--- title: "Top 10 Things To Do in China (City Guides) Wimup" description: "Browse Wimup's Top 10 guides across China, Shanghai, Hong Kong and more cities, mapped and filmed. When to go, how to get around, and where to start." url: https://wimup.com/country/china type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-05 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Top 10s across China A country the size of a continent, with two special administrative regions that keep their own currencies, visas and rules. China holds **desert, subtropics and megacity inside one set of borders**, and a rail network that makes crossing it a question of hours. ## Quick answer A first trip runs **Beijing** to **Xi'an** to **Shanghai**: the Forbidden City and a wall section outside town, the Terracotta Army, then the modern half on the Huangpu. That is a week, with a few hours of train between legs. Add **Chengdu** for Sichuan food and the panda base, **Guilin** for the karst rivers, or **Yunnan** for Lijiang and the mountains behind it. **Hong Kong** runs on its own visa rules and makes an easy first or last stop. Plan around **April, May, September and October**. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Apr · May · Oct - **Ideal length:** 12–18 days - **Budget per day:** $60–180 - **Language:** Mandarin - **Getting around:** High-speed rail & metros - **2** City guides - **1,404,890,000** People - **56** Ethnic groups China is too big to see in one trip, so most itineraries pick two or three bases and let the high-speed trains do the joining. Beijing and Xi'an hold the imperial half of the story, Shanghai and the Yangtze delta the modern one, and Chengdu opens the southwest. Hong Kong is the softest landing of all: separate immigration, English on every sign, and the rest of the Pearl River Delta an hour away by train. ## 2 China city guides 1. [Shanghai](https://wimup.com/city/shanghai.md): Asia · 10 picks 2. [Hong Kong](https://wimup.com/city/hong-kong.md): Asia · 10 picks ## Know before you go - **Population:** 1,404,890,000 - **Area:** 9,600,000 km² - **Density:** 146.3 / km² - **Capital:** Beijing - **Major cities:** Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Renminbi (¥) The yuan is the unit, the renminbi is the currency, and both names get used for the same money. Hong Kong keeps the Hong Kong dollar and Macau the pataca, so moving between them means changing money. - **Language:** Mandarin Mandarin is the national language, written in simplified characters. Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau speak Cantonese, the last two in traditional script. English is thin beyond hotels and transport. - **Calling code:** +86 Hong Kong dials +852 and Macau +853, and calls between them and the mainland count as international. - **Power:** 220V · Type A, C & I - **Emergency:** 110 police · 119 fire · 120 ambulance All three are free to call. 110 is the number to start with if you are unsure which service you need. - **Visa:** Visa-free for many nationalities Dozens of nationalities enter visa-free for up to 30 days, and a transit exemption allows up to 240 hours via many ports. Both lists change, so check before booking. Hong Kong and Macau differ. - **Registration:** Within 24 hours of arrival A hotel files your accommodation registration for you at check-in. Staying in a private flat means going to the local police station and doing it yourself within a day. It is free either way. - **Payments:** Alipay & WeChat Pay Almost everything is paid by QR code. Both apps take international cards after a passport check, so set them up the week before you fly. Cash is legal tender and accepted, just slow. - **Internet:** Plan around the blocks Many foreign sites and apps are blocked on mainland networks, though not in Hong Kong or Macau. International roaming gets around it for most visitors. Sort maps, mail and messaging before you go. - **Getting around:** High-speed rail & metros The high-speed network is the world's largest and beats flying on legs under about five hours. Book on the railway's 12306 app with a passport and an international card. The passport opens the gate. - **Tipping:** Not customary Tipping is not expected on the mainland and is sometimes refused outright. Hong Kong and Macau restaurants tend to add a service charge instead. - **Weather:** Continental to subtropical The north freezes from December and bakes in July. The Yangtze cities are humid all summer. The south is subtropical, with a typhoon season running through late summer. - **National holidays:** Avoid the first week of October The National Day holiday moves hundreds of millions of people at once, and the Spring Festival in late January or February does the same. Trains, tickets and hotels sell out well ahead of both. - **Ethnic groups:** 56 recognised The Han majority and 55 recognised minorities. The southwest and the northwest are where that shows most plainly, in language, food and architecture. ## When to visit - **Jan** - **Feb** (peak) - **Mar** (good) - **Apr** (best) - **May** (best) - **Jun** (good) - **Jul** - **Aug** - **Sep** (best) - **Oct** (peak) - **Nov** (good) - **Dec** ## Fun fact China spans five geographic time zones and runs all of them on a single official clock, UTC+8. In the far west that means the sun can come up after 10am. