For foreigners, traveling in China is generally a bit different than what you normally expect in an Asian country, where scooters, motorbikes, long-distance busses, trains and flights are generally cheap, easily available and flexible; and where you come to a new place and can easily navigate yourself around through some online sightseeing tips or the odd hotel receptionist that tells you about awesome spots to visit.
That was the mindset I had when I came to China. What a large and organized county, travelling must be a piece of cake.
After having lived here for a few months now, I can say: it can be a piece of cake, but not in the same way that I described above. I tried this individualistic backpacking approach from above and I should say, I didn’t really fail entirely, but it wasn’t really what I thought it would be.
So far, I would say that there are three ways to travel in China as a foreigner: with a pre-booked tour group, with a Chinese friend who knows his/her way around, or individually (however, some places are more designed to do that, others less).
- Pre-booked tour group
This is something I had never considered using or taking any interest in. I used the old bus-city-travel companies around 2005 before there were budget airlines but other than that: the thought of sitting in a bus with a bunch of other people, being pushed from one photo spot to another in a pretty short time with a rather inflexible schedule didn’t really seem too tempting and reminded me very much of the stereotypical chinese way of traveling in the US and Europe.
However, China has a lot of English-speaking travel agencies that are specialised in arranging expat-tours to areas that are usually rather difficult to get to. It turns out that these companies are very popular among foreigners. You book a weekend trip or a 1-2 week trip with them, get the entire schedule arranged for you and don’t have to deal with anything. This doesn’t sound like much of the actual spirit of travelling – and I agree, it isn’t – but this entire „planning thing“ for travelling in China sometimes just becomes way to annoying that it’s good to go on a trip where you really don’t have to worry about where you will end up, if you will be allowed to stay somewhere (considering you are a foreigner), etc.
I went with a few of these agencies and the trips were always pretty good. For some areas of the country, there is actually no way around these agencies, as you are not allowed to go on your own. For other areas, they might be able to take you to off-the-beaten track areas, that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. It sounds weird, but things like Lonely Planet or wikitravel or other travel sources that sometimes help you to get around, really don’t work here.
Some of the agencies I know or went with are: M2, HikingLovers, EliteTravel. You’ll easily find more on WeChat if you start looking.
2. Go with a Chinese Friend
The major thing that prevents you from finding cool places to go or things to do is the language barrier and the different usage of social media. Our standard search platforms for these things (google, Facebook, Instagram) throw out rather limited information on places in China. Chinese use various apps in their daily life that are very different from what we use. Even if we figured out which app to use to plan your trip, we’re still far from leaving, because the language gap is extremely large. Without any knowledge in reading chinese characters, you are completely lost and have to picture-translate every single page and every single menu bar with baidu translate.
To avoid this and to get a chance to get a bit off the beaten path, try to find a Chinese friend and do a trip together. If they have a bit of a western attitude, they might know or might be able to find some cool sights and ways to get there.
3. Individual travel
Some areas in China are easy to travel. A chill weekend on the beach that as a slight resemblance with Southeast Asia? Fly over to Sanya, on Hainan Island. City tour? Try Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Xian. These large cities are usually pretty easy to navigate to and within for foreigners.
Other areas are more difficult to get to and to get around. We did a 4 week South Yunnan trip in December/January, which was very nice, but due to a lot of hassle with police check-points, busses or taxis that didn’t want to take us or didn’t know where we wanted to go, and not a lot of information along the way on what one could do or where to go, it was a bit of a hassle. If you try to organize a multi-day hike by yourself in a mountain area or somewhere – have fun, it’s not gonna be much fun, at least not the organizing part of it. You won’t find much information online. On-site hotels are usually not really able or willing to help, either. This was very frustrating experience for me initially. But after a while I realised that it takes some very diligent research online and asking around in a few travel groups in WeChat and then even a nice hike can be planned.
Good areas for hiking are: Wuyuan (close to Shanghai, Jianxi Province), Shangri La, Tiger-Leaping Gorge (Yunnan).
What seems to be pretty upcoming in the last years in China is the RV world. Even though, China is massive and you’d have to really think about where you want to start and end your RV trip, this might be a good opportunity to travel independently and get to see some remote places. Google a bit and you will definitely find RV rental places that rent to foreigners.
If it doesn’t have to be an RV, try to get a rental car. You will not feel as independent as traveling around by yourself in other Asian countries, but it gets pretty close to that. Click here to find out how to rent a car in China. Be prepared to spend a day after arrival running to different governmental offices to get your temporary Chinese drivers licence – generally no test required if you only want a temporary one which is tied to your visa. Once this is set up, you are allowed to drive rental cars in China. To get a rental car, booking.com helps. There is also a Chinese car rental app that you could use (神 州租车), but that would involve a lot of screenshot translations via baidu translate and not being sure if you would get the car at pick-up due to being a foreigner. Hence, I would go with Booking.
Travelling in China works well. Trains and flights are very reliable. But other than that, you need to be prepared that China is not made for the classic Southeast-Asia backpacker. The people here travel differently, and they prefer – especially the locals – the pre-booked guided tours I described in #1 above from individual traveling. So, either go with the flow, or invest some extra time and nerves in designing your travel plans – it will probably work, but maybe slightly different than you expect.