China Travels 2026
There’s a lot said about China these days, so I figured it’d be a good idea to see for myself. And so I went to see Tier 1-3 cities across the country: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Mianyang & Shenzhen.
Beijing
Beijing, like Moscow, has this mixture of wide streets and larger-than-life housing blocks which tells visitors immediately that this is a seat of authority. It was the first city of our trip and it hit doubly hard because we just weren’t used to China scale yet.
Everything’s enormous: you’re spotting a nice location for eating that looks close on the map, but low and behold it’s a 35-minute Didi (the Chinese equivalent to Uber) ride.
We did some of the typical tourist stuff and, on our incoming leg, also booked a hotel from an international chain located inside the very centre of the city, which was nice for settling in. On our return leg though, we spent two more days in Beijing and stayed on the northeastern edge of Chaoyang district and just roamed parks and the neighbourhood, which is what I’d recommend if you want a more laid-back and authentic experience.
Funnily enough, I liked Beijing cuisine the most (yes, even more than Sìchuān cuisine): I just feel like the overall palette is closer to (my admittedly narrow) European sensibilities: more wheat, more meat than in the other Chinese cities I’ve been to.
My culinary highlights included Peking Duck of course, but also a breakfast buffet at a chain called Congee Mood with cabbage eggs, dumplings and a sourdough stick.
Breakfast – many locals order while they’re in the subway via WeChat and then just pick it up.
Beijing has many pedestrian bridges crossing its plentiful 3-8 lane roads.
Chinese cars are interestingly often sold within shopping malls and flagship stores of e.g. Huawei or Xiaomi. Quite different from the car dealership-centric model in Europe.
We arrived right after the Chinese New Year celebrations, so Beijing was still full of festive decoration.
Shanghai
A city that speaks money: sure, you’ve got your typical tourist highlights like the Bund, and of course, the colonial history, with its leftovers like the French quarter.
But what makes Shanghai stand out for me is how commercial and international it is: Pudong (which is barely 40 years old), and its massive skyscrapers, brandishing logos of banks, tech and insurance companies. Obscenely large malls. Fabric markets where locals haggle with tourists.
It’s quite clear that Shanghai is one of the places to be inside China if you want push your career, especially if you work in finance or tech. As a tourist, there’s plenty to see, but since it’s also clearly one of the most tourist-heavy cities in China, I was happy when we moved on to Sìchuān.
My Shanghai highlights – none of them too original, but enjoyable nevertheless:
- The South Bund fabric market, where you can get tailored clothing at fair prices and great quality (turnaround times are less than a week).
- Walking around in Pudong.
- A guided tour around the French quarter, learning about food and the history of the Bund.
- Atour Hotels (a Chinese chain): clean, modern with fantastic self-service laundry amenities.
Off we went in a sleeper train to Chengdu. Not surprisingly, the compartment was very clean, with a particular favorite of mine being the color-coded slippers staff handed out (so you can’t mix them up with other passenger’s).
Shanghai Pudong – it’s hard to put the sheer scale of it all into pictures.
Shanghai is a shopper’s paradise. It’s hard to walk around and not somehow end up in yet another giant mall.
If you look for it, you can still see traces of the “old” Shanghai, from a time before the glass domes and clean skyscrapers.
Chengdu & Mianyang
Mianyang was my favorite stop of the whole trip. Originally, I intended to stay around 3 days in Chengdu and then check out Chonqing, but I liked Mianyang so much that I shortened my stay in Chengdu and skipped Chongqing altogether.
Mianyang is much more laid back than the Tier 1 cities I visited before. With around 4 milliion residents, it’s a somewhat small town for Chinese standards. As a European, I needed that breather, and I enjoyed the Mianyang lifestyle: talking walks in beautiful parks and residential areas, drinking tea, eating hot pot.
If you ever visit China, I strongly encourage you to take one or two steps off the beaten path and plan for a stop in a city like Mianyang.
Of course, I had to see pandas. Mianyang panda zoo – less touristy and cheaper than the one in Chengdu. And also, more modern (I think it’s barely a year old).
Smartphone usage is even more pronounced than in Europe.
Shenzhen
YouTube videos often portray Shenzhen as this super futuristic cyperpunk city, with drones flying about everywhere, robots greeting you at every corner etc.
