China

China… the Red Dragon, this was by far the most surprising country for us. We had plenty of thoughts on the country prior to visiting but we weren’t sure what it would really be like until we landed. Originally, we planned on staying here for 7 days. We wanted to fly in, see the Great Wall for the bucket list, try some food, and move on. But after all the effort and costs of getting our visas, we felt like we should spend a little more time and make it worth the trouble. So we added on a couple of weeks and a few additional cities. Then, after we arrived, we decided to push it out even further. What started as a week ended up being a month and a half, and honestly, we could have done more.

First Impressions

The first thing we noticed was the airport, obviously. It was massive and very impressive. We made sure our eSims worked, and more importantly, we grabbed a matcha to make sure the payment apps AliPay and WeChat were working correctly. (If you don’t know, these are the only way to purchase anything, cash and credit cards are virtually useless here). The apps worked without issue, we found our train, and headed off to our hotel.

The train ride was our first real insight and it was interesting… there were security guards walking around very seriously. Passengers were silent and sitting properly on the train. It felt a little intimidating, actually. I couldn’t help but wonder if things were going to be as rigid and authoritarian as I had always heard about.

We got to the city and quickly found things here were pretty much the opposite!

As we started to explore, we noticed nothing but carefree people all around. Families taking kids to the park to play in the middle of the day, old ladies dancing to music, and hacky sack circles forming randomly. There were scooters flying down the sidewalks, people going out for a run in their work pants, and people spitting and farting in public without a care in the world. It wasn’t rigid at all and people here seemed happy, almost child-like, and certainly free from embarrassment. It was fun to see and brought a lot of laughter while we explored the cities.

Another thing we noticed was the hospitality. Everyone was really happy we were there. People went out of their way to say hello, make our stay better, they offered food for us to try, and each hotel gave us gifts and toys after our stay. Kids would come up to us constantly, bashfully saying hi and asking for a picture with us. The language barrier didn’t slow them down either. Everyone was happy to jump on a translate app and try to talk with you.

Our first mission when we arrived was to get a coat. We’d just come from the Dubai heat but now it was November in Beijing and we had to layer up quick. We went to the closest place we could find, which turned out to be our introduction to China malls! I am not sure why we’ve never heard anyone talk about these before, but they blow every other country’s malls out of the water. They are clean, orderly, massive, and full of random stuff you’d never think of. They’ve got western brands you’d see at home mixed with their own local stores. Each mall’s lowest floor was always a grocery store and the top 1-2 floors are packed with great restaurants. These weren’t ‘food court’ restaurants either, some of the best places we ate in China were in a mall. We enjoyed the malls so much, we started picking hotels based on close mall proximity.

Another big surprise was coffee. You know by now we are pretty snobby with coffee and I fully expected we would just make coffee in the hotel while here. But the coffee scene here was nuts. They had tons of third-wave shops with drinks you’ve never even thought of. Cheese lattes, sparkling coconut Americanos, yuzu lemonade with espresso, and “dirty” coffees. Dirty coffees were essentially lattes or mochas where they pour hot espresso into very cold cream without mixing, so as you sip the temperature and flavor changes. It’s hard to explain but we loved them and started getting them all the time here. Every shop did things their own way which made each morning more exciting not knowing exactly what to expect when you ordered your drink. 

Finding these good coffee shops and restaurants was a challenge though. Our normal ‘research’ tools like Google Maps and Instagram were blocked by “the great firewall”. To even use our social media we had to install VPNs to get around it, allegedly (in case the CCP is reading this). However, the system they had instead was impressive. Literally everything is run on one big app, WeChat. You could order food, hail a ride, message the hotel front desk, and scan into the metro. Anything you can think of can be done on this app. It was really cool to use and we will miss how seamless everything was here.

Food

Food here was a big learning curve, it’s a skill we had to develop. The first time we sat down at a restaurant we realized things were going to be tricky. When you translate menus from Chinese to English it only gives you a rough idea of what the dish actually is. A menu item might translate to something like “noodles with spicy meat paste.” That could mean a lot of things, but you just have to order it and hope the meat and the spice turn out to be something you like.

