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Be at the panda base for opening or do not bother going
The pandas eat at about 8:30 and are asleep by eleven. Arrive at midday and you will queue to look at a grey lump in a tree. Book online in advance — morning slots go first — and take a taxi in time for the 7:30 opening rather than trusting a bus. Head straight for the nursery and the sub-adult enclosures while everyone else is still buying coffee, then wander the rest of the park on the way out.
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April is peony month, which means flowers and a full city
Luoyang has grown peonies for fifteen hundred years and every park is full of them for a few weeks in April — along with everyone else in Henan. Rooms double in price and the trains fill. If you want the flowers, book beds and tickets a month ahead and go on a weekday. If you want the caves and the temples in peace, come in late September or October instead: the same city, half the people, better walking weather.
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Cruise or raft, decide by how much time you want on the water
The full cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo is about four hours and covers the whole river, lunch included, booked a day ahead. The bamboo raft from Xingping covers the best forty minutes of it — the stretch on the twenty-yuan note — and can usually be arranged on the day. If you are already staying downstream, take the raft and spend the saved half day cycling. If this is your one day in the region, take the cruise and let the river do the driving.
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Do the cable car and the river views after dark, and queue on the south bank
The Yangtze cableway is a commuter line that became the ride in town, and the queue at the Jiefangbei end can run to an hour in the evening. Cross by metro or taxi and board on the **south bank** instead, then ride into the lit city rather than away from it. Same principle for Hongya Cave: look at it from the Qiansimen bridge or the opposite bank, where the whole stack is visible, instead of standing inside it in the crowd.
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Do the Terracotta Army backwards: Pit 3, Pit 2, then Pit 1
Everyone walks straight into Pit 1, the big one, and everyone is standing three deep at the rail. Start with the small pits instead: they are quieter, the explanations make sense there, and by the time you reach Pit 1 the first coach loads have moved on. Tickets are real-name and sell out in the holidays, so book online before you travel. Take the audio guide or a guide at the gate — without one it is a lot of soldiers and very little story. Go for opening; the site is an hour east of the city.
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Give Kunming two days on the way west, not a stopover of two hours
Most people treat the Spring City as a transfer to Dali and Lijiang. It repays a day or two: Green Lake with its Siberian gulls in winter, the university lanes off Wenlin Street, the Yuantong Temple under its cliff, and weather that never gets extreme. Trains to Dali take about two hours and Lijiang about three, and they leave from two stations — **Kunming** in the city and **Kunming South** far out on metro line 1. Check which one is on your ticket the day before, not on the morning.
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Give Yungang half a day, and start at the far end of the cliff
Fifty-three caves, fifty thousand figures, cut in the fifth century when Indian and Central Asian styles were becoming Chinese. The famous seated Buddha of Cave 20 sits in the open air; the painted caves either side of it are what people remember. Buses run from the city, sixteen kilometres east. Walk to the far end first and work back — everyone starts at the near caves and bunches there — and bring a torch for the dim interiors, or use a phone screen rather than a flash.
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Hunan Museum tickets go a week ahead and vanish at weekends
Lady Dai, buried in 168 BC and unwrapped in 1972, is the reason to come, along with the silks, lacquer and the painted banner from the same tomb. Entry is free, real-name, released about a week in advance on the official account, and gone quickly for weekend slots. The museum closes on Mondays. Book the moment your dates are fixed. Allow two hours minimum, and read up on Mawangdui first — the labelling assumes you know why any of it matters.
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Kumbum early in the morning, when the pilgrims outnumber the visitors
One of the six great Gelug monasteries sits 25 kilometres south-west of the city, at Lushar. Buses run from the south bus station and take about an hour; go for opening, when the halls smell of butter lamps and the prostrating pilgrims are at the stupas. Dress modestly, ask before photographing anyone, and follow the walkways clockwise as everyone else does. Staying the night in Lushar buys you the monastery at dawn and a quieter dinner than the city.
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Sleep inside the walls; the town is worth the evening, not the day
Coaches from Taiyuan arrive around ten and leave by four, and between those hours the main streets are a souvenir corridor. Before and after, the lanes belong to the people who live in them. Stay in a courtyard guesthouse inside the walls — most have kang beds and a rooftop — and plan the wall walk and the quiet lanes for early morning or the hour before dark. Winter rooms can be cold in a courtyard, so ask about heating before you book.
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Sleep one night on Gulangyu and watch the day-trippers leave
Between ten and five the island's lanes are shoulder to shoulder. After the last ferries go, several hundred colonial villas, a few hundred residents and you have the place to yourselves, and it is the best evening in the city. Guesthouses are in old villas, rooms are small, and everything you bring you carry up the hill yourself. Book ahead in October and November, the best weather of the year here.
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Sort your payments and data in Shanghai before you head inland
This is the easiest city in the mainland to get set up in: staff are used to foreign cards, most counters can explain themselves in English, and there is a fallback within walking distance when something does not work. Use the first day to link a card in Alipay or WeChat Pay, add the metro QR, buy the data package you plan to use, and test all three on something small. Doing this in Shanghai takes an hour. Doing it for the first time in a small city takes a day and a lot of pointing.
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Stay a night in the old town instead of day-tripping from Shanghai
The train from Hongqiao takes 25 minutes, which is why most people come at ten and leave at six — exactly the hours the old town is busiest. A night in a guesthouse near Pingjiang Road buys you two quiet halves of the day: the canals at dusk with the lanterns on, and the gardens at opening before the first coach. Suzhou station sits on the north edge of the old town, so you can walk in with your bag.
