I work in elder care and have an old Chinese client. She and her daughter love to give me food. I like Chinese food but many times the food they offer is types I am not a fan of (bean pastries, je. I don't want to be disrespectful but both are very insistent that I eat what they give me.

I don't eat what my client gives me unless it's prepackaged because she tends to leave food out (it's easier to refuse her because she will get distracted and forget she gave me things so I can put it away when she's not looking) But her daughter will bring in fresh food from restruants or markets and offer it to me.

I've tried insisting I just ate or am going to eat soon, or that I'm on a diet or even that I don't like it but they still insist. I get nauseous eating many of the foods and it ruins my appetite for the rest of the day on occasion.

The client is a first generation immigrant and her daughter born here but studied in China, so both are very cultural in how they offer and make food. I know they are doing it to show they care but it's still uncomfortable.

I don't want to be rude but I also don't like feeling pressured to eat things. Any advice is appreciated.

Hey y'all,

I'm from the Philippines with a Filipino passport, and given what's happening in the West Philippine Sea / South China Sea, I'm pretty much on my country's side. Whatever your opinion may be on the matter (if any), I regularly defend the Philippines' sovereign rights in its EEZ online, even calling out state-sponsored social media accounts that push the narrative that we should just let it happen or go as far as to insult us. So if you can't tell, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the CCP.

BUT I LOVE Chinese culture and history!

I've always wanted to go there, visit multiple cities and provinces, enjoy the delicious food, and meet the people there. I'm even studying Mandarin and have Chinese friends, including folks I met online. I genuinely have no issues with Chinese people and Chinese culture in general (I even admire their infrastructure for the most part... and their trains!), my criticism is directed at the CCP and its policies, especially towards my country.

That said, I'm wondering: given my opinion on the CCP, if I plan on applying for a visa to travel to China in the future, is there a high likelihood they'll just reject it 'cause of this?

Thanks in advance guys!

Hello,
I'm a Westerner but I engage in Chinese spaces from time to time relating to technology and software for other perspectives and assistance. However, some of the sites I want to explore require you to have a Chinese email (qq.com, 163, yeah.net, etc) to use them. I've tried to sign up to no avail - they require Chinese phone numbers and using ones from SMS rental sites don't seem to work, either. I really just want an email from China. Any help?

Does the website/connection/latency handle users in China well or much better to live in North America?

I'm wondering if for example the connection is good enough / won't be too laggy a connection from a town in China to a US east coast student

I wonder because the website looks kind of old. But it seems like recently they added Chinese as an on-demand teaching subject (meaning you don't have to schedule a time, you just wait until a student shows up)

Pretty sure its minimum wage pay for the USA (a bit confused, that seems to vary by state), not sure if you have to sign up while within the USA or not? Do you need a USA social security number/tax ID number to sign up on tutor dot com?

Anyone tried this?

How hard was it to pass their online test to qualify to be a tutor?

If you ask the exact same question on Alibaba's Qwen or Tencent Yuanbao on your laptop browser versus on the phone app, you would probably assume you are talking to the same AI searching the same internet.

A recent study tested that across 614 Chinese questions on China's four biggest AI assistants, which are DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent Yuanbao. They ran every question three times on both the web browser and the mobile app, checking 160,860 source links.

It turns out the phone app and the web browser on the exact same AI barely even use the same websites:

A few other things from the study stood out:

• On Alibaba's Qwen, 64.2% of identical questions did not share a single web link between the laptop browser and the phone app.
• Even when a company or product was mentioned inside the web pages the AI pulled up, the AI still left 91.7% of those brands out of its written answer.
• On DeepSeek and Yuanbao, which show little footnote numbers in the text, 39.3% of the links listed at the bottom of the screen were never actually used in a single sentence.
• About 13% of the brands the AI recommended were not in the cited web pages at all. The authors note their scraper only read the main text of pages and skipped pop-ups and page code, so some of those names could be hiding in page metadata rather than coming purely from the AI's memory.

On Chinese AI apps, the web browser gives you a research tool while the mobile app can quietly turn into a walled-garden shopping mall.