Sometimes you walk into a place, see the food at the counter, and just point, which seems easier, but even that wasn’t foolproof. One morning I pointed at what I thought was a normal croissant. It looked like all the other ones I’ve had in my life, then I took a bite and discovered it was filled with cheesy rice. These surprises weren’t always a bad thing, but regardless, food ordering here was always a gamble.

Another part of the challenge was all the types of food they eat. I tend to think we’re more adventurous than the average person. (I ate spicy rabbit head and we had our fair share of century eggs.) But we would translate a lot of the menu only to find things like “spicy soft-shell turtle” or something called “baby fish”. Then you search "baby fish China food" only to find out it’s what they call braised salamander. So like I said, food was a gamble. That “noodles with spicy meat paste” now seems like a much safer bet.

Also, everything we thought Chinese food was back home is a lie. Fried rice is completely different, if you can even find it. There’s no orange chicken, no egg rolls, and no fortune cookies. I guess Panda Express couldn’t get braised salamander to turn a profit.

In all honesty, we enjoyed so much of the food in China and at first the food gambles were kind of fun. Every meal was a surprise and it was funny to see what the other person had to eat. Some things were amazing and some got instantly spit in the napkin. But after a month or so, the gamble game got a little old, and we started trying to find as many western spots as we could. It was nice to sit down and order something and confidently know what will show up on your table.

Cost

China was super affordable. We could both eat pretty easily for under $10. Metro rides were about 30 cents. DiDi (Uber in China) was often less than $2. We even stayed in a hotel for $25 a night. The flight over might cost a lot but once you get here you can live like a king. We ended up splurging on a week at the Four Seasons in Beijing which cost less than a Radisson back at home.

Not everything was cheap, though. Anything “western” was actually pretty expensive. Lululemon, McDonald’s, and any American or European brand was a lot pricier than you find somewhere else.

Even so, the “western” brands were super popular here, even ones we didn’t know existed. For example, FILA, I thought had been long dead, is thriving here. Then there were brands like JEEP and Caterpillar. In the US, these companies make cars and machines. In China, they make super popular clothing.

A lot of the fashion here incorporated the English language. The shirts were pretty funny to read since a lot of the time, they didn’t even make sense. You would see a lady wearing a shirt with a flower and underneath it read “Bold Underline Text”. Or we saw one person wearing a shirt saying “your name here” or random words like “pathetic hair”. We laughed a lot but I’m sure they do too when they visit us and see the Chinese lettering tattoos.

Beijing

Beijing was the first of five cities we visited. We spent 12 days here and easily could have done more. The first few days were at the Four Seasons, like I mentioned earlier. We both needed a little time to relax and slow down after the craziness of Egypt and Dubai. So we kicked back in our Four Seasons robes and did as little as possible for the first few days. After that though, we got busy exploring and hitting all the stuff on our list.

First up was obviously the Great Wall. The star of the show. We were pretty lucky, the day we went had great visibility, so you could see the wall stretch along the mountains for miles. We visited the Mutianyu section, which is a further drive but it is less crowded, there is a toboggan coaster ride down, and randomly has old ladies selling Corona. I guess every time the wall keeps out a Mongolian, a Corona gets its lime. We loved the coaster down at the end, that alone would have been worth the drive out there.

Also on the list was the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Tiananmen Square. All of these were very surreal to see. We’ve seen these places on TV or in movies but for some reason it seemed like a place we'd never see in real life.

Thanksgiving fell while we were in Beijing. It was our first big holiday away from family. We still wanted to celebrate but turkey and mashed potatoes are not staples of the Chinese diet. So we settled for the next best thing: Peking duck. Not exactly the same but it was delicious and as close as we were going to get.

The last thing we saw was the Olympic Park. The 2008 Olympic Games were one of the most memorable for me. Most notably the greatest race in history took place here in the Water Cube—the Men’s finals 400 freestyle relay. USA!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to everything we wanted while we were here, but our time was up and we had to catch our first high-speed train to our next city.

Chengdu

Chengdu felt like a totally different place. The landscape was green with a jungle feel. The city was laid back and less polished. It is also huge and home to 20 million people, so a week didn’t let us hit everything but we had a great time wandering neighborhoods, parks, malls, and eating a lot of Sichuan food.

