things to know about china before going there! 🇨🇳

😋 FOOD 😋

1️⃣ When calling for the waiter/waitress, call them 服务员 (fu wu yuan)

2️⃣ 收藏 ，打卡，5星好评 - if you do this e.g. on 大众点评 for restaurants, you can likely receive something for free e.g. dessert. Check with the service crew there if they have this because usually they do!

3️⃣ Every city that you go to usually leans towards a certain direction regarding the kind of flavour/taste that they like. For example, Beijing's dishes are salty, Zhangjiajie's dishes are both salty and spicy, and Changsha's food is a little bland at times.

4️⃣ Use wechat to scan QR codes when ordering food

5️⃣ Check out 大众点评 for ratings of different food places! Note that this can be a bit of a scam sometimes because of no. 2️⃣; some of the 5 star ratings may be fake so use your own judgement to check if the reviews are real or not

6️⃣ You can't drink tap water so you'll need to get bottled water

7️⃣ Majority of the food places in China won't give you spoons and will only provide chopsticks. You'll have to ask for it e.g. 能给我个勺子(shao zi)吗

8️⃣ The fruits here are super cheap!! 🤑 Also you can pick and choose strawberries and then put them in the plastic container 😮 I've done this before at supermarkets and fruit stalls. The strawberries here are really different, they're soooo sweet and juicy!! 🍓

💰 DISCOUNTS 💰

1️⃣ Check if meituan has any coupons (卷) at the restaurant you're at. It can help to save you money!

2️⃣ Sometimes it's cheaper to book tickets for tourist attractions through the hotel 😮 This is especially for hotels that are situated near to tourist attractions e.g. if you're going to a hotel in Zhangjiajie, chances are that the hotel you've booked will have a discounted price for the attractions at zhangjiajie national forest park

3️⃣ Depending on the tourist attraction, tickets can be cheaper during low season as compared to high season

❌️ SCAMS ❌️

1️⃣ No matter how desperate you are, ‼️DO NOT‼️ get into the car of any driver who approaches you if you need to get to a destination. This applies to places such as airports, by the road, at tourist attractions etc. Some of them may be a 黑车 (idk what this is in English...scam car??). Best case scenario is that they overcharge you and some worst case scenarios are human trafficking/rape/organ donation 😱

2️⃣ Hotel staff are usually quite helpful and will recommend places to go. However, some hotels are affiliated with certain shops 🤨 so take whatever they say with a pinch of salt. For example, they may tell you that a certain restaurant is better than the rest but do your research first and check the dishes to see if they're to your liking.

🚦 TRANSPORT🚦

1️⃣ Call the driver 师傅 (shi fu)

2️⃣ Check with the hotel staff if there's free transport to the hotel. A lot of hotel staff are actually very apprehensive when they see English names because they don't know if we can speak Chinese. It's better to let them know in advance that you can speak Chinese so that it's easier for them to communicate with you.

3️⃣ Pedestrians and motorcyclists both have blatant disregard for traffic rules. It can be the red man 🛑 but pedestrians will just walk across🚶‍♀️There were also a few times where there wasn't a pedestrian crossing and the locals just walked across the road like nobody's business (and this was at a JUNCTION 😵‍💫). Motorcyclists also won't care if it's supposed to be the green man for pedestrians and will just drive across, so you have to be careful!

4️⃣ Drivers in China don't like to turn on the radio or play music and like to drive in silence 🤫

✈️ WHEN TO TRAVEL ✈️

1️⃣ Unless you want to fight with the locals for tickets to tourist attractions and be in crowded places most of the time, it's best to avoid their national holiday periods

2️⃣ Cities such as Xi'an have no low season - locals have told us that it's high season all year round! 😯

🇨🇳 CULTURE 🇨🇳

1️⃣ There's a surprisingly high number of gay and lesbian couples 🏳️‍🌈. Some are obvious, and some aren't. I've been able to spot them in every city I've been to

2️⃣ Many girls prioritise taking photos 📷 over comfort and health. I've seen girls wear heels 👠 up a mountain and some wearing short skirts in freezing temperatures ❄️ A lot of them also don't want to wear down jackets because they think that it'll look ugly in photos. I also saw this girl wear a BACKLESS top while the temp was 5°C; she kept shivering and telling her friend to hurry up and take the photo 🫠

3️⃣ 99% of the men (and some women) are addicted to smoking 🚬. Be prepared to inhale secondhand smoke everywhere, and I really mean everywhere - shopping malls, toilets, restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions etc.

4️⃣ Be prepared for men to randomly spit phlegm in public areas. I mostly see this outdoors and rarely indoors

5️⃣ Many girls wear makeup 💄 - it's a necessity for them and they don't feel comfortable if they don't have makeup on

6️⃣ Livestreaming is a thing here so be prepared to see people doing it anywhere and at any point in time

🛍 SHOPPING 🛍

1️⃣ Some things are cheaper and some aren't. Always check the price to make sure that it's not an item you could actually get for the same price in SG!

2️⃣ Not all shopping districts are created equally. For example, Hangzhou's shopping district was HUGE and took a few days to explore, while Changsha's shopping district was smaller than I expected.

🛎 HOTELS 🛎

1️⃣ Instead of calling the hotel staff via the landline if you need anything, you can just message them via wechat! They'll usually have a QR code that you can scan 👍🏻

2️⃣ Some hotels have free laundry service where they'll wash your clothes for you. You'll have to check with them on the specific details such as when they can finish washing it 🧺

3️⃣ The room layout for a lot of hotels are a bit weird in the sense that you can feel quite exposed 😅 For example, the bathtub can be smack in the middle of the room without any partition. Or there may only be 1 shared door for both the shower area and the toilet area, meaning that if 1 person is in the shower area, the other person using the toilet will be facing the room without any door in front of her 😅

🧻 TOILETS 🧻

1️⃣ ‼️Always‼️ bring tissue paper with you because most of the toilets in China don't have them! I cannot stress how important this is!!!

2️⃣ The cleanliness of toilets varies amongst cities. The toilets in Chongqing were one of the worst I've ever been to while the toilets in Hangzhou were quite clean

3️⃣ Squatting toilets - be prepared for an abundance of this!

💖 Other useful links 💖

easy guide: use alipay for bus/metro in china

detailed guide: zhangjiajie national forest park

tianmenshan guide: all you need to know

#YearEndRecap #chinatraveltips #chinatravel #TravelGuide #china