Anyone been to China?

Going to China for the first time in the summer.

Got 5 days in Beijing, 4 days in Cheng Du and 11 in Shanghai (Partner's aunt lives there so needs to be the longer stop).

Itinerary so far:

Beijing: Great Wall, Tiannamen Sq, Forbidden Palace

Cheng Du Pandas, Leshan Giant Buddha

Shanghai See family, 2 or 3 day trip to Zhangjiajie (mountains that inspired Avatar), Hangzhou/West Lake, Maybe one of the water towns, Shanghai sights like the Bund etc

My question is - what am I missing? Is there something that is a must see? We're not going to make it X'ian or Three Gorges Dam etc this time - Those 3 locations are locked in with flights and accomodation booked, so is there anything not currently on my itinerary around Beijing, Chengdu or Shanghai that anyone would recommend?

upload some photos of the sights if you can please should be a great trip

Ok. So, I'm jealous already.
You can keep your "Sun, Sea & Sand" holidays for other folks.
I'd want to be going places not many others do.

I had a friend many years ago who went to Nepal, and I was jealous then. (and still am).

When I then got the chance to go to Poland (before The Wall came down), I jumped at it, and have never regretted that visit.

I've been sort of half offered a visit to Hong Kong - with some Chinese neighbours, but it's not happened yet, and I doubt it ever will.

Enjoy Tom, memories to last a lifetime from this

Food is great in China, just be careful of what you do there. Enjoy your trip as a fellow Asian.

If you had the time, you should have also visited Hong Kong. Great metropolis that mixes both Western and Eastern cultures.

Closest we’ll be to Hong Kong is 1200 miles away in Shanghai. It’s a 3 hour flight and just can’t fit it in. We plan to go back once the restoration works are finished on the terracotta warriors to see them and some of the bits we won’t get to this time (hanging monastery, Tibet, three gorges etc). I guess Hong Kong will fit on that itinerary.

We’re both geography teachers so far more attuned to seeing stuff and going to different places rather than just beach holidays.

Bolton Wanderers wrote:

upload some photos of the sights if you can please should be a great trip

Will do mate

Edit

If its Geography you are looking for.....

Rice Terraces @ Long Sheng
Glass Bridge (is that at Tiger Leaping mountains?)
Yangtze River cruise
Guizhou Waterfall
Huashang Plank of Death (but dont take that personally !!)

Thanks for suggestions but pretty sure none of them are near Beijing, Shanghai or Chengdu which are the places we're going. With a two year old in tow, we can't deviate too much from that.

No Pukki No Party wrote:

Going to China for the first time in the summer.

Got 5 days in Beijing, 4 days in Cheng Du and 11 in Shanghai (Partner's aunt lives there so needs to be the longer stop).

Itinerary so far:

Beijing: Great Wall, Tiannamen Sq, Forbidden Palace

Cheng Du Pandas, Leshan Giant Buddha

Shanghai See family, Hangzhou/West Lake, Maybe one of the water towns, Shanghai sights like the Bund etc

My question is - what am I missing? Is there something that is a must see? We're not going to make it X'ian or Three Gorges Dam etc this time - Those 3 locations are locked in with flights and accomodation booked, so is there anything not currently on my itinerary around Beijing, Chengdu or Shanghai that anyone would recommend?

OK, just back from China so thought I'd give an update on how it went, as quite a few people have been asking.

Beijing - Very boring city. It's very corporate, not much life going on there - people go to work and go home. Surprisingly difficult to find restaurants etc, and the food was either atrocious or very overpriced. Difficult to get around, almost zero level of English - have to cross essentially motorways constantly (there's 5+ ring roads that are 8-10 lanes across).

Summer Palace - Very pretty, but naff all there. Can kill a couple of hours walking around the lake but nothing else to see or do here.

Great wall is unbelievable. Highlight of the trip by a country mile. Top tip if you ever go - take the extra journey time and visit Mutianyu. Badaling is the closest section to Beijing and rammed with tourists etc by all accounts. Mutianyu is much quieter, not that much further away, and you can get a cable car to the top, and there is a TOBOGGAN RUN to get down after hiking for a couple of miles along the top (not exactly flat as it follows the ridge of mountains, but not too steep - we managed with the 2 year old in sweltering heat).

