Preparing for China

Travel Survival in China

Preparing for China is no easy task.   No amount of preparing though would get us ‘China Smart’.  Some of the hurdles we came up against could only have been learned with ‘on the job training’. 

Beijing was to be our first ‘Port of Call’ on our month-long stay in China.  Our guided tour with Travel China Guide starts in Beijing and finished in Shanghai.  We wanted to arrive a couple of days early in Beijing to find our feet.  

Having a couple of days to wander around the immediate area and cover off some of the sights not included on our tour was the perfect way to settle in China.

Why We Decided on an Organised Tour

Guided tours aren’t really ‘our thing’.  Having worked in the tourism industry ourselves for a number of years in New Zealand, we prefer to follow our own itineraries.  More often than not, we go off the beaten tracks and try to steer clear of the crowds as much as possible.

In China, this is not always the best option.  We have been to China before (just a fleeting 4-day stopover) and we recalled that it was extremely difficult to get around on your own.

We settled on a company called Travel China Guide after reading the online reviews.  It appealed to us that they specialize in small groups and they have great flexibility with itineraries.

Upon booking, we were assigned our own personal Travel Assistant and Abby was great to deal with prior to our arrival.  Her communication was always fast and efficient.  We also used their services to book onward travel after the tour.  They have a separate division who look after train, accommodation and air travel.  It does cost you a bit more for booking fees but in China, you just don’t want anything going wrong.  It is extremely hard to fix once you are there.

Getting Connected

This is really Scotty’s domain.  He leads and I follow (hey you can’t be good at everything!!!).  Scotty has always managed to find a way to get from point A to B.  Our first priority is always to find out the best local SIM card.  It is so important to have coverage while out and about.  MapsMe is good to use offline but doesn’t always show the best directions so a backup mapping system is usually needed.

China was to test us on a whole different level when it came to connectivity.  As a foreigner, you can just walk into a shop and buy a SIM card but the language barrier can prove to be difficult and it is easy to end up with a card which isn’t the best option.

We ordered a card online from 3G Solutions which was delivered to our hotel the next morning.  This cost us $45nz for a 4g package (data only) which was to last us a month.

VPN

We always use a VPN while travelling to ensure we have a secure connection, especially when using open WiFi.  Tunnelbear has always served us well over the past 12 months.  Our relationship with Tunnelbear in China was not a successful one.

A VPN should allow you to trick the internet into thinking you are in a different country, therefore giving you access to all the sites from that country, right?  No, not always the case as we found out.  

Our next hurdle to get sorted was trying to get access to our e-mails.  Some of our devices allowed us into xtra sometimes, but not all the time.  It didn’t matter if we used our iPad, tablet, Surface Pro, android or apple phones (yes we had all bases covered).  Even connecting through the xtra website did not download all our e-mails from the server.  This was challenging as a lot of information regarding onward travel and information was via e-mail. Fortunately we had taken screen shots of important information, flight confirmations etc.

Scotty went through 3G Solutions again and purchased a VPN through them.  It cost $20nz for a month.  It worked well on our mobile devices but we still had issues with our e-mail.

We ended up researching some more as our Tunnelbear subscription was due for renewal and we didn’t really want to commit to another year if it wasn’t going to ‘cut the mustard’ where ever we might be.  This is how we ended up with Express VPN.  This worked really well in China and even enabled us to get Netflix…….I know, first world problems.

What Apps Work in China

A lot of Google-based Apps don’t work – but we found Google translate does (go figure!). Also no Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, basically all the western social media apps are blocked without a good VPN.

The best map app was MapsMe. We (I really mean Scotty) downloaded the areas of China we were visiting BEFORE arriving.

The most widely used app in China is WeChat.  This can cover basically everything.  They use it instead of Facebook so all communication is done through this app.  The locals use it to pay for everything so China is definitely moving towards a moneyless society.  They even get all their wages paid into WeChat, swipe their phones and that is how you pay.  This was even on street food stalls.  For us, WeChat was the only way to communicate with everyone including hotels.  There is also the capacity to translate Chinese to English which was imperative. 

Transport

We didn’t really need to use public transport until after our tour finished in Shanghai.  That is the bonus of being looked after.

