Visas & entry
China's entry rules have changed repeatedly since 2023 and continue to be extended, expanded and adjusted — usually in the traveller's…
Independent · Updated for 2026 travel
The complete China travel guide for foreign visitors
China reopened to independent travellers with visa-free entry for dozens of nationalities, a cashless payment system that finally accepts foreign cards, and the largest high-speed rail network on the planet. This guide covers all of it — entry rules, payments, trains, food, etiquette and 20+ destinations — in plain English, written for people who do not read Chinese.
- 240 hvisa-free transit at 60+ ports
- 48,000 kmof high-speed rail
- 60UNESCO World Heritage sites
- 8great regional cuisines
Start here: the things that trip people up
If you read nothing else, read these. They are the difference between a smooth trip and standing outside a hotel at midnight with a card nobody can process.
Money & payments
The currency is the renminbi (RMB, "the people's currency"); the unit you count in is the yuan, written ¥ or CNY and spoken as kuài in…
Internet, VPN & apps
What is blocked Mainland China filters a large part of the foreign internet. As of 2026 the practical list of things that will not load on…
Trains, metros & flights
High-speed rail: the default China's high-speed network exceeds 48,000 km — more than the rest of the world combined — and it has quietly…
Accommodation
The rule nobody warns you about Chinese hotels must register every guest with the local Public Security Bureau. To register a foreign…
Health & safety
How safe is China, really Very. Violent crime against foreigners is rare, cities are extensively policed and camera-monitored, and it is…
Plan the trip
Timing, budget, route length and packing — the decisions you make before you spend anything.
First trip to China
Most people arrive in China expecting the difficulty to be cultural. It is not. Chinese cities are safe, orderly and astonishingly well…
Best time to visit
Ask when to visit China and you will be told "spring or autumn". That is correct and nearly useless, because it says nothing about the fact…
Costs & budget
Prices below are in renminbi (¥, also written CNY or RMB). The exchange rate hovers around ¥7.1 to the US dollar and ¥7.7 to the euro, but…
Packing list
The general rule: China manufactures most of the world's consumer goods and sells them to itself at low prices. Forgetting your shampoo,…
Where to go
Twenty-plus destination guides, each with a realistic number of days, the best season, and how to get to the next stop by train.
Beijing
Beijing has been the capital of China, on and off, since Kublai Khan built Dadu here in 1267. The consequence is a city planned as a…
Shanghai
Shanghai is the easiest major Chinese city for a foreign visitor: the most English, the best international food, the most walkable historic…
Xi'an
Under its Tang dynasty name of Chang'an, Xi'an was the largest city in the world — a million people inside a walled grid, the terminus of…
Chengdu
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, a city of 21 million in a fertile basin under near-permanent cloud, and the place most travellers say…
Guilin & Yangshuo
Karst is limestone that has been dissolving in rain for 300 million years, leaving behind isolated towers, sinkholes and caves. Guangxi has…
Zhangjiajie
Zhangjiajie's quartz-sandstone pillars — around 3,000 of them, some over 200 m tall — formed as water eroded a plateau along vertical…
Ready-made routes
Day-by-day itineraries built on real train times, from a one-week first trip to a three-week Silk Road run.
7 days
Seven days in China means choosing. The temptation is Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai and maybe Chengdu; the reality is that four cities in a week…
10 days
The Beijing–Xi'an–Shanghai triangle is the standard first China trip and it is standard because it works: the imperial capital, the ancient…
14 days
Fourteen days is the sweet spot for a first China trip. It absorbs a rainy day and a slow morning without wrecking the plan, and it adds…
21 days
Three weeks is where a China trip becomes a proper journey rather than a highlights reel. The route below keeps the classic four cities and…
Why China is different from anywhere else you have travelled
Most travel advice assumes three things: that your credit card works, that Google Maps knows where you are, and that English signage will save you. In mainland China, all three assumptions fail at once — and every one of them has a straightforward fix that takes ten minutes to set up before you fly.
The payment system is the clearest example. China skipped credit cards and went straight from cash to QR codes. Roughly nine in ten urban transactions now run through Alipay or WeChat Pay. Since 2023 both apps accept foreign Visa and Mastercard, which means a visitor can pay like a local — but only if the app is installed, verified with a passport and linked to a card before arrival, because the verification step can require an SMS code sent to a working number.
The internet is the second. Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X and most Western news sites are unreachable on a mainland connection. A foreign SIM roaming into China usually routes traffic back through its home network and reaches everything normally; a Chinese SIM does not. That single technical detail decides how you should handle connectivity.
The third is scale. Beijing to Guangzhou is 2,300 km — roughly Madrid to Warsaw. The high-speed rail network makes that a comfortable eight-hour ride at 350 km/h, and understanding how to book and use it is what turns a scattered list of cities into an actual route.
None of this is hard. It is just unfamiliar, and almost nothing you learned travelling elsewhere transfers directly. That is what this guide is for.