Tiannamen Square - utter dross. It's just a big open concrete square, but you cant get a decent sightline across it as it's got entrance gates and CCTV poles everywhere, not to mention rammed with tourists. The buildings surrounding it are entirely unremarkable and very corporate. In short, nothing to see here at all and no recognition of the history of the square anywhere. The open space at Anitkabir (Ataturk's mausoleum) in Ankara, Turkey or St Peter's Sq in Rome is far more impressive.

Forbidden City - Brilliant for about 5 minutes. Then incredibly dull and tedious. It's basically a long corridor of courtyards running for a couple of miles. Every courtyard looks almost exactly the same, there are no exhibits of any historic relics etc from the emperors that lived there. It seems to go on forever, there are frequent chokepoints which you have to fight through between every courtyard.

Cheng Du - Much more lively city, very busy and vibrant. Not much there that you can't get in any major city though. Level of English was equally poor but more of the menus etc had English translations, the food was better quality (largely).

Panda Park - Pandas are incredible but place was entirely ruined by Chinese tourists. We followed some advice found online, and took a taxi to the park before it opened. We arrived at 7am - it opens at 7:30. There were already around 1000 people there in a multitude of different queues and no explanation as to what any of them were. Fought my way round to the ticket desk (need to buy before queueing to get in). Woman behind was over my shoulder, ramming her hand/money through the counter window before I could even take my tickets out of it. It was like Lord of the flies with queuejumping, pushing, shoving etc. Got in and went opposite direction to the crowds - walked quite a long way through badly signposted maze of paths and found an enclosure. Only one other guy there, and pandas were really active - it was a spectacular 10 minutes. Then the crowds arrived at the enclosure and the magic was broken by rude Chinese tourists barging, getting in front of photos due to lack of spatial awareness etc. By the time we got to next enclosure it was about 3 deep all the way along the fence and you couldn't even see the pandas without fighting the crowd, waiting for ages or watching through your phone. Then you realise, it's essentially a small zoo (albeit the enclosures are massive etc) and there are only 8 exhibits spread over a large area so you have to walk for miles between each one, all but one of the exhibits is the same animal (Red pandas in the other), and there is pretty much nothing to see after 9am as the pandas all go to sleep (Who knew Pandas sleep in trees btw - wtf?!). We were done by 10:15.

Didn't go to the Leshan Buddha as it was expensive and 3 hours each way which just wasn't feasible with my daughter in tow.

Wenshu Monastery - Spectacular "old china" style monastery set in beautiful grounds featuring turtle ponds. Unfortunately it was torrential rain, so we didn't spend too long in the gardens, but it was a really interesting place and really enjoyed the visit (albeit it is just looking at stuff as there is no information about anything, anywhere). Only downside is you can't get a great perspective of the monastery for photos due to surrounding buildings being so close. Pro tip - the restaurant next to the monastery is utterly f***ing disgusting. Had quite literally the worst meal of my entire life there. Totally vile.

Shanghai - Ridiculously large city. Including the suburbs it's nearly 200 miles across. 27 million people. The scale of it is just absurd and mindblowing to see. Quite cosmopolitan, much larger contingent of foreigners (we'd only seen about 8 white people in the 2 weeks before we got to Shanghai). Level of English generally poor but better than other parts of China. Skyline rivals New York imo.

Hangzhou/West Lake - Hangzhou was a nice city - lots of markets (calmest sellers we found anywhere) and stuff, lots of life, although we went during Typhoon Lekima so very rainy meaning the show on the lake we were due to see was cancelled etc. Stayed in an unbelievable hotel here (see below picture).

Water Town - No idea which one we visited, was expecting it to be like a Chinese Venice or something. Was just a town with a canal running through it and loads of shops selling absolute tat. Some nice photos but nothing worth the 3 hour round trip we made to get there.

The Bund - Spectacular skyline - lights come on at 7pm. There is a roof terrace on the hotel indigo which has the best view in the city to see this. Lots of western restaurants etc round here too.

Tianzifang Market - bog standard market. Sellers here were less aggressive than other markets though. Lots of cheap plastic crap.

