinese translation to security on the road or even to strangers and every one gestured and helped us out with a smile.

Most places we visited had English signboards too, going off the beaten track will probably need Chinese language skills.

Hello. 你好。 Nǐ hǎo.

Please. 请。 Qǐng.

Thank you. 谢谢。 Xièxiè.

入口 Entrance [rùkǒu]

出口 Exit [chūkǒu]

推 Push [tuī]

拉 Pull [lā]

厕所 / 洗手间 Toilet [cèsuǒ] / [xǐshǒujiān]

Chinese does not have words for "yes" and "no" as such; instead, questions are typically answered by repeating the verb. Here are common examples:

To be or not to be 是 shì, 不是 bú shì

地铁 ditie subway

Ticket 票Piào

售票处 Shòupiào chù ticket office

车票Chēpiào bus/train ticket

北京植物园 Běijīng zhí wù yuán Beijing botanical garden

长城 Chángchéng Great wall

Taxi 出租车 chū zū chē 等 Děng wait the train station...火车站 ...huǒchē zhàn the bus station ...汽车总站 ...qìchē zǒngzhàn the airport ...机场 ...jī chǎng

yuan 元; 10 jiao 角 角=10 fen 分

We had a word file with all the attractions and their names in Chinese .

RESOURCES FOR RESEARCH:

Travelchinaguide was pretty helpful for research; they even answered some questions of mine promptly. Wish I had bought some service from them.

https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/transportation/bus.htm

PEOPLE:

Overall, we found the people quite willing to help if you showed them Chinese written words.

At Suzhou subway station the machine did not take 1 CNY note, we needed coins. I asked Young men behind us for a coin showing my note, they gave me the coin and refused to take my note. I had to chase down 3 of them and make them accept the note!!

the Security guard noticing our plight got a note and returned with a coin to help! Such LOVELY UNFORGETTABLE people!!

At Guilin we wanted to know the direction to walk to the Sun and Moon pagoda from the Elephant trunk hill park. It was drizzling steadily. A girl sheltering at a bicycle stand gestured us to follow her and walked on... it was a LOOONG walk and we were surprised why she was doing this for us. We decided she'll ask for a tip, and were contemplating we would stop at 10 CNY. In fact we were a little annoyed that she chose to do it this way instead of just pointing the way. We reached the destination, she gestured us to cross the road and waved us goodbye before trudging off! What a sweet girl!!

Lines were orderly at subway stations, in spite of the massive crowds.

We had read about stares at foreigners and had assumed it was for the white foreigners, We were stared at a LOT, almost constantly, people poked phones, cameras right at our faces and took pics even with a flash.

There were several instances of sneaky picture taking, mostly by young girls and boys. There was instant uploading as well after some fast texting! We were so surprised.

At Pingyao, 2 middle aged ladies were so overcome at the sight of me! My strategy was to confront the starer with a smile, here the ladies dissolved into a frenzy and waved and yelled Hello!

Youngsters approached with an accented “ May I have a picture with you?” and were happy when we obliged! Some wanted both of us, some were selective! Son had a stream of girls who wanted pics with him! There were some girls who wanted a pic with only me.

I took a pic of the pic taking once

and found several instances where our pics are being taken by a stranger! I can kind of get the youngsters needing a pic for their social media account but the many older guys taking my picture freaked me out!

Kids went all out staring away, many times joined by the adults in the group.

It was all such an intense experience for sure!

FOOD:

Tough on us vegetarians. We self catered.

Below is Milk cartons and yogurt drink bottles... all chinese labels of course.

Milk is 牛奶 Niúnǎi ... see in the cartons below

Plain bread was hard to come by

This is a sweet filling with dates, usually the fillings were all meat!

Brought a pile of home made Tortillas made with whole wheat flour and smeared with butter, and home made tomato relish

Supplemented with juice, yogurt, bananas, grapes bought

This is home made cashew nut sweet

This is forbidden rice, Imperial rice/black rice, grown just for the emperor.

We could not buy ordinary white rice anywhere. This rice was available only in one shop at Xi'an. Went great with our soup.

POLLUTION:

Unfortunately we were in the midst of a lot of smokers. By the time we reached Shanghai I had a bad cough and felt feverish. I made do with medicines. I felt OK on boarding the flight back home.

With this intro, I'm starting a day by day detailed account of our trip.
Report of Days 1 and 2 is here:

http://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2018/04/china-trip-report-day-12-shanghai-day.html

CHINA VIDEOS:

As usual our videos have music and some frames are captioned.

Link for full album is here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/0mpluVvn4YTuWU883

Great wall at Badaling:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Hu4TZES5MXUpmFTw5

China hotels:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MWC3i12Hn9c7Urux8

Forbidden city:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UJ8gNcdM7Xc2wyLM6

Summer palace and Beihai:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TRc5Q8JyNij8vuqj9

Pingyao:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SUrJKBuQMUu6KDrS6

Wang family courtyard and Shaunglin temple:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VE5yUPDf6DnnHHKr6

Xi'an:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GuRfuU8brbL444ZN7

Xi'an Drum Tower performance:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Mnf7fsETvN7fD8Dp9

Luoyang White horse temple and Longmen grottoes:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FCfFarg521jemTie8

Terracotta Army:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FF3vSntoJR8NPDeT8

Guilin:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/DKcWfud8TTqfVHKs7

Shanghai:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EkRwLnpyPWZbKGZm8

Hangzhou West Lake:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/E3HoksP98xwSJaci8

Suzhou and Tongli:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PhP55BYhEaiPMq2GA

Hangzhou west lake Xihu music, dance buskers:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ea8di8r7jrQZDKoc8