I recently got back from a week-long trip to China. The trip was great. Extremely productive. The travel was a bit grueling. United 835 from Chicago (ORD) to Shanghai (PVG) was right around 14 and a half hours. The flight home was less than 13. It was my first trip to Asia and here are a few tips that I would pass along to those traveling to China for the first time.
Before You Travel
First thing: Make sure you have a passport! Hopefully that goes without saying, but you will need a current, up-to-date passport. For China, your passport will need to have at least 6 months of validity remaining before it expires to get in to the country.
You will also need a Chinese visa (with a few exceptions). The visa request will require you to;
- Fill out the application form.
- Get a special photo. The consulate is very strict on what they will accept. The photo must meet the requirements set forth in this document. I chose to get mine done at the local Walgreens. They were extremely helpful, but the size is not standard and they ended up creating a new template on the photo kiosk, printing it off, and cutting it down using a ruler. The whole process took over an hour. Please post in the comments if you find a better solution or have better luck at another location.
- Provide proof of legal stay if you are not a US citizen
- A photocopy of previous visas (since you are traveling here for the first time, it probably doesn’t apply to you)
- If you have a Chinese parent, visa requirements are different. For the sake of time and space, I’m going to leave the link that you can pursue if this applies to you.
- Finally, you will need an invitation letter. This letter needs to contain specific information, including your name, gender, date of birth, purpose of visit, arrival and departure dates, places that you will be visiting, relationship to the person who is inviting you to China, financial source for funding any expenses you accrue on your trip, and the name and contact information of the person inviting you to China. This letter will need an official stamp and signature of the legal representative or inviting individual. Get all that?
Once you have a Chinese visa, it will be good for 10 years, allowing you to come and go pretty much as many times as you want for those 10 years, as long as each stay does not exceed 45 days.
If you haven’t traveled abroad recently, or ever, you will want to make an appointment with a travel clinic. Your employer may have a relationship with a local place, so check with your HR group. The travel clinic will be able to give you the required immunizations (i.e. typhoid, hep a, hep b, Japanese Encephalitis, etc). Some vaccinations take a week or two to build up an immunity in your body, so don’t put off getting this done.
Next, if you are a US citizen, register with the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP). It’s completely free, takes maybe 5 minutes to complete, it’s run by the US government, and can provide important information to you or reach you in an emergency.
If you are like me and don’t sleep well / at all on planes, go to your primary care provider and tell them that you need something to calm you down or help you sleep on a flight. For me, I get a little anxious, so some alprazolam (generic Xanax) really helped. China is on a single time zone, but it is approximately 12 hours different than US time, depending on which time zone you live in and whether or not it is daylight savings time. Trust me, you will want to try to sleep on the plane. I also did a test run on a Saturday night prior to the trip to understand how long it took for the pill to kick in. Turns out I get 33 minutes before night night time after one pill.
Pack light. When I went to China for a week, I packed a carry-on suitcase and that’s it. The last thing you want is to worry about you bag not getting to your final destination. Depending on where and when you are going, you can slim down your clothing options.
Finally, know that China does slightly censor their internet content. Google, and all associated services, like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Drive will not be available to you. You may be able to get around this by logging into a VPN, but plan accordingly. The censorship does apply to … uh, how should I say it … adult sites. To be clear, the Chinese government does not actively “seek and destroy” so to speak. The onus falls on the internet providers to block the appropriate sites, so if you should happen to be creative about how you happen across some content, you will not end up with a police officer at your door. I also noticed that services like Snapchat only worked intermittently. It worked if I connected my phone to my hotspot, but not if I used the hotel’s Wi-Fi. Again, please comment with your experiences in this area if you have found repeatable success.
Day of Travel
Know what you’re getting into. Check the flight information and, if you care, the aviation / turbulence forecast. There are several sites for this, but I’ve linked to my personal favorites. These sites can show you your route, length of flight, delays, gate changes, and any expected “rough air”.
Arrive at the airport earlier than usual. International check-in requires a bit more time as you will need to have your documents (passport and visa) checked before going to security. Once you get to your gate, check to see if the airline will be doing another document check. If so, have them stamp / sign off on your documents so you don’t have to wait in line later.
Don’t pop those pills too quick! On my flight over, we were served a hot meal about 2 hours into the flight and 2 hours before the flight landed. As soon as you get on the flight, I would set your watch to China time and figure out when you need to sleep. For the meal, choose the safer option. Beef or chicken over fish, pasta over meat, etc. The meal from the US to China is very American. The meal on the flight from China to the US is very Chinese, just beware. I would also suggest to wear compression socks. It is a long flight and you should try to stretch a few times. Also, I would recommend not drinking alcohol on the flight. The dry cabin air has very little humidity, so water gets pulled out of your body a bit faster. Buy or fill a water bottle and stay hydrated.
My flight over to China was really smooth, no issues, but I was only able to sleep for about 5 hours even with the alprazolam, because we flew through daylight the entire flight. On the way over, we arrived early afternoon the following day. Thankfully, we had a driver scheduled to take us from the airport to our hotel about 3 hours away. I slept the whole car ride too.
On the flight, you will be given a customs form to fill out. There is a detachable area for when you head through customs to return home. You should fill out the entire sheet now, so that you don’t have to do it later. When you get to the customs line, remember that the Chinese are very diligent and follow rules precisely. You will need to hand the customs officer your passport with visa and your form that you filled out on the plane. They will take a photo of you entering the country and then the customs officer will detach the return portion of the slip and give it back to you. You should keep that slip in a safe place where you can find it later, but in the off-chance that you do lose it, there are return slips available as you go through customs on the way back.
Making the time change to the Chinese time zone will be a little difficult, but hopefully not too bad. Make sure you get to sleep early that first night and if you need help falling asleep, take a small amount of sleep aid.
Watch What You Eat
While in China, there are lots of interesting foods to eat and curious places to visit that we don’t really have in the US. However, remember that your body is not used to the bacteria that is found in the water in China. Just like traveling to Mexico, you could quickly find yourself in a miserable place if you eat the wrong food. Stick to foods served hot or from restaurants in your hotel. I even brushed my teeth with bottled water like I did when I traveled to Panama.
As an aside, I have been told that dog meat is still used as food in rural areas — and even in some lower income urban areas. It isn’t something you will likely come across more than once on your travel. I didn’t see it on any “menu” that I could read.
Watch What You Do
Karaoke is a national pastime in China. It can also quickly cross over from fun with friends / co-workers to borderline strip club. Just be observant and if the karaoke bar you start heading to allows you to pick women to come sing with you, hopefully your “spidey sense” is kicking in.
Useful Apps
I found that the Google Translate app still worked in China, in spite of the rest of Google’s stuff not working. It was nice to help read signs and menus that were in Chinese. I would recommend downloading the Chinese language add-on prior to your trip.
Traveling Home
Again arrive at the airport early. My flight home was mostly night, so it was easier to sleep for the majority of the time. However, getting back on US time was much worse than going to Chinese time. It took me about 5 days to get my schedule back. Hopefully you can acclimate faster!
Leave Your Thoughts in a Comment
Do you have an experience to share? Leave it in the comments below! Safe travels!
