China Travel Expenses

China! Where to begin? This is my attempt to make this short, but it seems there is no end of things to talk about from our time in China. It was a challenging travel experience but rewarding and eye-opening. It was by far the most culturally different place we visited this year. 

The nine weeks we spent in China was our longest stay in any single country so far on our trip. One reason for staying so long was because our tourist visas were expensive, and we wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth. The second was that China is simply an enormous place. It’s the same size as the United States. Looking at a map we realized that a few week’s trip was only going to allow us to see a tiny part of this enormous country, so we elected to stay as long as we were allowed. We were also of the mentality that, given the distance from home, we may not make it back out here anytime soon so we might as well see as much as we could.

Waiting on a Hong Kong rooftop for our laundry to finish getting washed. Hong Kong was a blast and a great place to hang out for a week waiting for our visas to be processed, but it's so completely different from everywhere else on mainland China. It's also way more expensive. 

We traveled over 9,000 km on our trip, making a giant circular arc that started in Hong Kong and ended in Shanghai. This is about the same distance as going from New York to Los Angeles and back again. The geography of China is enormously diverse. This route took us past oceans, deserts, mountains, forests, rivers, and great plains. We also passed through many different provinces, each with their own identity, culture, and, importantly, cuisine.

Our trip around China started in (1) Hong Kong, where we applied for our tourist visas. From there we crossed the border into mainland China and stayed in (2) Guangzhou to get ourselves oriented before traveling by train to (3) Yangshuo, (4) Kunming, (5) Dali, and (6) Lijiang. We took a flight to (7) Chengdu and then set off on a trip along part of the old silk road through (8) Lanzhou, (9) Jiayuguan, and (10) Dunhuang before flying back east to (11) Xi’an. Now following the classic tourist trail we took the train through (12) Pingyao and up to (13) Beijing, where we made a stop at the Great Wall in Gubeikou. Then heading southeast, we finished our trip with a quick stop in (14) Tianjin before ending in (15) Shanghai.

Traveling in China was, at times, very difficult. The language barrier was huge. Few people spoke English and we certainly didn’t speak Chinese, even though we tried to pick up a few key words and phrases. Our inability to read characters made it much more difficult than other foreign languages that use Latin script. By the end of our trip we were recognizing many of the common Chinese characters all over the place, but it still didn’t help us read anything. We were tied to the translation apps on our phones or to playing simple games of charades with people. On the other hand, some things were surprisingly easy for us, like taking the high-speed trains, booking and checking into hotels, or using China’s Uber-like taxi hailing service called Didi. So while some things were difficult, not everything was.

A statue of Mao Zedong in Lijiang.

Another complication for us in China was the Great Firewall. There is the Internet that most of the world uses and then there is China’s Internet. Unless you read Chinese, China’s Internet is of limited use to a traveler. We got by with a VPN service, which allowed us to connect to the internet outside of China but caused everything online to be slower than it should have been. Many internet transactions, like booking a hotel room, sometimes required going on and off VPN to access the websites we wanted, either outside or inside of China.

The desert and mountains in Jiayuguan.

China was very different than what we expected, but it’s difficult to concisely describe why. The giant cities are shockingly enormous and amazingly modern. Every city has an extensive and efficient subway system, and every city is connected to every other one by China’s futuristic high-speed train network. Cash is a thing of the past. Even the smallest of transactions are done with mobile payment systems. Despite the futurism, many of China’s cities can feel a bit drab. They are efficient and well planned and orderly. There were many exceptions, but most cities have a certain look about them that we can now recognize almost instantly as being of the “modern Chinese” style. Huge ten-lane boulevards and blocks of identical high-rises are some of the cues.

A typical boulevard in Xi'an. The intersections can get a little crazy when two of these streets cross one another.

We can say that China is incredibly safe. We never once felt a need to look over our shoulder, which is a rarity in much of the world. But it also comes with a cost. It feels like someone is always watching you. Security is extremely high in all subway stations, train stations, tourist attractions, and airports. Security cameras are everywhere. It makes sure that you, along with everyone else, is on their best behavior.

We saw many Buddhist temples throughout China, but the Three Pagodas in Dali was our favorite. 

We also experienced the bizarre and fascinating. We'll characterize these observations as simple cultural differences. We wouldn’t have believed them if we hadn’t experienced them ourselves. People spit, to a seemingly excessive degree. Sneezes and coughs are never covered. Noses are cleared without the use of a tissue; the blockage is just projected out to the ground. The average sound level of communication is deafeningly high, and that’s just when someone is talking on the phone. In markets and shopping areas there is a constant barrage of advertisements being shouted from loudspeakers. People can be pushy and we were quite regularly cut in front of, especially when boarding trains and subways. No one lets you out unless you push your way out as well. Smoking is ubiquitous. Hotel rooms may be labelled non-smoking, but they smell of smoke anyway. And somewhat comically, the bathroom stalls of train stations are continually in use as people sneak one last cigarette before boarding the strictly non-smoking high-speed trains. All these things may seem jarring from our cultural perspective, but they are simply the norm in China. We, on the other hand, must have also appeared strange to them. We held many people’s stares as we walked down streets and we became the featured subjects of many photos and videos. I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

Biking around Yangshuo.

