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The whole trip was a great success. Though, we encountered strong air turbulence when our airplane left the Californian coast. We were one hour behind the schedule when the airplane landed in Shanghai. As the original plan, we visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou within two weeks.

In Shanghai, we explored the famous shopping district — Nanjing Road, the Bund, Oriental Pearl TV Tower, and QiBao Ancient Town. In Beijing, we covered Summer Palace, Great Wall, Ming Dynasty Tomb, Tianmen Square, Forbidden City, and Wangfujing Street. In Hangzhou, we circled around the amazingly beautiful West Lake.

A lot of things have been changed in China from my last trip 5 years ago. Nowadays, traveling in China has become much more easier.

First, there are bullet trains connecting cities together with reasonable cost, running at 200 km/hr. It takes a night from Beijing to either Shanghai or Hangzhou. The traveling time between Shanghai and Hangzhou has been further reduced to 75 minutes from 90 minutes 5 years ago. The train stations become much cleaner, especially in Shanghai.

Second, there are McDonald, and KFC everywhere. Food in China is relatively cheap, even after the recent price hiking. In China, a meal in McDonald costs 22RMB — about 3 dollars, compared to $7~8 in US. If one goes to some local restaurants that don’t look very clean, the cost could further be reduced to 4RMB, which is a little bit more than 50 cents. On the other side, one can enjoy a really good meal for less than $30.

Third, there are restrooms everywhere and the streets become much cleaner. It is not only for foreigners, but also for local travelers. Even though it was not the right season for traveling, we still saw a lot of visitors wherever we went. The whole traveling industry will be the next biggest thing in China once Chinese have more flexible vacation time as what we have in US.

Now, let’s look at lodging. The best way is to live in a hostel, which, most likely, provides tour groups for foreigners. The second best choice is to book a hotel via ctrip.com, which requires a local cell phone number for membership. (Besides, there will be a ctrip/HYSTA event in Feb 2nd.) Both hostels and hotels are clean and the cost is less than 200RMB per person per night. Of course, rich visitors could try expensive 5 star hotels that provide English local maps and costs more than $100 a night per person. Hostels and hotels allow people to check in luggages and even expensive goods while they are out for sightseeing, but they might not provide tooth paste and tooth brush.

All in all, traveling in China is pretty exciting and relatively cheap compared to US, except the expensive airline tickets.