The study is called "What Do Chinese-Language Generative Search Engines Cite and Surface? A Large-Scale Empirical Study" (arXiv:2607.15771) by Tao Zhen, Yue Liu, Gege Zhang and Yixuan Niu, submitted July 17, 2026.

For anyone using DeepSeek, Doubao, Qwen or Yuanbao in China, have you noticed the mobile apps pushing you into their own shopping and content ecosystems much harder than the web versions, and which one do you actually trust right now??

Hi, I am new in China and looking for a good manicure place. Anyone can recommend a good salon with high hygiene standards in Dunhuang, Lanzhou or Beijing?

Thank you!

Context 

This Document is Written from a Canadian specifically Calgarian perspective, not all of what I talk about will be relevant to everybody. When I went to China I had many unanswered questions and found it hard to find information about particular things. I wanted to create this as a reference for someone who wants to travel to China. 

Before You Land

Flying to China 

When flying to China we flew on Air Canada, then transferred to Air China. Flying on a Western airline to China is worth it if you care about being certain of seat selection and other information. Although the flight we took with AirChina was outstanding, with food on a 1:30min flight and plenty of leg room. If you do book through Star Alliance with a connection to AirChina any additional information will be difficult to find, to do seat selection we had to use Live Chat on the Air China website through Google Translate. 

Your Name in China

Using your Name in China will be more difficult then you expect for local apps, Western Names often do not work properly on domestic services, generally you will need to play around with the order that you put your name, First, Middle, Last does not always work, for example when ordering food to your seat on the High Speed Train required First, Last, then Middle names. The best way to circumvent this is to use Alipay sign in for things.

Your Passport in China

In China you may be shocked by the amount of times that you need to use your passport, it will be required for everything online, from renting bikes, to booking trains. It is also required in person when getting entrance tickets to parks etc. In addition to the necessity of the passport it is required that you carry it on your person at all times by law. 

Your Privacy in China

In China no where you go and nothing you do in public spaces is not on surveillance. You are being watched. All you need to do is to keep politics out of your Trip.

Your Phone in China

Important Apps

This is going to be a long section because in China your phone is your most important asset, without it and a decent understanding of how to use it, you will be stranded, without money, communication, travel, food and everything else. The first thing you need to do is download Alipay, Wechat, Amap and Trip.com. Starting with Alipay, you need to download this app before you leave for China, as you will need your Western Phone Number to Sign up, Make sure that you Upload your Passport, Verify with your face, Link your western Credit/Debit Cards. These are all extremely important to do because without them your experience in China will be severely limited. Next Wechat, I found while I was there I used We-Chat less then Alipay but if I did not have it it would still be limiting, so follow the same steps with We-Chat as Alipay. Next Amap is an amazing navigation app for transit and biking. Once you have signed in make sure to switch it to English in the settings. Finally Trip.com this app allows you to have a fully English interface to book tours, buses and trains, this is just like a normal travel app it just works in China. 

Data Plans (E-Sim)

Data Plans, When you travel to China one of the most important things is Phone Data, without it you will not be able to function or talk to loved ones, when we visited (July 2026) One of us used a Rogers Roam Like home plan and the other used a Holafly Plan, the Rogers Plan worked flawlessly the entire trip, allowing us to both use Chinese apps and Western apps like Whatsapp and Google Translate, the Holafly sim was less good for the first 3-days of the trip, one of our phones barely functioned, then after spending 1hr on support with Holafly they gave me a new sim that worked perfectly the rest of the time, so I can not recommend Holafly. In addition to data, some make the choice to use a VPN to access their home countries' internet no matter where the E-Sim route their data. Some options include Surfshark and Nord. Keep in mind that using a VPN with local Chinese internet does not always work and should not be relied on. Often online there are conversations about the necessity of a Local phone number, we found that while this can sometimes be an issue it is usually solvable with some creative button mashing, and not worth the risk of putting a Chinese sim in your phone. 