We had so many interesting experiences in China, but if we had to pick our favorites they would be biking around the karst towers of Yangshuo, visiting the Three Pagodas in Dali, exploring the deserts around Dunhuang and the fortifications of Jiayuguan, and hiking the Great Wall in Gubeikou. As an interesting point of cultural observation, we can say that many of these experiences were, perhaps, the least Chinese things we did on our trip. Many of these activities spoke to our adventurous and outdoorsy side, which did not seem to be what the typical domestic tourist was looking for. We encountered the most domestic Chinese tourists in the old towns of Dali, Lijiang, or Pingyao. Personally, we found these places a bit too crowded for our liking, but crowds are a simple fact of Chinese life. There are just so many people who live there. Excluding Hong Kong, which I loved but isn't anything like the rest of mainland China, our favorite city was perhaps Xi’an with its delicious dumplings, beer bars, and its beautiful city wall. Xi’an also had the benefit of being home to the Terracotta Warriors, which was another highlight of our trip.

Big attractions draw big crowds, like the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Expense-wise, we found China to be surprisingly affordable. We averaged $114 a day for our 64-day trip, which includes the time we spent in Hong Kong and the cost of our visas. The visas alone cost us $670, which added a per day expense of $10. Our week in Hong Kong cost us $167 per day, which was way above our average spending of $96 per day in the rest of mainland China. Our spending in China was only slightly above average for us, but I feel like we got a lot for our money. We stayed in some really nice hotels and we always had great meals. We also traveled huge distances across the country, which was fast and affordable thanks to the high-speed train network.

Accommodations: We stayed mostly in hotels plus a few guesthouses here and there. Almost all were booked through trip.com, a Chinese booking website. Most of our rooms were nicer than average. They always had hot water kettles and toiletry packages, which included a toothbrush that was replaced with a new one daily. Our only pet peeves were the see-through glass bathrooms and the fact that every hotel room smelled of cigarettes.

Transportation: We flew three times, from Bangkok to Hong Kong, Lijiang to Chengdu, and Dunhuang to Xi’an. Otherwise we took high-speed trains everywhere. City metros were very cheap (on the order of $0.50 a ride), as were taxis, which we called using an app called Didi, which is like Uber.

Restaurants: We always ate well. A nice dinner would set up back no more than $20 in most places, and oftentimes less. Restaurants could be more expensive in larger cities. Food is most often served family style, so we would usually order three dishes and split them between us. By travelling through so many different provinces we got to sample so many different cuisines. It felt like there was always something new for dinner.

Drinks: We drank copious amounts of tea everywhere we went. Unfortunately, most coffee we came across was instant, so it was always a treat to order a real cappuccino on occasion. Beer was very inexpensive, but Travis was generally dissatisfied with the low alcohol content (usually 2-4%). I became rather fond of it as I could enjoy a beer or two without feeling like I really had that much. I think most of this money was spent at the craft beer bars in Beijing and Shanghai, where prices were similar to home, if not higher.

Other: Our two 10-year multiple entry visas cost $670. We also included a cost of $102 in this category for our cancelled travel arrangements to Xinjiang Province. Otherwise this category includes a SIM card, multiple loads of laundry, and other various small expenses.

Tourism: We visited many museums and tourist attractions along the way. Many tourist attractions can be surprisingly expensive. It wasn’t uncommon for a ticket to something to cost just as much as our hotel room did for the night.

Grocery: The only place we cooked our own meals was in Hong Kong to try and save some money. Otherwise, we’d use the grocery store to pick up snacks and instant noodles to take onto the train during travel days.

China was a whole new experience for us. We were nervous at first because we felt like we were traveling into the unknown. We had so little idea of what to expect. But now that our trip is over, China feels a lot less mysterious and a lot more familiar. There are still so many places we never made it to, but I think we did a pretty good job of catching the highlights. If we made it back to China one day, we'd be unlikely to visit the same places we saw on this trip. We'd prefer to see other parts of the country that we haven't yet seen. We would also try to brush up on our Chinese a bit more, which would make things easier. It would be fascinating to return years later from now with everything changing so fast. New apartments, train lines, and cities seemed to be appearing out of nowhere all over the country. Our guidebook was only a year old and practically useless when it came to certain things, so I imagine that even if we repeated our same trip a decade from now, it would be a whole different experience.