<p>I feel like I need to start thinking about my China visit now that I know when D HS class of 2012 will begin college. Unfortunately the school she picked is the one with the latest start date. She doesn’t leave till late September. I had planned on going to China mid Sept. Now I think we will have to go early Sept and be back in time to take her to college. I am thinking we will leave Aug 30. It will probably be hotter then I would like but we have to work with the dates we have available.
China is not on my bucket list but D1 will be working there and we would like to visit her. </p>
<p>Tentative plan is to fly into Shanghai,take the train to Nanjing. Spend several days with D. Aside from that I don’t have a clue as to what we should do. I would like to go back to Nanjing at the end of our stay to see D again. That would leave us about 10 days to see other parts of China. Less if we go to Hong Kong.
Shanghai How many days?
Other areas that look interesting to me from looking through a guidebook-
Yangshuo
Suzhou
Hangzhou
Beijing
We aren’t tour people and usually travel independently. How hard will this be (absolutely no knowledge of language)?
Would love feedback on these places and places to stay.
Favorite airline to China?
Thanks in advance</p>
<p>You’d better off join a tour if you don’t have knowledge of the language. Talk to a travel agent to see which tour would be most interest to you. The best airline to fly in Asia supposed to be the Singapore Airline, but since I don’t know where you live and your travel style, cannot be sure what to recommend. I always take the cheapest I can find and don’t care which Airline I take.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend Beijing for more than a couple days. Seeing the Olympic stadium and the Great Wall was cool, but after about 2 days I had a nonstop headache from all the smog and pollution. Southern China was much more pleasant - more humid, but less of a headache. But I didn’t visit any other cities besides Beijing, so maybe they are all like that. Something to think about.</p>
<p>I would suggest you fly to Hong Kong by Cathay Pacific. I always feel Cathay Pacific/Dragon air have better service/more on time than any domestic Chinese airlines.</p>
<p>You may have some language problems if you dont join any tour in smaller Chinese cities like Yangshuo, Hangzhou. Beijing, Shanghai maybe slightly better. You will not have any problem if you are visiting Hong Kong.</p>
<p>The places I recommend to go are:
Hangzhou (beautiful Westlake), stay in any good hotels within short walking distance to Westlake (it is hard to get taxi sometime)
Beijing (great wall, Forbidden City, etc) (better take a local tour for easy commune)
Yangshuo </p>
<p>We did Beijing a few years ago for a week and it was great. We signed up for local tours only of Great Wall. Everything else we took a cab. The hotel gave us the tourist stops written in Chinese for drivers which made everything easy. Favorite place was Summer Palace. </p>
<p>for ppl have no knowledge in language in China, you’d better off hire a car with a driver from the hotel front desk than call a taxi to diy sightseeing. If you catch a cab on the road, they might over charge you or take you for a ride and you don’t even know it.</p>
<p>Join a tour is the best way for the first time tourist, however, you should reframe form buying any expensive souvenirs from the “stores” that the guide took you to, they are rip offs. Because the guide get a commission from what your purchase. You will find those “stores” have everything a tourist wants to buy and they have clerks following you every step of the way.</p>
<p>Agree about finding a guide to help you navigate around. Very few people speak English in China, although most street signs are written in Chinese and English. It didn’t help! You night be able to find a college student who would be wiling to show you around. We found the young people were eager and loved to ‘show off’ their language skills.</p>
<p>Just give you an example of my shopping experience in China</p>
<p>If you don’t know, Anhwei produces one of the best Chinese Writing Brush in the world. So when I was there, I told my guide I want to buy some for my Mom, so he took me to this huge store that has everything in Chinese writing instruments. When I first walked in, I notice that we were the only customer in the store, but I bushed it off, thought it was a weekday. The price of individual items in that store could run from $10US to 1000’s. I picked some cheaper varieties and dropped around $50 in that store. Well, I later discovered that I could buy those in specialty stores on the street, without the guide accompany, for $5 (they look the same)… Also, I was offered in the store some Chinese writing paper for $10 and we stopped by a wholesale store afterwards, bought twice as much for $3 or some.</p>
Also, I was offered in the store some Chinese writing paper for $10 and we stopped by a wholesale store afterwards, bought twice as much for $3 or some.</p>