Travelling

There are three main times for foreign teachers to travel during their year in China; the National Holiday (first week of October) the Spring Festival (four weeks of January and February) and during the summer after the term ends. Of these holidays the National Holiday as well as the Spring Festival are incredibly busy, though in slightly different ways. The National Holiday is a popular time for Chinese people to go travelling so you will find that not only are the planes and trains sold out early but also wherever you go will be rammed with tourists – it is not the most fun time to travel. The Spring Festival sees an even higher movement of people, though this is mostly before the Spring Festival, so during the holiday itself travel is not that difficult. The Spring Festival sees most Chinese people return to their home towns which leaves the big cities somewhat empty, so visiting tourist attractions is quite easy. The other thing to remember when travelling is that China is a huge country so the weather varies quite a lot depending where you want to go; in the Spring Festival for example Kunming can be an airy 20 degrees, whilst Harbin sits uncomfortable low at -20 degrees.

Flying within China is fairly easy, though the price of flights can be variable. Trains are generally a cheaper and easier option though for some routes the savings made are probably not worth it (Twenty hour journey with a standing ticket….I don’t think so). Train tickets can be bought at any train station though you will also find train ticket offices spread throughout the city where tickets can be bought. Some hostels may also offer to buy train tickets for you, though they may add an extra charge for this (if you don’t speak Chinese this might be the simplest option though). Tickets can only be bought 10 days in advance of travel, and for peak periods this will mean lengthy queues outside the ticket offices. When buying tickets you will need your passport with you as well as the passport number for any other people you are buying tickets for as this number will be printed on your ticket. Buying train tickets can be a bit of a pain as there may be more than one class of train going on a given route as well as a number of different seat classes for you to choose from – spending a bit of time researching the relevant terms in Chinese before buying your ticket is definitely worth it.

Booking accommodation in China is as easy as anywhere else. There are plenty of hostels in the big cities for which sites such as hostelworld and hostelbookers are quite useful. Agoda is also quite a good website for booking hotels and has a very broad range of hotels to choose from. Hostels can be a good choice for many travellers as there will typically be many other foreign tourists there so meeting new people is easy. As well as this, these hostels will have English speaking staff who can help arrange day trips for you as well as buying train tickets etc. As big as China is, when you are on the tourist route it actually seems to contract. Many people go to the same cities (Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Xi’an) and stay in a small handful of hostels. Once travelling with my sisters in Xi’an we got friendly with quite a large group of foreigners and had several nights out together. After going off on our separate ways we then saw six of them again in four different cities (it was getting slightly embarrassing by the end).

As far as planning your trip there is no shortage of information from brochures and books to guides and blogs. What I would say though is that when you have settled on where you want to go and what you want to see, getting the names of those places in Chinese characters can be a good idea (showing taxi drivers pinyin usually does not get you anywhere). Arriving in a city only to be unable to tell the taxi driver the location of your hotel is no fun. There are now some apps that can help with getting around. Taxi-Book is one such which has directories for a number of cities in China containing all manner of bars, hotels, cafes, restaurants and attractions coupled with written directions in Chinese characters.

Whilst China can be a difficult place to get around if you do not speak Chinese, this is usually not too bad in tourist areas and as long as you plan your trip properly you should not have a problem.