China is not difficult. It is just specific. The metro wants a QR code, the restaurant wants a different QR code, the train station wants your passport at a gate twenty metres before the platform. None of it is hard once someone shows you, and all of it is exhausting at 7 pm after a twelve-hour flight.
That is the job we give your guide on day one: set up the phone, walk you through the first payment, teach you the three characters that get you a table. By the second morning you are ordering breakfast by yourself and wondering why you were nervous.
Every day here is a suggestion. Your guide rewrites it with you the evening before — that is the whole point of travelling privately.
Arrive, sleep, then the Forbidden City at opening time and a hutong lunch your guide has eaten at since primary school. Day three: Mutianyu Great Wall at dawn, cable car up, toboggan down, back in the city for a late lunch.
Morning high-speed train to Xi’an, 4.5 hours, second class is fine. Afternoon on the City Wall by bike; evening in the Muslim Quarter eating lamb skewers standing up.
Terracotta Army at 8:30, before the coaches. Then the Shaanxi History Museum with someone who can read the bronze inscriptions, and a noodle-making hour in a family kitchen.
Fly or take the 6-hour train. The Bund at 6 am, French Concession lanes at 10, Yu Garden at closing time when the light goes gold. One day out to Suzhou gardens by car.
Whatever you missed. Your guide knows what you have been circling all week and will have booked it already.
Citizens of 50+ countries enter China visa-free for up to 30 days. Another 55+ can transit up to 240 hours (10 days) with an onward ticket. Rules change often — we check your passport against the current list before you book flights.
Cards work at hotels and big shops; everything else runs on Alipay or WeChat Pay. Both accept foreign Visa and Mastercard now. Bring a little cash for temple donation boxes.
Google, WhatsApp and Instagram are blocked on local networks. An international eSIM keeps your usual apps working; your guide covers maps and taxi apps locally.
Book 10–14 days out for the good departure times. Passport number must match exactly, and you enter the station with your passport, not a ticket.
One brief, one reply within 24 hours, two or three guides who have done this trip before.
Start planning — it’s free