People who have been to China

[Yee236T]

Where do you recommend going and when?

Currently I've just been seeing videos of the Shenzhen skyline and thinking to myself "wow this looks so cool".

I really want to go see China.

Beijing and Great Wall are pretty cool. Would love to see shanghai and the Ice festival in Harbin

Agree re Beijing and the Great Wall.

I loved the Terracotta Warriors so would really recommend a visit to Xi'an.

And the scenery around Guilin is absolutely stunning.

I would love to go but worry that I would see upsetting treatment of animals. Is this a thing to worry about or am I being silly?

I'd love to see Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing

Well I it's a while since I was last there, but when I was there in some of the restaurants you pick live food and the markets would probably be a place to avoid.

Shenzhen, it's just a big city to me but you used to be able to get the boat over to Hong Kong too from She Kou (some would argue more of the same). Beijing is good and loads of tourist stuff to do and see there - I prefer it to Shanghai.

Xi'an I would like to go to but never been.

There are a lot of smaller (small by Chinese standards anyway, each one would be a major city in the UK) cities that I have visited that have pretty much nothing there to see from a tourist perspective.

the typical tourist trail is Beijing - Xian - Shanghai

other great areas include Guilin and the Yellow Mountains and Hong Kong

China is a big complicated place and not always easy to understand or navigate

are you thinking of a package tour or backpacking or something in between? what do you want to get out of your trip?

I've been several times, mostly for work but with a bit of sightseeing thrown in too. Avoid the weeks either side of national holidays. Easter is nice. I find Beijing a bit stuffy but the historical sites are beautiful and fascinating. Shanghai is more modern and glitzy. Chengdu is a good base for going to see the tea fields, giant pandas and Leshan Buddha. The light show in Guilin is amazing. I highly recommend taking a river trip from Guilin to Yangshuo and spending a few days at the latter. Absolutely gorgeous scenery and plenty to see and do.

If you avoid the wet markets and dolphin/whale shows then you're unlikely to come across animal cruelty in the cities. The supermarkets often have tanks of live fish and crustaceans though.

What kind of budget do you have? I’d consider a tour

I travelled around China in 2012, it’s a huge country and they do not speak so much English so I booked a guided tour with Intrepid ( not sure if they’re still around). You can get to the main cities ( Xian, chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai) use the bullet train where possible, the normal trains are horrible ( cigarette smoke, dirty etc) but I would say it’s not easy to to get to the local sites because of the language barrier. It may have changed now. I also recommend visiting Emi shai ( Buddha in mountain). As I said, I had a guided tour and this was worth every penny. But you can DIY, just have a good translator in your phone or guide book with mandarin written in it. Lonely planet books are really good and worth getting

Have you been back in the last 14 years?

Ah sadly no I haven’t. Not sure how much has changed since then. I would go on lonely planet forum and ask people there ( as well as here of course ). It’s a lovely country to visit, there is a lot to see.

A lot has changed from your depiction

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years. I agree with those saying Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Guilin/Yangshuo but would also pop Yunnan in as a wild card suggestion.
if you don’t go to zoos or markets you won’t see anybody treating an animal badly. I saw more people being awful to children than animals in my time there.

Definitely worth going and have a good time. The one thing I can say is the food in China is out of this world :-)

Guilin/Yangshuo is lovely, I went there too. Definitely worth a visit

We did a tour with Wendy Wu. Not wild about the whole group thing, but China is so vast and so few people speak English we felt it was the best way to see a lot.
We did Shanghai, Beijing, the Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Panda sanctuary etc and three day cruise down the Yangtze. It was a great way to see everything but it was a bit conveyor belt.
One thing that massively impressed me was that you can get a lifesize souvenir terracotta warrior with your face on it in the shop there. Sadly, we didn't take them up on it.

We did a very, very similar tour in 2012.

It was fantastic and I would second as being an ideal way to see the main sights.

Absolutely creased that someone is recommending Intrepid and the Lonely Planet like they are little known hidden gems!

Ah same year I went. Yes I agree on the tour thing, I felt like I had to socialise a bit at times but our tour guide was excellent! Although some places we stayed at could have been a bit better, some were really nice. I wasn’t too confident travelling around on my own, I was literally on my own backpacking, so a guided tour was the best option for me. I did get to Shanghai from Beijing on my own, my tour guide gave me directions on using the local buses. I stayed in a youth hostel in Shanghai and staff there were excellent in giving directions on how to get to places etc. I met lovely people there.. Found Shanghai quite easy on my own but the rest of china would be hard work as no English announcement on the trains, etc. Maybe bullet trains have them now ( they were just rolling them out in 2012 I think) 🤔

Not sure what you mean by your post?😀 I used LP books all the time, I have travelled around the world in 2012 , (sadly on my own). Found those books very useful throughout my travels, even for shorter holidays 😀

That is nasty and not at all how that poster presented the suggestions.

I lived in China for 12 years.
avoid any national holidays: Chinese new year, mid autumn festival, October holiday are the big ones.
summer can be very hot in certain areas- Nanjing eg is routinely around 40 degrees in summer.
september is a good time too but check dates of mid autumn festival.
where ? - Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, Chengdu are probably the most popular destinations.
depends how much time you have - Guilin, round houses in Fujian province, canals in Suzhou, Nanjing (former capital), Inner Mongolia, Harbin (ice festival), jiuzhaigou are all worth visiting. Tibet and Xinjiang province are also fabulous destinations and so very different from the East of China- but can be challenging to visit, particularly Tibet as sometimes extra permission is required.
edit - so many typos!

Well I lived there for 12 years and found LP pretty useful.

We did a month Wendy Wu similar to others on here but the one thing I disagree with is the Terracotta Warriors. Quite a few of us were disappointed with it, very pushy with selling the replica warriors and rushed through it. Very commercialised, not what we were expecting.
The Panda experience was good and they were very well looked after.

The worst thing about the organised tour was the food. It was mostly buffets and obviously designed to be fairly mild not to frighten the tourists.