And make no mistake, it is a very future-bound city. But it’s not entirely accurate to portray Shenzhen like that: robots, drones and electric cars are maybe slightly more plentiful than in Shanghai e.g., but nowhere near ubiquitous, except of course for electric cars.
It’s also fairly reductive – Shenzhen is a fascinating city, full of hustle and also just a very liveable city.
Shenzen grew into a megapolis since the turn of the millenium. And as such, it’s a case study for urban planning: traffic flows (mostly) smoothly, there’s green space everywhere and the public infrastructure is on par (and newer) with Shanghai’s, which is now my gold standard for public infrastructure.
Shenzhen train station. Note the greenery in the background.
But fundamentally, it’s just a very modern, green and liveable city
Hints for Future Fellow Travellers
- Set up WeChat and Alipay before the trip, both have built-in translation overlays which will help you to navigate China stress-free. Also, since they’re are essentially a bank, shopping platform, messenger all rolled into one, they take some time to set up.
- Revolut eSIM worked flawlessly and was cheaper than some of the (heavily advertised) eSIMs like Airalo.
- Use WeChat for hotel bookings, prices and selection are often (much) better than on international platforms since many hotel chains cater to domestic tourists only.
General Observations
I’ll leave out politics here and focus on my experience as a visitor from Europe.
- The infrastructure is truly next-level: going with a high-speed train (HSR/Gāotiě/高)铁) from Shenzhen to Beijing takes less than 8 hours. That’s around 2.000km, about the same distance as Milan to Stockholm. Same applies for the subway system (Shanghai e.g. shows you an accurate second-counter for when the next train will arrive), and public restrooms (clean, plentiful).
- There’s a strong sense of safety in cities. People would just leave their suitcases in the waiting hall when going to the restrooms. And after a while, I did the same. I also remember the expansion push of various Chinese bike-sharing brands into Europe and the endless mass of vandalized bikes this resulted in. But looking at Chinese cities, I understand why this concept works here. The idea of someone in Shenzhen trashing a rental bike is quite far-fetched.
- Average cleanliness and hygiene in Chinese cities are (much) higher than in cities like Berlin: it’s a focus in Chinese culture and there’s plenty of cheap labour available to make sure everything’s squeaky clean.
- That said, people spit on the street – a lot. It’s a thing and the first few days I was taken aback by it. It puzzled me so much that I looked it up and apparently it’s rooted in TCM and especially the older generation believes that slime/spit wants to leave the body, so they will proudly and loudly expel it any time, any place.
- Many cities aren’t particularly walkable – because they’re huge, but also because the chance that a delivery scooter will overrun you if you’re not careful is not zero.
- English signage is plentiful, but it’s still quite hard to find Chinese service staff able to converse in English with you fluently, even in larger cities and international hotels. Have a translation app ready (or learn some basic phrases in Mandarin).
- The country runs on WeChat. This is great for travellers actually, because you can almost always check through a (machine-translated) menu on WeChat and order right from within the mini app of the respective restaurant.
- Shopping is better than anywhere I’ve been so far. China is a much more mercantile nation than I expected. Malls are full of hyper-competitive local brands in addition to all of the international brands visitors from Europe would be used to. The choice and selection was often simply exhausting.
- Chinese parks are so good they could charge entry. They’re large, clean and often have elaborate manufactured landscapes plus many options for sport and family entertainment.
- Chinese cities are generally quite green, especially Shenzhen. There’s a visible push by the municipalities to increase the ratio of parks, trees inside streets etc.
- Animal treatment is poor and heartbreaking to see sometimes. Live fish in supermarkets inside tiny cages, animals at pet stores and pet cafe’s also in tiny cages, etc.
- Farming and agriculture is largely done manually. As much automation as you see in cities, on the countryside it’s the inverse. You see many people plowing the fields by hand.
- I expected to notice pollution, but especially in coastal cities it was really a non-issue.
- China is a very large, homogenous country. Relative to it’s size, it doesn’t have many immigrants or tourists. As a consequence, expect to stick out, especially in Tier 3 cities. People are generally curious and friendly though.
Verdict
I’d absolutely visit China again, it’s an underrated tourist destination: cheap, easy entry (there’s a 30-day visa-free entry for many countries), hospitable (deeply engrained in Chinese culture), and you can traverse the country and its many world-class cities in reliable, fast trains.