🇨🇳China
Imperial palaces, a wall you can see for days, and cities that leapt from bicycles to bullet trains and mobile-only payments in a single generation.
Cities
Imperial China's capital for six centuries: the Forbidden City, the Great Wall a day trip away, and hutong alleys tucked behind glass towers.
Giant pandas, fiery Sichuan food, and the most laid-back pace of any major Chinese city — teahouses and mahjong tables over glass towers and rush.
The birthplace of dim sum and China's oldest trading port, hot and humid on the Pearl River — one of the country's biggest cities, and one of its least touristed.
The karst-mountain scenery on the back of the ¥20 note — a slower, greener corner of China built around the Li River and the backpacker village of Yangshuo.
The city Marco Polo called 'the finest and most splendid in the world,' built around the UNESCO-listed West Lake and now doubling as the tech-money capital of the Alibaba era.
China's far-northeast winter capital — Russian-influenced architecture along the Songhua River, brutal sub-zero winters, and the world's largest ice and snow festival.
Ancient capital of thirteen dynasties, home to the cliffside Buddhist carvings of the Longmen Grottoes and China's self-declared 'City of Peonies.'
A breezy coastal city with a German colonial past — red-roofed architecture, sandy beaches on the Yellow Sea, and the birthplace of Tsingtao beer.
China's futuristic showcase: a neon-lit skyline across the river from 1920s European facades, and a metro that will out-engineer anything back home.
The 'Venice of the East' — a 2,500-year-old canal city of UNESCO-listed classical gardens and whitewashed courtyard houses, sitting just half an hour from Shanghai by train.
Ancient capital of a dozen dynasties and the eastern anchor of the Silk Road, best known today as home to the buried Terracotta Army.
At a glance
How China’s cities compare. Rough 2025–2026 figures.
| City | Cheap meal | Mid-range hotel | Transit ride | Avg. monthly salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇨🇳 Beijing | $2.00–5.00 | $55–110 | $0.40–0.85 | ≈ $1,400 |
| 🇨🇳 Chengdu | $2.00–4.50 | $40–80 | $0.30–0.60 | ≈ $1,080 |
| 🇨🇳 Guangzhou | $2.00–5.00 | $45–90 | $0.30–0.65 | ≈ $1,250 |
| 🇨🇳 Guilin | $1.50–4.00 | $30–65 | $0.25–0.50 | ≈ $780 |
| 🇨🇳 Hangzhou | $2.00–5.00 | $55–110 | $0.30–0.55 | ≈ $1,450 |
| 🇨🇳 Harbin | $1.50–4.00 | $30–65 | $0.25–0.45 | ≈ $820 |
| 🇨🇳 Luoyang | $1.50–3.50 | $35–65 | $0.25–0.50 | ≈ $850 |
| 🇨🇳 Qingdao | $2.00–5.00 | $40–85 | $0.30–0.50 | ≈ $1,100 |
| 🇨🇳 Shanghai | $2.50–5.00 | $60–130 | $0.40–0.85 | ≈ $1,550 |
| 🇨🇳 Suzhou | $2.00–5.00 | $55–115 | $0.30–0.55 | ≈ $1,350 |
| 🇨🇳 Xi'an | $1.50–4.00 | $40–75 | $0.30–0.60 | ≈ $950 |
Travel prep for China
1. Visa
- Americans still need a visa for a standard trip. As of February 17, 2026, ordinary passport holders from the United Kingdom and Canada can enter mainland China and stay up to 30 days with no visa at all — but the United States is not on that 30-day visa-free list. Travelers Today
- The workaround (240-hour visa-free transit) only applies if you’re flying out to a third country, not back to the US — so it doesn’t help for a normal there-and-back trip. China for Travelers
- For a real visit, you’ll apply for an L (tourist) visa: it allows a short stay of around 30 days per entry, and if your visa shows 30 days per entry, you must leave mainland China on or before day 30 unless you’ve obtained a legal extension. Arrival Card China
- Good news on paperwork: as of January 1, 2024, Chinese embassies/consulates no longer require tour itineraries, round-trip tickets, hotel bookings, or invitation letters for standard tourist visa applications. Snap2Pass
- Practical logistics:
- Plan your visa at least 3–4 weeks before travel — processing can take 1–2 weeks and requires submitting your physical passport. China Neighbor
- Your passport should generally be valid for at least 6 months beyond entry and have blank visa pages. Arrival Card China
- The L visa fee for US citizens is $140 applying directly at an embassy/consulate, or roughly $252 through the CVASC service center including fees. VisaBeat
- Since November 2025, visitors must also present a valid China Arrival Card upon entry — worth filling out in advance if there’s an online option, so you’re not scrambling at the airport. Arrival Card China
- Since you’re eyeing Luoyang long-term, this trip is presumably a scouting visit — a standard L visa (60 days per entry, per some sources) should cover that fine; just don’t overstay, since overstaying even a few days can cause fines and problems with future visas. Arrival Card China
2. WeChat & Alipay
- Download both before you leave — Wi-Fi in transit or a hotel lobby is a much better time to set these up than at the airport with jet lag.
- WeChat: set up your profile, and if you can, get a local contact (or your future landlord/contact in Luoyang) to add you first — some verification steps go smoother with an existing contact vouching.
- Alipay: link a US Visa/Mastercard (Alipay’s “Tour Pass” / international mode supports this without a Chinese bank account).
- Test it before you leave the airport, ideally before you even leave home: load a small amount, try a test payment (even a $1.00 in-app purchase or scan a QR at a US retailer that supports Alipay if you can find one). Confirm the linked card is actually accepting charges — foreign cards sometimes get silently declined for reasons unrelated to balance, and you don’t want to discover that hungry, at a counter, with no cash on you.
- Bring some cash backup anyway (RMB) for the first day or two, since even a working Alipay account can occasionally hit a hiccup with a specific merchant’s terminal.
3. Translation
- Install Pleco (offline Chinese-English dictionary, works without data — very good for camera-based character lookup) and/or the offline mode of Google Translate’s Chinese pack downloaded in advance.
- Note: Google services are generally blocked in mainland China without a VPN, so download the offline language pack before you land, and consider a VPN app (installed and tested before departure — VPN apps are much harder to download once you’re already inside the firewall).
- Baidu Translate is a solid China-native alternative that works without a VPN.
4. Survival phrases
A short starter set is worth memorizing cold, since fumbling for your phone isn’t always fast enough:
- 你好 (nǐ hǎo) — hello
- 谢谢 (xièxie) — thank you
- 多少钱 (duōshao qián) — how much?
- 我不会说中文 (wǒ bú huì shuō zhōngwén) — I don’t speak Chinese
- 洗手间在哪里 (xǐshǒujiān zài nǎlǐ) — where’s the restroom?
- 帮帮我 (bāng bāng wǒ) — help me
- 我要这个 (wǒ yào zhège) — I want this (pointing works great alongside this one)