China - 2 weeks

purplecow1977

I'm hoping to visit China next mid March for about 2 weeks. Preferably flying into Hong Kong in time for Paddy's Day! Any suggestions after this? I enjoy doing tours like G Adventures organise but there wasn't anything that suited as I've such limited time (need to be flying back to Ireland April 3rd).
Thanks in advance.

sarkozy

China is HUGE. You're flying back from Hong Kong?

You'll just need to do your research and pick two areas max. The reason is flying everywhere is exhausting and pointless, and you should really spend time soaking up the culture, interacting with people.

Base it around the sites you want to see, or experiences you want to have. If a tour does that for you, it'll make things easier, but China's well developed (if a little mad), so it's easy to go solo, though a challenge all the same.

While Beijing is great, I'd suggest skipping the north because there are more attractions in central and south-western China. So there, you have historic cities like Xi'an. Some go to Shanghai (I've never been) because it's also near Nanjing, a really important historical city.

Then you can choose to visit the misty heights of China's famous karst mountain ranges, which would put you down in the vicinity of Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan, in the foothills of the Himalayas. I didn't see those, but enjoyed Yunnan.

But then, I've only seen Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Kunming, Lijiang, Dali, Tiger Leaping Gorge.

While close to each other, don't think you can see places in those three provinces in any short space of time. They're huge. For example, the bus journey between Kunming and Dali took HOURS. Nice trip, though.

But don't take it from me. I'm just mentioning where I went. I didn't see everything I wanted, our itinerary could have been better. We didn't do our research. Which is why I so want to go back!

rojito

From Hong Kong you aren't too far from Yongding or Guilin (for Yangshou and the dragons backbone in Longji). Covering those might be a bit of challenge (at times uncomfortable) though if you normally do tours.

It all depends what you're after, in two weeks you could easily fly to Shanghai, Beijing for the great wall etc, then fly to Xi'an for the terracota warriors.

Columbia

With just two weeks you'll definitely want to get some internal flights. Beijing, Xian and Nanjing are all good calls. Hong Kong itself deserves a few days and would be a good place to pick up a new phone, laptop or (genuine) watch, since they have no import tax.

Shanghai is a cool city (I live there), but I don't know what a tourist can do except gawk at the really tall buildings. It's a bit like London if you stripped away the history and legitimacy of that place. If you're coming from Europe, there's nothing special about Shanghai, other than they've spent a bit of money on some huge-ass buildings, and a fast-ass train to the airport.

Honestly, be prepared for some stressful travel. Getting anywhere will be a challenge, because most people don't speak English (even if they know how, they are usually too shy to, especially if there are other Chinese nearby - "losing face" is a huge thing here). Learning more than the most rudimentary Chinese (Mandarin) is impractical, because it's a tonal language so you'll need tens of hours of study and practice before a local can understand anything you're saying, except by guessing from context, and even then Mandarin is probably not their first language. I know people who have been here for 3/4 years, and still can't order a beer in a restaurant, because they can't get the tones right. Road signs are in English, but not much else. Any place worth seeing is rammed with people, unless you go way off the beaten track, which I don't think you can really do in two weeks.

Google is blocked, so using Maps is out. Facebook is out. Gmail is out. YouTube is out. Twitter is out. Basically if you need to send or access information outside of China while you're here, you're going to have a frustrating time. You can overcome this by getting a VPN, but they're hit-and-miss, and often blocked on public WiFi access points, including cafes and hotels.

purplecow1977

Columbia wrote:

Google is blocked, so using Maps is out. Facebook is out. Gmail is out. YouTube is out. Twitter is out. Basically if you need to send or access information outside of China while you're here, you're going to have a frustrating time. You can overcome this by getting a VPN, but they're hit-and-miss, and often blocked on public WiFi access points, including cafes and hotels.

Wow I did not know this.
Why is it blocked?
I really wasn't aware of this so I really need to be prepared in advance!
I'm travelling with someone who isnt really into travelling if you get me, so I want to be organised as we're booking flights in the next week or two so I don't want to book return flights to Hong Kong if im going to fly home from somewhere else!

I think she has it in her mind to spend the two weeks in Hong Kong. She's visiting a relative. Would this be a waste of time? The two weeks in Hong Kong I mean, not visiting the relative!

Thanks for comments so far. Duly noted.

sarkozy

We 'did' China in three weeks, including one week in Beijing hanging out with an old college friend. So the following two weeks were a frenzy of travel. As I said, it depends how you want to travel, and Columbia's advice above is good. We were used to some tough travelling from having lived/travelled in other difficult parts of the world. It didn't phase us as much, but it was challenging. Not because of lack of infrastructure, because of culture and language. Still, things worked out, even though somethings they shouldn't have. For example, on our way to Xi'an, we got chatting to a fellow in Chengdu airport. On arrival, he offered to cover our taxi fare to the hostel we were staying in. But the address had changed. If not for him, we'd have been in trouble! But we hung out with him the next day and saw stuff we wouldn't otherwise have.

That's how it goes.

My learning on that trip was: do more with less. Focus more time on really exploring a locality, somewhere different and interesting. If you're going to Hong Kong anyway, do your homework and really explore the city. Maybe go and get lost in Kowloon. But you have an airport on tap, so perhaps choose one other crack-your-skull-open-amazing location and spend real, quality time there.

The next easiest option is to book a tour and let them do the work.

Alternatively, spend two weeks in HK or two weeks of hard, exciting travel around an incredible country.

A note on the internet stuff: Gmail was still somewhat accessible when I was there, and so was LinkedIn. Still, there are lots of internet cafés about the place and still lots on the internet to search for stuff. Our physical China travel guide was invaluable.

killbillvol2

Two weeks in HK would be a bit much I'd say. I spent 5 days there a couple of years ago and that was about right.

I'd advise picking one base and going there for the rest of the trip.

I've been to Beijing 5 or 6 times and still find new things to do. Guilin and the surrounding area is beautiful and not too far from HK. There's a lot to see and do in Yunnan but the distances are huge for your two weeks. Chengdu would be another good base with a lot nearby. I'd agree with Columbia that Shanghai has little to offer to a tourist.

The bottom line is that given the size of the country it'll take years to see even a fraction of it. I've been 6 times and have barely scratched the surface. It can be difficult to communicate sometimes but the Chinese are a very friendly and helpful people in my experience and I've always managed to find a way to get by even in out of the way places.

As to internet, Google and Facebook are definitely and aggressively blocked but if you set up a good VPN before you enter China you'll get around the "Great Firewall" no problem.

haro124

Definitely try and fit in Zhangjiajie or Huanshan mountains