Science Museum - Lord of the flies again as tickets are cheap and it has air con - there were literally families there set up with Ipads etc who were spending the whole day sat in the corridor there as they didn't have air con at home. The exhibits were F***ing s***. One of the worst museums I have ever been in.

OVERALL: There is a ridiculous number of people in China and it shows. It was Chinese school holidays when we went and every attraction was rammed full of Chinese tourists. Very few westerners. This is reflected in the level of English being pretty much zero, the tourist attractions had very little info or exhibits in them. Similar western attractions would have had info boards explaining things etc but there was nothing, not even in Chinese. The whole country is just not set up for Western tourists, every attraction is miles away from the next one so each one requires ridiculous transport costs and almost a whole day to visit, even if it's in the same city as traffic is beyond mental and they all drive like t**ts.

The culture was exactly what I expected unfortunately. We came across a lot of Chinese tourists in Thailand and found them to be incredibly rude. I'm pretty cultured and relatively well travelled so it's not that I can't deal with different cultures, or cultutre shock or anything like that, it's simply the fact that the Chinese culture is utterly unpleasant. Everybody spits, everywhere - even in restaurants they will just hock up and spit on the floor. People don't queue, they just fight - I know we're renowned for being polite and queueing at every opportunity, but people there are just utterly disrespectful and it is genuinely like lord of the flies. That gets really tiresome after a while. I almost got in a fight at the Science museum after some tosser literally knocked my daughter over as he barged through and didn't apologise, or even look down to see what he had barged into - I turned round and sent him absolutely flying and obviously looked intimidating enough that he thought better of kicking off when he looked round.

The whole culture is just totally selfish and lack of basic decency - for example we were trying to get a taxi in the rain in Cheng du - There's us (2 adults and a 2 year old child without umbrellas) and a 20 something woman on her own a little further down on the other side of the street trying to hail a cab. One comes down the street and we flag it down. It stops way closer to us than it does to her. She has an un=mbrella, we dont. We have a two year old child that she can clearly see, she's on her own. Taxi stops and she sprints like Usain Bolt to get there before us and dives through the door.

My daughter is blonde and blue eyed and they were utterly obsessed. Couldn't stop anywhere for longer than 2 mins without a crowd forming. People constantly wanting selfies with her and just filming/photoing her without asking permission. My partner's uncle speaks chinese, and he told some to stop at one point. Before he'd even turned round they had their cameras back up taking pictures and he had to tell them to FO quite aggressively before they stopped. It's funny for a day or two but then it just gets really irritating with my daughter being treated like an exhibit in a zoo. I'd hate to be a celebrity. My daughter got really tired of it too.

The cities are massive and have very few attractions in them, it takes forever to get anywhere and it stinks. The smells of sewage, the smells of some disgusting foods being cooked, the pollution etc. Everywhere smells really really bad. It makes it really unpleasant to wander the streets because every 20 seconds your nostrils are assaulted with something utterly foul. Everywhere is crowded and they can't do civilised crowds, you almost need Bear Grylls to come in and guide you through every queue because sometimes it feels like it's a survival mission. Food in general is pretty horrible and very few western options when you do want a break from it. Nothing like our "English chinese" takeaways (which to be fair are much, much nicer than the sh** they eat over there.

CCTV is EVERYWHERE. There are poles every 50 metres or so with 10-15 CCTV cameras on them. Every highway has cameras every kilometre taking pictures every 10 seconds. It's constant surveillance. They have nearly 200 million CCTV cameras in the country. It's absurd. It's like being in some Orwellian dystopia.

Some of the "English" Tshirts they wear are hilarious. They clearly have no idea what they mean. Saw various including one just saying "Ankles" in massive letters on the front. One saying "Acne", one saying "Something cheerful". I've included two of my favourites in the pics below.

Overall, I'd love to recommend China but in all good faith I can't. I'm glad I went and saw the Great wall, and the 10 decent minutes of pandas before the hordes descended but I'm even more glad that I never have to go back there. If you are thinking about going to Asia, then I thoroughly recommend Thailand and Cambodia rather than China (not been to other parts of Asia but heard good things about Malaysia, Philippines etc). People are much nicer, culture is much more pleasant and there is far more to see and do - not to mention they're just better set up for westerners.