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Walk over the 1957 bridge and take the two-yuan ferry back at dusk
The Yangtze River Bridge has a pedestrian deck the whole way across, and the walk gives you both banks, the river traffic and the Yellow Crane Tower on its hill. Come back on the Wuhan Guandu ferry instead of the metro: it costs a couple of yuan, runs constantly between Wuchang and Hankou, and at sunset it is the best-value view in central China. Boats fill on summer evenings, so let one go and stand at the rail on the next.
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Stay in the Former French Concession and give the Bund one evening
The skyline is worth an hour at dusk, and hotels beside it charge for the privilege of being there. The city you will actually enjoy walking is the Concession: plane trees, lane houses, coffee, and a metro station every few blocks. Base yourself around Wukang Road or Jing'an, walk to the Bund after dinner, cross the river for the reverse view, and come back. Zhujiajiao and Suzhou both work as half-day escapes from the same base.
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Tiger Leaping Gorge is a two-day walk, not an afternoon photo stop
Coach tours take you to the viewing platform by the road, where you look at a river between two very large mountains for twenty minutes. The reason to come is the **high trail** above it: about two days, with guesthouses along the way to break the walk. Store your main bag in Lijiang, take a small one, start early, and book a bed in advance at one of the halfway guesthouses in season. Do not walk it in heavy rain — parts of the path are exposed and rockfall is real.
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Two stations, and the fast one is not the near one
**Pingyao Ancient City** takes the high-speed trains — about half an hour from Taiyuan, three hours from Xi'an, four from Beijing — and is a short taxi from the walls. The old **Pingyao** station is nearer the gate but serves slow trains only. Book the high-speed leg ahead in season and tell your guesthouse which station you are arriving at; most will send someone, because taxi drivers at the ancient-city station are not always keen on a five-minute fare.
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Walk the West Lake causeways at dawn, then again at dusk
Between about nine and five the causeways belong to tour groups with flags. Before and after, they belong to people swimming, running and practising the erhu badly. Walk the Su and Bai causeways early, take the middle of the day for the hills or a museum, and come back for the light on the water in the evening. The lake loop is flat enough to cycle, and shared bikes sit at every corner of it.
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Zhangjiajie is not a day trip from Changsha — give it two nights
The sandstone pillars are three hours west, the park is huge, and the Bailong lift and cable cars are separate tickets from the entry pass, which is real-name and valid for several days. Sleep in Wulingyuan at the park gate rather than in Zhangjiajie city, go up on the first shuttle, and keep the crowded viewpoints for the late afternoon when the coaches have gone. Fog is common; two days gives the weather a second chance.
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Welcome to China Unhurried, and why it exists
If you are reading this, you are probably thinking about a trip to China. Or you have just landed and something is not working. Either way, welcome. This is the first post on the site, so it seems right to say what the place is for. ## The trouble is rarely the country Ask people what went wrong on their first visit to China and the answers are strangely alike. It is almost never the sights, the food or the people. It is the small practical things, and they tend to arrive all at once on day one. * **The wallet.** China runs on Alipay and WeChat Pay. Cash works in theory, but the taxi driver, the noodle shop and the metro gate all expect a phone. If you did not set a wallet up before you flew, the first hour is a scramble. * **The internet.** Google, WhatsApp, Instagram and a good part of the web do not load on Chinese networks. The maps you rely on at home go blank. People discover this at the airport, which is the worst possible place. * **The hotel.** Not every hotel is allowed to take foreign guests, and the booking site does not always tell you. Being turned away at midnight is a rite of passage nobody needs. * **The train.** High-speed rail is the best way to see the country. Buying a ticket with a foreign passport used to be an ordeal, and although it is easier now, the steps are still not obvious. * **The language.** Little English is spoken outside big hotels. That is fine, and part of the charm, but you need a couple of tools and a way to show an address to a driver. * **The rules.** Visa-free entry has been extended to a long list of countries, then changed, then changed again. A blog post from two years ago may be confidently wrong. None of this is hard once you know. All of it is hard when you find out on the spot. ## Why we made this Most of what you find online about visiting China is one of three things: a list of ten places you must see, a forum thread from 2019, or a sales page. The practical answers exist, but they are scattered, dated, and written for people who already know the vocabulary. We wanted one place that does the boring parts properly. Six guides cover what actually trips people up: [visas and entry](/guides/visas-and-entry), [paying](/guides/paying-in-china), [staying online](/guides/staying-online), [getting around](/guides/getting-around), [where to stay](/guides/where-to-stay) and [getting by in Chinese](/guides/getting-by-in-chinese). Every guide shows the month it was last checked, because on this subject a stale answer is worse than none. When something changes, we say so at the top, not in a footnote. Then there are the cities. Every place on the site carries its Chinese name, and every city page has a card in large characters that you can hold up to a taxi driver. The site is independent: no tourism board, no agency, no commissions. We recommend an app because it works, and we will tell you when it stops working. ## Why "unhurried" Because the usual itinerary is part of the problem. Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai in eight days is a lot of railway stations and not much China. Pick fewer cities. Stay a third night. Order the second pot of tea. The country is kindest to people who slow down, and slowing down happens to be cheaper too. ## What we would like from you A site like this is only as good as the reports coming back from the road. If a guide worked for you, say so at the bottom of the page. If something has changed, say that even more loudly. Ask a question in the community and someone who was there last week will probably answer. If you were there last week, please be that someone. And if you know which dates you will be in a city, mark them. You might find company for dinner. That is all. Take China slowly. We are glad you are here.