Travel tips for China

When it comes to travel, I love natural scenery, and it’s been on my radar for a while that China has some beautiful places. For an Australian, it’s relatively convenient to get to (e.g. compared to Europe), there’s a 30 day visa-free policy (at least to the end of 2025) and it’s super cheap.

But because China isn’t the most English-friendly country, among other reasons, it’s not that popular, and can be quite hard to find good information online.

I went to Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie and Yangshuo in March 2025, and so I hope my next few posts help!

Trip.com

Use trip.com. It’s the international version of Ctrip, which is Chinese. It means there’s a wider selection of accommodation options than on non-Chinese platforms.

• I read some concerns online about foreigners being turned away by some accommodation providers. We stayed in 7 different hotels/inns, and all of them accepted foreign passports.
• During March 2025 (off-peak), we paid on average 170 RMB per night for 4.5+/5 (review rated) twin bed accommodation. They weren’t luxurious, but all clean, had air con, windows, en suites and well located.

I noticed domestic flights became available for booking quite late (often just 1 month in advance), and a wider selection of flights were available on trip.com compared to non-Chinese platforms.

• Our Guilin to Xiamen flight with Xiamen Airlines was changed at least 3 times in the 1 month leading up to the flight, from the afternoon, to the morning, back to the afternoon, before it was cancelled entirely forcing a change of date! As I booked both our flights and accommodation with trip.com, the staff were very helpful over chat in arranging free cancellation of our non-refundable accommodation bookings multiple times to match our flights. I think this was an edge case, but also more likely to happen with domestic flights where schedules appear to be less rigid.

Trip.com is the easiest site for foreigners to book Chinese high speed rail tickets.

• Unfortunately, they do charge for this convenience: there’s a booking fee of $9 AUD for a $98 AUD ticket, a booking fee of $5 AUD for a $24 AUD ticket, and a booking fee of $3 AUD for a $4 AUD ticket.
• There’s also a fee for changing/rebooking your ticket.
• Primarily due to cost, I ended up booking through the official 12306 app, which I cover in the Trains section below.

You can also book tickets for attractions on trip.com! Most major attractions use your passport as your ticket.

If you’d like, here is my referral link for trip.com, which includes some referral discounts.

Payments

I did not use any cash during my trip.

I used WeChat Pay almost exclusively, except for public transport, and a single shop in Xiamen that surprisingly only accepted AliPay.

• Set it up before you go (you won’t be able to use it for payments until you’re in mainland China though). Link your credit/debit card to it, and set up real-name authentication with your passport, since it takes a few days to verify your identity before you can use the service.
• For transactions under 200 RMB, WeChat/AliPay do not charge a 3% transaction fee. Generally, shops will split larger bills into 200 RMB increments on request to help you stay under this threshold.
• AliPay has much better public transport support within China, allowing you to generate per-city QR codes which can be scanned to enter metros/buses, and for the balance to be deducted from your configured payment source, without a domestic mobile number. On WeChat, these are separate per-city mini-programs that require a domestic mobile number to register.
• WeChat and AliPay both feature translation functionality for mini-programs, and WeChat will also allow you to auto-translate any messages you receive into your preferred language.

Ride hailing

Within WeChat and AliPay, you’ll be able to access Didi, which is akin to Uber. Unlike Australia where I never take a taxi or Uber, it’s super affordable in China.

In WeChat, go to Discover –> Mini Programs, and search for Didi to find 滴滴出行. In AliPay, you can find Didi Travel. Thankfully, the rest of the interface is in English, and you’re able to confirm the fare before you request the ride.

You can also book rides in advance, which we used to book a ride the day before to the Guilin pier the following morning for our Li River cruise so we wouldn’t be late.

Trains

High speed rail is awesome in China. We only flew domestic once, because it’s so much more convenient and comfortable to take high speed rail between cities - especially if you sequence your trip well.

We found arriving at train stations ~30 minutes before departure was just the right amount of time:

• Security is quick, generally under 3 minutes
• Walking to our check-in gate could take 10 minutes for a big station
• The gates open for check-in ~10-15 minutes before departure, and close ~5 minutes before departure, after which you walk up or down a set of stairs/escalators to the platform
• There are no train tickets, your passport is the ticket. Most check-in gates at most stations do not support passports (they accept Chinese ID cards), so you need to go to the left-most or right-most gate where a passport reader is manned by staff
• Platforms are very long to cater for trains up to 16 carriages, and so it can take a few minutes to walk to your carriage (signage of where to wait is on the floor if the train hasn’t arrived yet). Whether carriage 1 or 16 is at the front of the train depends on the train, and the platform screens typically only convey which coloured carriage signs to wait behind in Chinese
• There’s plenty of luggage space in the overhead compartments (which fit up to a medium suit case of 24-28 inches), and some extra space at the end of each carriage

Here are some things to note about booking tickets:

• High speed rail tickets can only be booked 15 days in advance. Trip.com allows you to pre-book earlier, but they can only guarantee your tickets when the 15 day window is open. The international/English version of the 12306 app does not allow you to pre-book.
• March was off-peak, so we didn’t have any issues securing train tickets 2 weeks in advance, however availability is scarcer if you’re booking a day in advance.
• Trip.com and the English/international version of 12306 don’t support/show journeys with train transfers. This is unfortunate because it significantly reduces the options you have travelling between cities e.g. in early 2025 there is a single service from Zhangjiajie West to Guilin each day departing at 7:17 am, but if you transfer at Changsha South, you can depart as late as 4:52 pm with a shorter travel time (though it does cost more as you’re travelling on the faster G trains as opposed to D trains). One way to look up options is by going to ctrip.com and using Google Translate to see the transfer stations it recommends. In my opinion, some of the transfers they recommend are uncomfortably tight (as little as 10 minutes), especially for foreigners, but I think 20+ minute transfers are okay even for large stations. It took 10 minutes from getting off the train at Chengdu East to arriving at the gate for our next train, walking briskly.
• To transfer trains, there will be platform signage for “便捷换乘 Transfer” you can follow, which is different to the station exit. Here, you’ll scan your passport to re-enter the station’s main waiting area, where you can head straight to your next train’s gate without having to go through security again.
• I’d liken business class on Chinese high speed rail to business class on flights (in comfort and cost), first class on HSR to premium economy, and second class on HSR to economy. First class is in a 2-2 configuration, and second class in a 3-2 configuration. Both have ample legroom, though I found the width of second class seats to be uncomfortably cramped on the 3 side of the 3-2 (the 2 side is fine), especially for longer rides.
• Train ticket time/date and seats can be changed for free up to 48 hours before departure through 12306 or station counters - there is a limit of 1 change per booking via 12306, after which you’ll need to go to the station counter. (Trip.com charges a rebooking fee.)

I used the official 12306 China Railway app in English (which is reportably better than their website) to book my tickets to avoid trip.com’s booking fees:

• I encountered an annoying bug in their app where I couldn’t book unless I changed my phone’s time zone to Chinese time because Sydney is 3 hours ahead of China, and their 20 minute booking timeout evidently didn’t factor in time zones (so if I initated a booking at 6 pm Sydney time or 3 pm China time, it would think 6 pm > 3:20 pm and cancel it).
• There was another annoying issue where on some days, 12306 didn’t accept payment using my international credit card directly (and retries failed), but it did accept payment using my international credit card through WeChat Pay (where the 3% transaction fee was still lower than trip.com’s booking fee).
• Unfortunately, as of February 2025, if you book through trip.com or 12306’s English/international version, you don’t get to choose your seat preference. You’ll generally get adjacent seats for everyone in the booking, but you’ll most likely be assigned the 3 seats in the 3-2 configuration for second class. As of April 2025, it appears that trip.com is now supporting seat preferences.
• I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re very keen, but as I can read Chinese, after I got a domestic mobile number on arrival, I switched to the Chinese version of 12306 (which requires a domestic mobile number for real-name authentication). This meant I could change my seats for free from the 3 side of 3-2 to the 2 side for a much more comfortable ride. The Chinese version also allows you to book meals from a limited selection of vendors who operate at major stations to be delivered to your seat on the train, which was a very novel experience to try!

Internet access

To access your regular internet services (e.g. Facebook, Google), I’ve heard VPNs can be hit and miss since there seems to be some whack-a-mole going on in China. The foolproof way to maintain internet access is by getting an eSIM.

How does that work?

When a mobile service roams internationally, all the traffic tunnels back to the home country. For example, if I enabled data roaming for my Australian mobile service in China, my IP address would be Australian, I would be able to access everything I can access in Australia, but I would also go broke quite quickly because international data roaming can be expensive!

However, in the past few years, a new market for travel eSIMs has cropped up where you can install an electronic SIM into your eSIM-compatible phone before you leave your home country, purchase a relatively affordable plan for the country you’re visiting, turn on international data roaming for that specific SIM (since the “home country” depends on the travel eSIM provider’s home country), and access the internet in your destination country.

I’ve had good experience with Nomad in Singapore, Japan and China. As of April 2025, they charge $20 USD for 20 GB for 30 days on China Unicom’s network. You’ll have to activate before you land though (a mainland China-specific limitation to my knowledge). If you’d like, using promo code HENR54QD will get you 5 USD off any data plan, as well as get me 5 USD off my next data plan.

I can’t recommend any VPN services, though I managed to set up my own private Shadowsocks server which worked well for me (I was able to watch YouTube and get 121 Mbps down and 55 Mbps up through my VPN vs. 332 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up on domestic 5G).

Chinese mobile number

I got a Chinese mobile number on arrival at Chengdu Tianfu International Airport’s payment service centre (which has a 24/7 China Telecom store, and took about 15 minutes with 2 people in line at 8 am in the morning). This is because I got more spam/scam calls after using my Australian number in China in 2024, and wanted a throwaway number this time. Also, occasionally you’ll need a Chinese mobile number to register for services since they are real name authenticated, for example:

• 12306 domestic version (for additional features) doesn’t work without a linked domestic mobile number
• In a shopping centre in Guilin, there was self-service luggage storage operated through a WeChat mini-program, which required a domestic mobile number
• Amap/Gaode Maps in English required registration using a domestic mobile number if you tried to use directions as of April 2025
• The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding operates a shuttle service within the park, whose tickets are not available on trip.com, and requires a domestic IP address to access their WeChat mini-program (perhaps due to a firewall blocking international traffic e.g. international roaming)
• Meituan is a food delivery app which also requires a domestic mobile number to register, and a few hotels we stayed at had food delivery robots in the lobby to deliver food to your room!

It’s definitely not essential, but if you’ve got a good VPN, you’ll likely get more data for a lower price with a domestic SIM than a travel eSIM.

Other tidbits

• Not all public toilets will provide toilet paper. Soap is rare too. BYO toilet paper and hand sanitiser. I only needed it once, but I’m glad I had it with me the whole trip.
• Bike-sharing services are available in many cities. The easiest to hire is Hello Bike (blue), which is available without additional registration through AliPay.
• Cars can turn right even when the pedestrian light is green, and bikes and scooters will often ignore red lights. In some cities, cars will stop for pedestrians about to cross a zebra crossing, whilst in others, they will weave through. Be careful!
• KFCs will often have a “scan here to order” QR code that directs you to an app store e.g. Apple’s App Store, which won’t exist in your non-Chinese App Store. You can just search for their mini-program in WeChat or AliPay instead.