Powerbanks 

If you travel to China in the summer it will be hot and your phone will drain 4x faster than it does at home, to mitigate this make sure you get a powerbank for your phone, when you fly in China you need a CCC certified powerbank, you can either buy one locally, we found an Anchor travel unit with the logo in a BestBuy at home the other option is you can buy any powerbank once you land in China from Xiaomi or other trusted local brands, neither is an incorrect approach if you want better value buy one while in China and if you care about the certainty of having one buy one at home. Also before we Left Home, Air Canada Emailed us a link to a declaration website to declare items. 

High Speed Trains 

This Heading applies both in and out of China, while some attempt to use the 12306 (Offical Website) website to book we just used Trip.com and paid the fee, it worked perfectly every time and the booking fee is 100% worth it. After you have booked your ticket there is the station experience, when traveling on Trains in China you do not need a ticket your Passport is your ticket, try to arrive 30mins to 45 mins early or even earlier to large stations if you do not want to cut it close, once you arrive just look at the departure boards (they flip between English and Chinese) find the gate on your app and pass through the manual channel, where a person will scan your passport and you can go through. Each train carriage has a number on it that will correspond with your Trip.com app information so find your seats. In our experience the upgrade to First Class is not worth it because the Second class train cars are extremely comfortable and in some ways better, because you can walk up and down the trains to get a movement break. For food on the train you can either buy from the dining car which had decent food for ok prices or you can struggle through ordering food to your seat, to do this open your alipay, click the scan button then scan the QR code find the station you want tap on that then tap order food pick your food and navigate to the payment screen, once on the screen you will be asked for you name, try multiple configurations, if it asks you for your western phone number try putting it in as many ways as you can eventually it might work. If all of this feels daunting I encourage you to give it a try. High Speed trains are an amazing experience and one that everyone who travels there should experience. 

Booking a Hotel 

When booking a Hotel in China we stuck to trusted western brands like Holiday Inn, to book a hotel, the platform we used was Booking.com but we do not recommend it, becuase for our side trips we used trip.com to book the hotels and they generally had better deals, therefore we recommend booking with them. Everything will be fairly normal when booking hotels, if you are staying in a major city smoking will likely be banned in all rooms, but if you are in a smaller city they will likely have both smoking and non smoking rooms so make sure you book what you need. When we were in our main Hotel in Beijing we ate everyday at the included breakfast buffet which was a great way to have breakfast quickly and start exploring. 

Warning 

If you are the type of traveler who prefers to have a slower, more relaxed trip, self guiding in China may not be right for you, there are lots of unknown things and it does take effort to have a great time. 

When you Arrive In China 

Stepping of the Plane

When you first step off the Plane follow signs to either connections or to exit, you do not need to scan your fingerprint at the self service stations, becuase they will scan your fingerprints again anyways, just go towards the immigration desk and enter into the general channel, once you are through follow the normal transiting procedure. 

Transportation to the Hotel (Beijing) 

Transport to the Hotel can be a difficult experience, because it is your first time navigating in China. Most major Airports have a metro connection and a rideshare zone, do whatever you would prefer. If you are taking a car, (we did not use any taxis while we were their so can not comment on them), but we did take DIDI (Chinese Uber) to take a DIDI follow signs to Rideshare Zone and Open your Alipay app, then navigate to the mini app area where you will see the DIDI icon, sign in with your Alipay and immediately go to settings and change the app to English mode, DIDI is one of the only chinese apps that has an excellent full English experience, you will need to communicate through text with your driver where in the garage you are which can be difficult. When you program in the destination of your Hotel, assuming you booked a Western brand it should show up easily and you can navigate there. Next if you Wish to take the Metro to your Hotel you should open the Amap app and put in your hotels name in English, again if you booked a Western hotel you will have no issues finding it, tap the transit icon and click on the metro option, when you get to the station look for ticket machines, they have an English button at the bottom look at what the final stop you are getting off at is, tap that stop and buy your ticket you can pay with Alipay Wechat or Credit card. It will give you a plastic card for a ticket, tap it on the top of the fair gate then follow Amap directions until your station. When you get off at your desired stop, insert the ticket into the slot on the front of the fair gate and exit the station. There are multiple exits for each station check within the Amap navigation. It will tell you which exit is the best one, follow that because sometimes the nearest crosswalk is far away. After you have exited the subway station, just walk to your hotel. 