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** China is one cuisine **Reality:** There are eight great regional traditions with little in common. Sichuan builds on the numbing tingle of its peppercorn, Cantonese cooking chases freshness and steam, the northwest runs on wheat, lamb and cumin, and Shanghai sweetens nearly everything. One dish in two provinces is two meals. - **Myth:** You need a group tour and a visa booked months ahead **Reality:** Independent travel is straightforward now. Dozens of nationalities enter visa-free for short stays, transit exemptions cover a long list of ports, and the high-speed network makes a self-planned route simpler than a coach itinerary. Check the current list before you count on it, because it moves. - **Myth:** Nothing works without Mandarin **Reality:** Signs on the metro, the trains and the motorways are bilingual, translation apps handle menus and taxi drivers, and the whole payment layer is a QR code. The gap is conversation, not logistics. - **Myth:** It is all megacities and grey sky **Reality:** The cities are enormous and the air has improved a great deal. Beyond them sit the karst rivers at Guilin, the Tibetan plateau, the desert edge at Kashgar and the terraced hills of Yunnan, which is most of what people come home talking about. - **Myth:** Bring plenty of cash **Reality:** China skipped the card era. Almost everything is a QR code, and Alipay and WeChat Pay both take international cards after a passport check. Set that up before you fly. Cash still works, it is simply slower than everyone around you. - **Myth:** The Great Wall is one wall **Reality:** It is many walls, built and rebuilt by different dynasties across centuries and running in parallel in places. The first full archaeological survey, published in 2012, counted 21,196.18 kilometres of walls, trenches and fortresses. The restored sections near Beijing are a few hours of that. - Hand over anything that matters with both hands: a business card, a passport, a gift. One hand reads as careless. - Never stand chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. That is what incense does at a funeral. - At a toast, ganbei means the glass goes down empty. Lowering your rim below the other person's is the polite move, and declining is fine if you say so early. - Avoid public confrontation. Raising your voice loses the room here, and a calm question gets further than being loudly right. - Tipping is not expected on the mainland and is sometimes refused. Hong Kong and Macau usually add a service charge instead. - Carry your passport. It is needed for train tickets, hotel check-in, museum entry and the security gate at the station. - A hotel registers your stay with the police for you. A private flat means doing it yourself, at the local station, within a day. - Do not photograph military sites, border posts or police. The rule is enforced and the sign is not always there. - Shoes come off at the door of a home, and the slippers you are handed are meant to go on. - Numbers carry weight: eight is lucky, four sounds like the word for death. It shows up in floor numbers, phone numbers and prices. ## Famous Chinese faces - **Confucius**: The philosopher of family, duty and government, around 500 BCE, still shaping the region - **Zhang Yimou**: Director of Raise the Red Lantern and Hero, and of two Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies - **Yao Ming**: Houston Rockets center and Hall of Famer, who opened the NBA to China - **Bruce Lee**: Hong Kong's martial artist and actor, and the reason kung fu cinema travelled - **Mo Yan**: Novelist of Red Sorghum, the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - **Tu Youyou**: Chemist who found artemisinin, winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - **Ai Weiwei**: Artist whose Sunflower Seeds filled the Tate's Turbine Hall. Consultant on the Bird's Nest - **Lang Lang**: Concert pianist, and the performer who put the classical piano on Chinese television - **Qin Shi Huang**: First emperor, who unified China in 221 BCE and was buried with the Terracotta Army - **Wu Zetian**: The only woman to rule China as emperor in her own right, in the Tang dynasty - **Zheng He**: Ming admiral whose treasure fleets reached East Africa decades before the European voyages - **Sun Yat-sen**: Led the movement that ended two thousand years of imperial rule in 1911 - **Deng Xiaoping**: Opened the economy from 1978 and turned Shenzhen from a county town into a megacity - **Wong Kar-wai**: Hong Kong director of In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express - **Gong Li**: Star of Farewell My Concubine and Raise the Red Lantern, the face of the Fifth Generation - **Jackie Chan**: Hong Kong's stunt comedian, who took his own falls for four decades - **Maggie Cheung**: Actress of In the Mood for Love, and the first Asian winner of Best Actress at Cannes - **Zhang Ziyi**: Star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, the 2000s crossover - **Faye Wong**: Singer whose Cantopop and Mandopop records defined the 1990s across the region - **Cui Jian**: The father of Chinese rock, and the voice behind Nothing to My Name - **Tan Dun**: Composer who won an Oscar for the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon score - **I. M. Pei**: Architect of the Louvre Pyramid and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong - **Wang Shu**: First Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Prize, building with salvaged brick and tile - **Qi Baishi**: Painter of shrimp, insects and ordinary things, the best-known ink brush of his century - **Lu Xun**: The founder of modern Chinese literature, and the author of A Madman's Diary - **Cao Xueqin**: Wrote Dream of the Red Chamber, the novel every other Chinese novel