God damn I fucking love China. It is so nice here. Little things, like sidewalks being wider, make such a huge difference. Tomorrow I’m going to the tomb of the second Khan of the Jing Dynasty and first emperor of the Qing dynasty. It’s literally just chilling in a public park, and you pay like ¥5 to go inside and check it out. So much history just bursting at the seams, and yet it still feels so much more modern than my home state in many ways.
It’s totally worth the effort. Hardest part was getting the visa, I don’t have a Chinese consulate in my state so I had to fly to the one assigned to my region. But you can get a 10 year visa so you only have to do it once.
The flight was expensive, but staying is cheap. For two weeks I’m spending less than $1000 in hotels, and I’m staying in really fancy hotels in multiple cities. I spent $2k for a week in a 200sqft hotel in California, so outside of the flight cost, this is probably going to be one of my cheapest vacations ever.
The hotels really are great aren't they. 30 quid a night for a fucking enormous room, massive TV and a wet room
How are you handling payment options? Do you use cash only or have you managed to set up a mobile payment system? I've been curious about learning more about some of the practical obstacles of traveling to China. Is there anything in particular that you've had difficulties with that you can give advice on (other than the visa thing)? How are you handling the language barrier? Or do you speak Chinese?
Just got back. Just make sure you get Alipay and WeChat set up for payments. Cash and card is sometimes taken, but a lot of street vendors and small shops won't.
P.S. get your banking apps installed on your phone. I had to approve a lot of payments despite calling my bank and explaining I was I China and constantly approving transactions was becoming very annoying.
You no longer need to worry too much about setting up payment methods. I just downloaded Alipay from the App Store, confirmed all my passport and such, and added my western credit card, and I use it everywhere and it automatically converts to yuan on payment and charges a 3% fee to do so, which is like 50 cents or less on most transactions.
The language barrier could be hard, but my gf is Chinese so I just have her help translate for me where my Chinese isn’t good enough (which is often because I am absolutely terrible at hearing Chinese, though I can write and speak at about a middle school level)
Honestly, I haven’t had too many issues though, everyone is really kind and helpful.
Oh that other guy is right. If you don’t have a local, try to set up the WeChat pay too. There’s been a few things I have been unable to purchase with Alipay and my gf has had to buy for me with her WeChat pay.
I basically slept 15 of my first 24 hours here and then didn’t sleep for like 20 hours haha. My sleep schedule is pretty normal now, but I get ridiculously tired around 9pm.
