If you had two weeks in China...

[Johnny20270]

I quite liked Lijing as was mentioned earlier, its easy enough to avoid that main bar street. I thought Stone forest was fantasic (no clue of name in chinese). Kuming and Yi village are ok, only the show in Kunming was good.

Beijing has to be done and I really like the arts area (761 or something I think)

Personally, I don't like shanghai but is good to wander around at least once, puxi/pudong. Tianzifang was nothing special in my view but given I live in europe and been in almost all countries in Europe its understandable why it doesn't appeal to a European

Xi'an was excellent and I have heard good reports about Yellow Mountain

I liked Maco too

Personally with china, I find there are better sites / scenary elsewhere in the world (as regards mountains/lakes/lack people) but its the chinese slant to everything I like. Also being a tourist, I was not inclined to be rude to the people following me incessently everywhere, but with my chinese firend she had no trouble getting rid of them. There was a lot of pushing and hand waving haha

PS: Qinhuangdao (or however its spelt is great). Great to see where the that big old wall ends!

[liuzhou]

given I live in europe and been in almost all countries in Europe its understandable why it doesn't appeal to a European

Is it? Why?

[Johnny20270]

oh, its not meant in a bad way. My shanghai friends love the place but its just something we (as Europeans) have seen many many times before. I think the food is no better than the respective European country. I guess for me I go to china to see authentic Chinese places, not see Italian / french etc restaurants, stores, shops full of European nicknacks. Pubs / clubs / all seem exactly same as London / Paris etc

What is nice though, is the adaptation to chinese society.

[renzhe]

Personally, I found that all the big sights DO live up to the hype. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

The problem is that two weeks is extremely short, so you'll have to stick to a particular region and then explore. You probably want to get to a large city to get an idea of city life and because most cities have some historical sights worth visiting. It also makes transportation easier. Then look into scenic villages (like Zhouzhuang) and major mountains (Huang Shan or one of the 5 great mountains) in the vicinity, plus some parks and historic cities nearby.

You could, for example, fly into Shanghai and spend a couple of days visiting Yu garden, the Bund, Nanjing road and the Chinese museum. Then you could take a day trip to Zhouzhuang (hotels can organise this for you, but this is all for locals, so brush up on your Chinese), and take the train to Hangzhou and/or Suzhou. You can also easily reach Huangshan from Shanghai, and Huangshan is supposed to be absolutely marvelous. A trip to the Taihu lake could also be an option, like visiting some of Wuxi's many parks.

A similar thing could be done with Xi'an, which is a beautiful and historical town where you can visit the city walls you can bike, eat awesome Hui Muslim grilled lamb and see the Grand Mosque, the oldest in China. Nearby you have the Terracota army and Hua Shan.

Oh, and BTW, if something is pretty in China, it will be full of tourists. Every minor sight in China makes the Eifel Tower looks like a secret underground CIA lab nobody has ever heard about.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Thank you everyone for your thoughts so far. Did I mention how lovely this forum here and everone in it is?

I'm looking every place mentioned up, and taking everything into consideration. And I took the warning about Oct 1st to my heart...

Oh, I have no illusions about being one in a flock of tourists. There is always that woman following you up hill. She tries to sell different things (a bottle of warm water, a fan with an outrageous painting of a sunset on a river with bamboo huts and palm trees, or a Neuschwanstein beer opener key chain), but she's always there

[Silent]

You already got a lot of advice. And actually I agree with your own answer, it depends on your preferences. I'ld say try to limit the number of large displacements. It takes a lot of time you don't have with only two weeks. (unless of course you feel you can sleep well in a sleeper bus/train). So pick an area and limited yourself to that one (or two) area. Depending you interests and what you've seen before try to have variety in the type of sites you visit that gives a more balanced impression. E.g. a Sacred mountain, a (big) temple complex, historic site, modern museum, a cultural performance, small historic village etc. Personally I feel the sacred mountains are great to spend a few days. They have a lot of history, great scenery and are a good place to meet people. I specially liked Hua Shan (near Xi'an) and Emei Shan (near Chengdu)

[Meng Lelan]

@Skylee - actually I may likely go to Taiwan next spring!

Heh, it so happens I may be going to Taiwan for a week or so in the spring. Hopefully you can start a thread soon on that topic and we can jump in there?

[Ruben von Zwack]

I have booked my flight, I'm so excited!!!

The advice to stick to one region was very good.

I calmed down, stopped flipping those 900+ travel book pages, and decided my first big anchor point was Beijing. There is so much interesting stuff to do "near" there in Hebei. Maybe I'll even venture into Liaoning. And my second anchor point will be Xi'An where, besides the obvious, I'll want to go to the Hua Shan. I have even managed to stretch my holiday to 3 weeks so I will have the luxury of being flexible.

Thank you again, everyone! You have been most helpful!

(PS, sorry, can't type pinyin on my work computer)

[roddy]

When are your flight dates? We want live updates daily.

[Ruben von Zwack]

still a bit to go: Oct 10th until Nov 3rd. But I got enough to do until then: yesterday when I was filling out the Visa application, much to my surprise, I found my travel passport had expired

And of course I have this plan to, from now on, study and improve like crazy every.single.day, so I can put my Chinese to the best use, ha ha