Public Transit

In my experience (Beijing, Shanghai, Datong) in the two big cities, public transit was incredible, it can take you from wherever you are to wherever you need to be, just open Amap app and use that to navigate. While the ticket machine is simple to use it is not time efficient, for this reason we recommend getting the transit card for the region you are in, to get one just open the Alipay app navigate to the transportation tab and get a transit card. Once you have got the card it will show up as a QR code in the transportation section, to use  it walk up to fare gate position your phone in front of the scanner and scan in, then when you are leaving the metro in any station scan again and it will calculate the price, this means you can change your plans of where you want to get off while on the train. When riding the bus make sure to scan on and scan off, you will need to get a separate transit card for this which is available in the same section. With my extremely limited experience, in the small city of Datong, transit was not as viable, so we took DIDIs

DIDI

DIDI is essentially Uber for China except it is reliable and affordable, to access it open Alipay and then open the DIDI Mini-App, and go to settings and change it to English. From there the app is very intuitive, basically just Uber. A small warning, some DIDI drivers will cover up the seat belt plug, because I did not feel comfortable with this I did put on my seatbelt. 

Money In China

To purchase things in China, the easiest way and cheapest is Ali-pay, make sure that you link your credit card. When you pay with Alipay using a foreign credit card , under a particular limit there is no foreign transaction fee. To pay, just show the vendor the QR code and they will scan it. But for some smaller vendors they will have you use the QR scanner, and it will bring up a pay amount just type in the amount and pay. Another cool feature that is available on Alipay is payment passwords, you can set a code so when you pay you must type it in. 

QR Codes in China

In China most things you do will be through QR codes. To use them, open your Alipay app and click in the top left corner and open the scan tab, this will bring up a camera feed and you can hover over any QR code and it will open the relevant Mini app or link. 

Restaurants in China 

Just eat wherever looks tasty, almost everything will be affordable and very good.

Washrooms in China  

In China, public washrooms in Beijing and Shanghai are near basically every destination, in our experience they have both western toilets and squat ones. They are almost always clean and well stocked with soap and other products.

Air Quality

The air quality in Beijing, and Shanghai when we were there was excellent, clean air. We felt comfortable hiking and biking around. Although we can not speak for other parts of the country, on the train when the doors opened in Nanjing the air that came in smelled absolutely horrific. You may still need to be careful of where you travel outside of the Beijing or Shanghai concerning air quality.

Shoes in China 

Depending on how busy you like to have vacations, you will probably walk anywhere from 8 000-30 000 steps a day, so make sure to pack very comfortable shoes for walking. 

Booking things in China 

A lot of the time you will find very limited information on Google, and Chinese search apps, in this case the best ways to find reviews ect. is a We-chat Mini app called Dieanping, on which you can search for all sorts of things, reviews etc. Because this app is Chinese it does not have English, to fix this on We-Chat tap on the top right of the screen on the three dots menu and click translate this will translate it to English, then to search, take whatever you want to search and put it through Google Translate, and then paste the result into the search bar, this is best way to find out if something actually exists and if it good. After you have decided what you want to do there is a few options of Booking that activity, the one that we found worked the best way just use Trip.com, yes the price is inflated and does cost more then if you just bought it direct but often that is not an option, because many things require real name verification that is almost impossible to navigate with an English name and passport. It can be better to book on Trip, the other option is asking someone at the front desk to help you book things, since they can navigate Chinese apps and are familiar with western tourists they can help you. 

