Hello friends, I'll be visiting China and have a few locations planned, somewhat unsure of specific things to do at these locations. My rough itinerary is as follows:
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Beijing 3 nights
Qingdao 1 night (beer fest)
Shanghai 3 nights
Sleeper train 1 night
Xi'an 2 nights
??? 3 nights
Guilin 2 nights
HK 8 nights
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I've got 3 nights that I'm kind of unsure about, potentially could visit Chengdu. Allegedly Beijing has an interesting underground music scene that I'd be keen to check out. I enjoy most normie shit - hiking, clubs, and to a certain extent sight seeing, but also keen to immerse (as much as you can while being a tourist). First time being a phone poster OP so sorry if formatting is fkd
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Why 8 nights in Hong Kong?
You could squeeze in Chengdu/Chongqing if you take two or three nights off HK.
for muh Wong Kar Wai fetish. but also because I'll be meeting some schoolmates there and potentially spend some time with a lady friend
>potentially spend some time with a lady friend
Without seeing her breasts it's hard to give an answer
Basically you're going to see nothing but planes and trains your entire trip. Going through the airports, waiting, maybe a delay because it's typhoon season, all takes like 2-4 hours then you're in the air or on the train for another several hours, then you're waiting to deboard and maybe luggage claim for another hour or so. In the end you'll waste half a day (or longer on trains). Trains also get delayed, even halfway through the trip, because of bad weather.
Add those three extra nights to places you've already listed. There's so much to do in all of them, doubt you'd have time to go hiking and see all the major sights. China is fricking huge and none of those cities are close to each other.
I haven't been to Qingdao but I can assure you the beer fest is probably not worth it.
yeah that's a good point - I'll probably use the extra days for hiking. Qingdao is already booked so I'm not going to change it - but if the beer fest is boring I'll try to check some other stuff out in the city. it's quite interesting tbf as it was leased out to the Germans for 16 years from 1898.
funnily enough I'm kind of the opposite - hapa that grew up overseas and moved back to the UK for uni, had the opportunity to learn mandrin but never gave a frick as a kid and ended up a dirty monolingust. my younger sister is pretty based though cuz she's almost fluent in mandarin
>my younger sister is pretty based
Do you have pics?
i've been to qingdao beer festival. it is a large hall with chinese shit going on. there is nothing else for you to check out once you go and have some beers. you will go in the evening and spend your evening there drinking beer. it is what it is. it depends on your group. i actually went to qingdao from beijing and by the time i'd checked into the hotel it was after 4pm, so late afternoon. train station was super busy because so many tourists were in town and taxis were impossible. there is a metro now though. i was there many days but if you are only there for the night you might be pushing the time you think you have.
a family friend of mine grew up in HK
Looks like the spitting image of a Bri'ish Norf FC fan, red tint and all, but he can speak perfect Cantonese.
>Allegedly Beijing has an interesting underground music scene that I'd be keen to check out.
all the big cities do but you need to know where.
ebin baidu time I guess
I'll try to be checked in by 12 or so and spend the rest of the day/evening wandering around and drinking. I'll be going solo so hopefully I'll run into some interesting people. There's meant to be this "Qingdao GanBei with the World!" event on that day, no idea what it entails but should be fun while plastered.
Thanks for the suggestion I'll definitely go to Huashan it looks amazing, HK is already fixed so no point in regretting it - the girl I'm seeing lives to the north of HK so we'll probably check out the surrounding countryside and maybe even hop over to Shenzhen.
From Xian you can take a train to Huashan. Takes about an hour or so. There are taxis right near the station that'll take you to the mountain for a few bucks. You can do a hike there, see some absolutely incredible scenery, and be back in Xian by night time. Definitely worth adding a day to Xian to see it.
As others said, 8 days in HK is completely unnecessary. 3 days is enough to see basically anything you'd want to see and 4 days would probably be more than enough to be fully satisfied and possibly even bored.
If you go to Chengdu (you could easily do it by cutting 4 days off Hong Kong), I highly recommend the Sanxingdui Museum. It's full of big ass, alien-looking bronze and gold masks from some ancient society (I think 3500 years old?). Nothing else like it. Chengdu also has some nice gardens and it's a nice place to sit, sip some tea, and enjoy the scenery. Beautiful city.
Chongqing is on the way with bullet trains for the ??? days. Sichuan's underground music scene is probably >>> Beijing btw, simply because it's further away from Beijing, if you get what I mean.
There are really fricking cool mountains between Xi'an and Guilin. But if you're into the underground music scene, Chongqing and Chengdu proper are probably more interesting. Guilin itself is quite meh btw, but the river to the south and the mountains to the west are awesome. That elephant trunk hill is especially meh. The people are pretty chill, though. Then again, not as chill as Sichuan I guess.
Where's the underground music in Chengdu and Chongqing? I am going my first time to china next week and Chengdu is top of my list.
r/chinalife/comments/14fwblj/psa_clubbing_in_china/
How long are you staying? I'll be visiting those cities too, but in the winter.
only three weeks
HK is worth 3 days max. Use those other 5 days for Shenzhen or Guangzhou
How is Shandong.
I would like to visit China just to get myself back into studying. It is the clearest accent for me.
Qingdao is great but the rest of Shandong sucks except maybe costal towns near Qingdao ie Weihai/Yantai.
Actual Shandong accent is very difficult to understand but the middle age/young people in major cities should speak perfect, understandable, standard Mandarin just by virtue of being Northerners.