is measured against - **Liu Cixin**: Author of The Three-Body Problem, the first Asian winner of the Hugo for best novel - **Yang Zhenning**: Physicist, and a Nobel laureate in 1957 for the work on parity violation - **Qian Xuesen**: The engineer who founded China's rocket and space programme - **Zhang Heng**: Han dynasty astronomer who built the first seismoscope, in the second century - **Li Na**: The first Asian player to win a Grand Slam singles title, at the French Open in 2011 - **Su Bingtian**: Sprinter, and the first Chinese man to reach an Olympic 100 metres final - **Zheng Qinwen**: Olympic singles tennis champion in Paris in 2024 ## Must-try Chinese food - **Peking duck**: Roasted until the skin shatters, carved at the table, rolled in pancakes with scallion. - **Xiaolongbao**: Shanghai's soup dumplings, pleated and steamed, with broth that burns if you rush. - **Mapo tofu**: Sichuan's benchmark: soft tofu, minced beef, broad bean paste and numbing peppercorn. - **Kung pao chicken**: Diced chicken, dried chillies and peanuts, with sweet and sour behind the heat. - **Hot pot**: A pot of stock mid-table and an hour of cooking your own. Chongqing's is red and brutal. - **Hongshao rou**: Pork belly red-braised in soy, sugar and rice wine until the cubes turn glossy. - **Lanzhou lamian**: Noodles hand-pulled to order and dropped into clear beef broth with chilli oil. - **Jianbing**: The breakfast crepe: batter, a cracked egg, sauce, herbs and a crisp cracker folded in. - **Roujiamo**: Xi'an's flatbread sandwich of slow-stewed pork or cumin lamb. Older than the burger. - **Chuan'r**: Lamb skewers with cumin and chilli, grilled on the pavement and counted by the stick. - **Shengjian bao**: Pan-fried pork buns with a crisp base and a scalding centre, sold by the tray in Shanghai. - **Stinky tofu**: Fermented, then deep fried. The smell arrives first, and the taste is milder. - **Dim sum**: Small plates over tea: har gow, siu mai, cheung fun, and a table held for two hours. - **Char siu**: Pork shoulder lacquered with honey and maltose, roasted dark, sliced over rice. - **Wonton noodles**: Springy noodles and prawn wontons in a dried-flounder broth. A Hong Kong lunch. - **Egg tart**: Custard in flaky or shortcrust pastry from the bakery counter. Best warm. - **Chongqing xiaomian**: Breakfast noodles under chilli oil, sesame paste and Sichuan pepper. Ask for less heat. - **Dapanji**: Xinjiang's big plate chicken with potato and pepper, belt noodles laid in at the end. - **Crossing-the-bridge noodles**: Yunnan's ritual bowl: a film of hot oil keeps the broth scalding as you add the rest. - **Cumin lamb**: Northwestern lamb seared hard with cumin, chilli and coriander. Now in every province. - **Tanghulu**: Hawthorn berries on a stick under a shell of set sugar, sharp underneath the sweetness. - **Douhua**: Silken tofu pudding, sweet with syrup in the south, with soy and chilli in the north. - **Mooncake**: Dense pastry of lotus seed paste and salted yolk, given at the mid-autumn festival. - **Longjing tea**: Pan-fired green tea from the hills west of Hangzhou, flat leaves and a chestnut sweetness. - **Baijiu**: Sorghum spirit, strong and floral, poured at every toast whether or not you asked for it. - **Doujiang**: Hot soy milk at breakfast, sweet or salty, with a fried dough stick to dip into it. ## FAQs ### Do I need a visa for China? Often not. China runs a unilateral visa-free scheme for ordinary passport holders from dozens of countries, currently for stays of up to 30 days, plus a separate transit exemption covering a long list of entry ports. The lists have changed repeatedly, so confirm yours with the National Immigration Administration before booking. Hong Kong and Macau have their own rules and are entered separately. ### How many days do you need in China? Twelve to eighteen for a first trip. Beijing and Xi'an take four or five days between them, Shanghai another two or three, and the rest goes to one region past the obvious: Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi or the northwest. A week covers two cities and the train between them, and nothing more. ### Can I pay with my own bank card? Rarely, and you will rarely need to. Almost everything is paid by QR code through Alipay or WeChat Pay, and both now accept international cards after a passport check. Set the app up before you fly. Cash remains legal tender everywhere, so it works as a fallback. ### Is it hard to travel without Mandarin? Less than people expect. Metro, rail and road signage is bilingual, high-speed trains announce stops in English, and translation apps handle menus and drivers. What you lose is conversation, not the ability to get from one city to the next. ### When is the best time to visit China? April, May, September and October. Spring and autumn are dry and mild across most of the country. Avoid the first week of October and the Spring Festival in late January or February, when the whole country travels at once. July and August are hot, wet and thick with school holidays. ## Related countries - [Japan](https://wimup.com/country/japan.md) - [India](https://wimup.com/country/india.md) - [All of Asia](https://wimup.com/asia) Part of [Asia](https://wimup.com/asia.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://www.mct.gov.cn/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://en.nia.gov.cn/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Registration](https://en.nia.gov.cn/n147423/n147478/n147715/c158241/content.html?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.