The Great Wall of China 

The best thing that we did on our trip and one of the highlights of my life, is going to the great wall of China, you may have already googled about the great wall and found that the Badaling section with a direct high speed rail connection, while you may want to go here, (we did not) we heard reports that it was extremely busy and not that fun. Instead the best thing to do is to go on Trip.com or Booking etc (We used Trip) and book a Shuttle Bus+Ticket combo for the Jinshanling Great Wall, our bus left from the Dongzhim bus station and took us directly to the great wall in about 2.5 hours. When you get to the station go in through any of the entrances to the bus terminal on the first floor. It is entirely buses on that floor, then find the Beijing tourist information booth and they will check your name. (unless the details have changed) The bus ride was absolutely beautiful and a nice way to see the country. If you are going to take anything from this document I think you should go on this daytrip, it is worth it. We almost had the wall to ourselves, I managed to get multiple photos without any other tourists, a rarity in China. A small warning must be included, on our way back from the Great Wall the bus pulled off the highway at a security checkpoint and we had exit the vehicle to pass through metal detectors,  they also took our passports and made sure all travel documents were good, and we were through in a short amount of time, even considering this I believe that the experience is one of the best things you can do while in China. 

Weekends

A small warning, in China everything is always busy and if you think weekday crowds are busy the weekends are insane, everything is constantly packed. Another small piece of information, one thing we noticed is when you go to places that are extremely cool, the main attraction is unbelievably busy but the small side rooms or other areas are empty, so I encourage you once you have seen the main sights go and explore around. 

Random Malls

One of the best ways to cool off or to have lunch was to stop in a random mall, wherever you are chances are there is a mall close to you that will be airconditioned and have an amazing food court so try it out. 

Safety

From a violence perspective China is very safe, you will never feel like you might be in danger, we walked around in the dark at 10pm and never once felt unsafe. If the 80 year old grandma feels safe exercising at night you will feel safe walking, we also saw lots of kids and solo travels out and about late into the evening.

Tiananmen Square General Advice

Visiting Tiananmen Square is a must see part of your trip, it is an awesome place to see in person, the best way to get to it and to visit the national museum of China, is to buy access to the national museum. We purchased our tickets through Trip Advisor but you can get them anywhere, they will email you a link to the tickets before you visit. To access the museum, get off of Metro Line 1 at the Tiananmen square stop and follow signs to the National Museum, make sure that you are in line 1hr before the museum opens. Do not visit on a weekend, it will be terrible. Once you are in the museum B-line for the basement exhibits, they are some of the best exhibits in the museum and have a massive line in the afternoon, once you have finished those exhibits explore the museum to your hearts content, the museum has a small cafeteria but nothing significant, so you may want to bring a lunch (we saw lots of people eating lunch while sitting on the stairs) once you are done the museum you will exit into the Tiananmen Square secure area, where you can explore the entire square. At this time it is a great opportunity to visit the Forbidden city, to get tickets the easiest way is to purchase an English language tour on Trip.com. To access the forbidden city there are multiple underpasses to get under the road and stay in the secure area. If you have some time to kill, a park with direct access from the secure area is one of the only places in China that feels truly secluded. If you are facing the Mao Zedong portrait,  to the right of the main entry is a small side gate, where you can pay an almost meaningless fee for access to a beautiful park in central Beijing. Enjoy your time there and when it is time to leave, make your way towards the exit and you will find a large open plaza where your tour guide will meet you. They will have a flag with their colour and logo and check you off from the list. Once you enter the City you can either stay with the tour or split off and go and explore by yourself, this worked for us and we were able to get same day tickets to the forbidden city this way. After you exit the forbidden city there will be a large amount of tourist buses, (we did not ride one so we do not know if they are a scam or not) then it is a small walk to the nearest metro station to get where you are going. Finally as far as we can tell there are no actual tourist ticket booths available at any attractions in China, and the best way to book is outlined above.