We needed to get from Shanghai to Wuxi to start our house/pet sitting assignment.  We found that there is usually a good metro App available for whatever area you are in.  I suggest that you definitely spend the time searching and downloading that App.

We found out that the central areas had English signs and even English speaking staff.  This isn’t always the case though.  More often than not, you are on your own when it comes to finding out where to go.

Taking a photo of your destination in Chinese is helpful so that you can show either a taxi driver or staff.  We found out the hard way that this doesn’t always work either.  It was quite disconcerting to have a taxi driver shouting at us in Chinese and wildly gesticulating that he was not going to take us to where we wanted to go.  The reason being, we think, is that it was because it wasn’t far enough so not worth his while taking us.  At least we think that what it was.  Not a nice feeling when you have backpacks and it is too far to walk!  It was a case of waiting for a nicer looking driver to come along.  Thankfully there was so all ended well.

Once you get the hang of the public transport, it is great to use.  We loved using the Bullet Train, even though our first experience was in the lead up to Chinese New Year.  The worst possible time for us to be travelling.  I’m sure the entire local population of Shanghai was travelling that day.  Quite daunting for a couple of forlorn Kiwi’s getting amongst thousands of Chinese locals!

Weather

I can sum it up in one sentence.  In February, IT IS COLD IN CHINA!!  

We had spent the last 15 months in summer weather.

There was the difficulty of having to purchase winter clothes in SE Asia where it very rarely gets lower than 20 degrees.  There was the added struggle of being able to fit winter clothes into our packs.

We needed warmth without the bulk and without the expense.

It was a case of layering up.  All the winter clothes I purchased were worn all at once it seemed.  I had two pairs of leggings underneath my harem pants.  I also had 5 layers on my top half.  This included an icebreaker singlet, 2 long sleeve thermals, a sweatshirt and a jacket/windbreaker.  I also had a merino head-warmer and a sarong that doubled as a scarf.  Two pairs of socks were in order and a pair of gloves.

In Beijing and Xi’an, the temperatures dropped to -10 degrees at night and we were lucky if it reached 0 degrees during the day.  There was also a wind blowing which we later found out blows in from Siberia.

I have never felt cold quite like it.  It was bone chilling and there was nothing that could block out that cold wind.  There was no snow which I think made it worse.  If it snowed, I think that it would be a dryer cold instead of the dull soul destroying dampness.

Even Scotty felt it, so I knew that it was truly cold.  He even said that it was colder than when he did two Tours of Duty in Antarctica!!

Coming to Terms with China Culture

There is certainly a different culture in China.  This may be because they are a Communist country and there are a lot of controls in place. There are armed military and police everywhere.  Cameras are placed in all public spaces so there is no doubt that big brother is watching you.

The population in China is huge.  They have a mentality that if you wait for anything, you lose.  It is true when you hear about the pushing and shoving that goes on.  There is no orderly queuing for anything.  The weakest in the pack waiting patiently will miss out.  

Our culture is always to be polite and wait your turn.  We soon found out that you need to fight fire with fire.  It went against the grain but after putting up with this type of behaviour, we managed to stand our ground and found out that it is the only way to get anywhere.  We also had the added benefit of being bigger than most of them and a couple of times some of them went flying.

We have been in many countries where English is not widely spoken.  None more so than China.  Children are taught English at school and many of them can speak it but they chose not to.  It was explained to us that they don’t want to lose face and they are often embarrassed to get it wrong.  There was definitely a reluctance with many of the people to attempt to communicate with us on any level.  This also meant that they appeared to be very unwilling to help us.  Very little effort was made to make any conversation which left us with the opinion that many of the locals were not foreigner friendly.

In Summary

To sum up our month stay in China, I would have to honest and say that our patience level was tested on a quite a few occasions.   We are always culturally sensitive when visiting foreign countries and compromises have to be made.  There is, however, a line between cultural differences and rudeness.  The line on some occasions was crossed in our opinion.  

There were some really lovely locals we stumbled across and certainly had a few laughs with each other without really knowing what the other was saying.  These fleeting moments went some way towards restoring our faith in the Chinese people.