The people here are obsessed with giant pandas. There are panda statues, murals, and merch everywhere. Most giant pandas are native to this area, so they are very proud. We took a day trip up to the Panda Research Center north of the city center. It’s home to hundreds of pandas and some red pandas. We had a great time and left with some of the obsession too.

I mentioned the malls earlier but have to note that Chengdu took the cake for best malls. We spent a lot of time finding malls and wandering around. I know it sounds weird but if you ever visit one, you’ll understand what we are talking about.

Chengdu is probably our first city that we would come back to if we return.

Chongqing

Chongqing was a city we hadn’t heard of until we started doing research for the trip. Even though it is really close to Chengdu it was another completely different world.

It is a futuristic, hazy, neon, and dystopian city on the Yangtze River. It’s a wild place with cable cars taking you over the river, subway trains running through residential buildings, and plaza centers up 22 stories off the ground. They even let you strap up and walk around on a 1,100 ft Raffles City skyscraper. Naturally we did it, Kaitlyn loved it, and I loved when we were riding the elevator back down. The lack of waivers or safety checks made it hard for me to calmly take in the views.

This city is one of the biggest in the world. With over 30 million people and the municipality being about the same size as South Carolina. We explored as much as we could during the 4 days we were here.

Zhangjiajie

This was our first nature stop in China. Don’t get me wrong it’s still a sizable city—1.5 million people. But it felt like a small town in comparison to where we had been so far. Our main area of focus was the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. This is where they got inspiration for the movie Avatar with the skyscraper-like rock formations. We spent 3 days here walking through the pillars and seeing all the monkeys.

We also went south of the city and visited Tianmen Mountain for the Stairway to Heaven. Unfortunately, the day we picked was very cloudy and we couldn’t see six feet in front of us, literally! So we didn’t get to see the famous views but it still gave a really cool and spooky feeling walking around and exploring. The last place we hit was the 72 Strange Buildings which is something you probably have seen online and assumed it was AI. It is not AI and it’s cool but it was definitely built to lure people in to a big shopping and restaurant area. We would recommend seeing it if you go, but you don’t need more than an hour or so.

We felt very lucky in Zhangjiajie. We’ve seen videos of the massive lines and huge tourist groups here, but it actually felt very empty to us. We never waited more than a minute or two for a bus or cable car and it felt like we had the place mostly to ourselves.

Shanghai

The grand finale was Shanghai, which eased us back into “real life” again. Shanghai was really cool and brought a little more of the western world into China. If you want to visit China, want some English speakers around, and don’t want to play the food gamble, Shanghai is the move.

This was Kaitlyn’s favorite city and we actually decided to extend our stay here an additional week. That meant we would spend Christmas here. The city celebrated a lot more than we would have guessed. There were Christmas trees and lights everywhere, and all the malls and common areas were playing Christmas music.

On Christmas Eve, we found a jazz concert at the JZ Club. The main guy was a jazz musician from Spain who, at the end of the night, desperately tried to get the audience to sing along to “Feliz Navidad.” The majority of the crowd couldn’t understand him or the song, but it was really funny hearing everyone try their best for him. Not our typical holiday, but one we won’t forget any time soon.

Final Thoughts

After 41 days in China, we were certainly ready to move on to our next spot but our last night we made a pact with each other that we would visit again soon. We promised to get at least one more visit on our 10 year visa. I imagine we’ll get even more than that.

China was a massive surprise, we knew it would be different but neither of us expected to thoroughly enjoy it as much as we did. Sure, there were tough days but the country felt joyful and fun and gave us tons of surprises along the way. (And no, I haven’t been brainwashed into a pro-CCP propaganda machine. Or have we?…)

Visiting here felt very authentic, there were not many tourists. If you found any at all, they were Chinese visiting from other areas. It felt like we got to see daily life without it being a curated experience for tourists, like you get in so many other popular countries. The irony is, every city we go to is full of cheap “Made in China” souvenirs. So when you come here you are finally getting a locally made product to take home with you!

We left with a ton of stories and memories. When we get home, I think China will be one of our most talked about parts of the trip.

Until next time, we are on to Japan!