Weather 

We visited China in mid July to early August, it was very HOT (for a Canadian living in Calgary) but the thing that really gets you is the humidity (for context Calgary is usually between 10-40% in the summer) you will be constantly sweating so bring white shirts, dont bother with a rain jacket if you are limited for space because you will be thankful for the rain, or if it really starts going down just take a break in a mall. Instead it is very important to bring an umbrella, we and everyone else used to constantly create a little shade as well as when it rains. Another thing you will notice is airdrying clothing in your hotel room will probably not work due to the humidity so make sure that your hotel has a washing room if you do not have enough clothes for every day of the trip. For Beijing, all of those things made the outdoors barely tolerable for extended periods of time, Shanghai is a different story. I could not tolerate outside for more than 1hr at a time, so make sure that you are prepared for the heat if you are coming in the summer. Due to weather my Iphone (15 Pro Max) got incredibly hot to the touch, throttled and drained battery like crazy, it also was not happy about being plugged in outside, so make sure that when you get a break to cool your phone down, take it out of its case etc, and charge it then with your powerbank. (see the section on water)

Bikes

Bikes are an amazing way to get around in China, they are extremely affordable and make it so easy to get to a metro station but they can be challenging to set up. The bike company that worked the best for us was Hello Bike (The Blue ones) to ride, scan the QR code on the bike through Alipay, then verify through real ID, in addition to this make sure that you get one of the bike discount cards, they offer great savings and make the bikes basically free. Be warned some of the bikes are not in perfect working order so you may have issues with some of them. Riding around China on a bike is mostly a very positive experience. Almost every road has a protected bike lane, but electric mopeds frequently buzzed us as we rode by. 

Renting a Car in China

Don’t
public transit and DIDI will get you anywhere.

Translate Apps

Assuming you have purchased an E-Sim and can use the western internet, the best translation app is Google Translate, it now has AI powered translation so you can hold a full conversation with someone in Chinese. You can also download the language if your phone is being finnicky. Apple translate also works ok, but lacks the more advanced features of Google Translate. Additionally often the Alipay and We-chat translation is very bad and can make navigating mini apps hard, to get around this you can either (if on a iphone 15pro or later, not sure about android) take a screenshot and when it detects Chinese translate, or get the person that you are traveling with to hold their phone above while in google translate camera mode, funny as this sounds it works very well. 

Water in China 

Almost all water that you can buy while out in the city in China will be room temperature, if like me the last thing you want as you overheat is lukewarm water, the best thing to do is bring insulated water bottles and a backpack, your hotel will give you bottled water everyday, we put that in the Mini-fridge and the next day poured it into our water bottles to drink throughout the day. In addition to this, water is not drinkable out of the tap in China. But you can get room temperature or hot clean water from free dispensers, at most major tourist sites and transport hubs.

Security In China (Mostly Beijing)

Airport style security checks are very common in China, they are found before entering most museums, before getting on the metro, the train. When going through the Metro security (when I went to Beijing) you did not have to scan your phone etc. but you did have to take off your backpack and place it in the x-ray. Sometimes they will ask you to show them your water bottle and they will use a device to scan whether it is actually water. While metro security is very fast, 1min or less, Airport/Train/Tiananmen security is more in depth, just listen to what they are saying or motioning to do.

Police in China (Mostly Beijing)

Police in Beijing were incredibly friendly and helpful to us, whenever we needed help we could approach a police officer and ask. They helped every time, so if you have questions or need help doing something, do not be afraid to ask. 

Outlet Type

China uses a mix of EU/North American Outlets, all of the hotels that we stayed in had the two pronged outlet connector for North American Charging Bricks, Just make sure that your device is compatible with 220 volts it will say on the back, for example I could not bring my electric toothbrush charger because it does not work with 220 volts. If you want peace of mind you can bring a universal power adapter, I did not need it though.   

Specific Things We Did in Beijing, Datong and Shanghai

This is by no means even close to a complete list of all of the things to do, just our experiences and things we learned that we would like to share with others. 

Beijing (10 days)

• National Museum of China
  • One of the best museums I have ever been to
  • more info is in the Tiananmen Square Section
• Riding the Metro for fun
  • Very particular interest of mine 
• 798 Art Zone (the arts district) 
  • Make sure you visit after 2:00pm most things are closed before that
• Shougang Park (a renovated industrial park)
  • Good if you have more time in Beijing
  • Has a cool temple on the Hill
• Tiananmen Square
  • More Info Above 
• Forbidden City
  • More info above
• Beijing Zoo
  • Amazing panda exhibit the rest of the zoo is quite good as well 
  • Ticket available on walkup - Through We-Chat 
• Lama Temple
  • Absolutely amazing place, just be respectful with your camera. 
  • Ticket Required but available on walk-up
• China World Mall
  • Extremely Expensive, but great if you just want a break from the heat and somewhere to walk around
• Great Wall of China (Jinshiling)
  • Highlight of the Trip more information above 
• Military Museum 
  • Tailored to a Chinese demographic almost no English translation, interesting to learn the non NATO perspective on military related things 
  • Ticket available on walkup, you need to buy the ticket from the ticket booth before getting into the entry line
•  Night Street 
  • Great way to spend an evening
• Visiting a NIO House (car dealership)
  • Great way to cool off 
  • Definity try sitting in the back seat of one of the cars it will blow your mind
• Fahai Temple (300 Year old Ming Murals Near the Olympic Grounds)
  • Definitely worth the visit and price, getting to see perfectly preserved Ming murals is simply amazing, keep in mind you can not bring any belongings into the building and there is no english guides so you will miss the context
  • Ticket Available on Walkup
• Walking the Olympic Park area grounds 
  • Applies mainly to the Summer olympic grounds as they are connected to a lovely park
  • Worth it if you have a lot of time in Beijing  
  • No ticket required
• Summer Palace
  • Great experience, you can reach it on either the Tram or Metro, you can buy tickets on the spot and they are reasonably priced
  • It is quite busy
• Capital Museum 
  • Quite good museum on Beijing History, no ticket required just Valid ID
• China Railway Museum
  • Great if you like trains 
  • Great Gifts for Train Fans
  • NO AIRCONDITIONING
  • Ticket Available on Walkup 
• Beihai Park
  • Lovely Park in Central Beijing, has one of the oldest trees still living, it was not open on the day we visited
  • Ticket Available on Walkup  
• Hutongs
  • There are many Hutongs (Historic Neighborhoods)
  • One of them is near Fahi Temple (Shijingshan)
    • Not very touristy, there are not many shops but it is still a lived in community, very interesting if you like history 
  • One of the most Touristy Hutongs is South Lugogu Lane
    • Lots of shops great place to get gifts but sometimes overwhelming  

Shanghai (1 Night Train Trip)

• The Shanghai Tower
  • Pricey but an amazing experience, extremely cool to see the whole city from the second tallest tower in the world (by tallest useable floor) 100% recommend 
• Shanghai Museum-Pudong Branch (2024)
  • Amazing Museum (In my opinion better then the National Museum of China), easily spent 8hr here saw ¾ of the exhibits but had to leave to catch the train
  • Free admission no ticket required just valid ID
  • Has multiple restaurants 
  • Great place to get gifts 
• Walk the Bund 
  • Best at night, amazing experience, about 1.5 hours
• Visit Shanghai F1 Track 
  • We visited when there was nothing open, you could not really see the track
  • Would not recommend unless you don't mind wasting a few hours to see a cool sign
• Yu Garden 
  • Absolutely amazing garden central Shanghai, we bought tickets in advance. 

Datong (1 Night Train Trip)

• Yungang Grottoes 
  • We bought Tickets in advance from Trip.com 
  • Absolutely amazing also incredibly busy
• Hanging Temples 
  • Very cool to look at
  • If you want to climb the actual temple, make sure that you are at the visitors centre by 6:00 am and get in the right line (take a photo set to long exposure then translate) to buy tickets
  • This will still not guarantee tickets 
• Mount Hengshan
  • There is a cable car to the top, I do not recommend it, it is quite expensive and if you don't mind a bit of exercise there are many cool temples on the way up to visit (including a gong that you can ring)
  • At the top they sell reasonably priced chilled Coke/Sprite 

Thanks

I wrote this document because it has most of the answers to the questions I had when traveling to China. I apologize for the length of the document, and any poor writing.

China leads in engineering, chemistry, enabling & strategic tech, and the US leads in clinical medicine. Any surprises here? And is the UK punching above or below its weight?