Frequently asked questions

The single most useful thing to know is that the answer changed repeatedly in the last two years, and that most of the visa-free arrangements currently in force carry an explicit expiry date.

Work through it in this order: are you from a country on the unilateral visa-free list; if not, are you genuinely transiting to a third country; if not, does Hainan or a cruise scheme apply; if none of those, you need an L visa.

Our full entry guide covers each route, the documents involved and the current fees.

The transit scheme is the most useful route for nationalities that are not on China’s unilateral visa-free list, including United States citizens. The essential condition is that it is real transit: you cannot arrive from and return to the same country, and you must hold a confirmed onward ticket to a third country or region departing within the 240 hours.

The stay clock starts at 00:00 on the day after you arrive, and the 10 days are counted inside the permitted areas, where you may cross provincial borders. Work, study and news reporting are not covered by any visa-free scheme.

Numbers published for this scheme have risen through 2026, and older official pages still show earlier totals, so confirm the current figures for your nationality in our entry guide and against the National Immigration Administration before booking.

Visa-free travel to China is written with explicit end dates rather than as a standing right. Roughly two-thirds of the current unilateral list lapses on 31 December 2026, and several countries were added to the scheme only during 2026, which is a clear signal that the list can shrink as well as grow.

That has two practical consequences. Do not book a non-refundable trip on the assumption that the rule will still read the same way at departure, and do not assume an arrangement that covered a previous trip still covers the next one.

Our entry guide lists the schemes, the countries and the dates we can verify, and explains how to confirm your own case.

Mobile payment is the default in China, and a foreign card bound to Alipay or WeChat Pay works almost everywhere, from metro gates to market stalls. Register with your international phone number or email, verify with your passport, then add the card.

The fee rule is consistent across sources and easy to state: free at RMB 200 or below, 3% above it. The spending caps are not consistent. Official guidance from late 2024 describes limits in the tens of thousands of US dollars, while a December 2025 source describes much lower per-transaction and annual limits, so check the limit shown in the app rather than relying on a figure from a guide.

Cash still works and is worth carrying, and foreign cards are accepted where the logo is displayed, which is weakest at small restaurants and street stalls. Our payments guide covers ATMs, cash withdrawal and what to do when a payment fails.

Those ranges assume a mix of local transport, a paid attraction most days and meals from street food up to local restaurants. Accommodation is the largest variable: hostel dorms and budget guesthouses sit around RMB 60 to 250 a night, mid-range hotels around RMB 350 to 700, and four and five star or international brands from RMB 800 upwards.

Three things break the pattern. Tibet runs far higher, roughly US$120 to 155 per person per day, because a licensed guide, driver and permits are compulsory for foreign visitors. Harbin hotel rates can double or triple between November and the ice festival season from late December to February. And rail travel is worth pricing separately: budget roughly RMB 0.4 to 0.5 per kilometre in second class, so Beijing to Shanghai is around RMB 553 and Shanghai to Hangzhou around RMB 73.

Budget ranges are planning estimates rather than audited figures, and fares and ticket prices drift. Our payments guide covers how money actually works day to day, and the best time to visit guide explains when those prices spike.

Pudong International Airport (PVG) sits in the east of Pudong New Area, about thirty kilometres from the city centre. The routes into town are not complicated; what decides your experience is the hour you land, because daytime and the middle of the night do not offer the same set of options.

Daytime: metro, maglev and taxis

Metro Line 2 is the default answer: one train into the centre, priced by distance, slow and crowded with nowhere to put a suitcase, but with no transfer to worry about. The one exception is that some services still require a same-platform change at Guanglan Road, so follow the in-station announcements and that day’s signs.

The maglev covers only the airport-to-Longyang Road leg, reaching it in a few minutes at its fastest, and from Longyang Road you still have to haul your luggage onto Metro Line 2, 7 or 16. It runs at full speed only during part of the day and stops earlier than the metro. It suits light packers, anyone who wants to try it once, and travellers staying near Longyang Road.

Taxis have an official rank on the arrivals level: follow the signs and pay the meter, with a night surcharge; the distance is what it is, so the fare is not small. Ride-hailing picks up in a designated area, not the taxi queue, and drivers usually phone to confirm where you are. Ignore anyone in the hall who approaches you asking where you are going. Airport buses link several main districts, with frequencies and last departures that shift with the season; they are worth it only if your accommodation sits near a stop.

Landing late or before dawn

The metro and the maglev both finish early, so red-eye arrivals will not catch them; that is a timetable problem, not a matter of luck. What remains is taxis, ride-hailing and some night buses, and the queue is usually at its longest. If you land after 23:00, decide before you fly: book a pickup, plan on ride-hailing, or accept the taxi queue. Do not gamble on the last metro.

Your first hour after landing

Immigration, baggage and finding your transport add up to more than an hour. Signage is bilingual, so simply follow it. Carousels and the arrivals exit are busy, so watch your belongings. Set up mobile payment before you leave home; the airport’s exchange and SIM counters do it all in one pass but are not necessarily good value, as our payments guide explains. T1 and T2 are separate buildings connected on foot; on the way home, if your gate is in a satellite hall you will ride a people mover first, so allow extra time.

The short answer

Daytime with light luggage: Metro Line 2. In a hurry and heading towards Longyang Road: the maglev. Late at night, with bags, or in a group: taxi or ride-hailing.

Two routes work in practice. The official 12306 channel is free and charges the exact domestic price, but registration requires a foreign-passenger account and passport verification that can take an hour or more. Agents such as Trip.com charge a small per-ticket fee and, more usefully, let you place a reservation months ahead and buy automatically when the official window opens, which is the sensible approach for Spring Festival and October Golden Week.

At the station, enter your name exactly as printed on the machine-readable lines of your passport. Automated kiosks read Chinese ID cards only, so foreign travellers queue at staffed counters, and screenshots are not accepted in place of the physical passport. Arrive 45 to 60 minutes early at a hub station.

Presale windows are the weakest claim in this area: one source describes tickets opening 15 days ahead, other recent sources imply longer windows, and agents market reservations placed months in advance. Our high-speed rail guide explains the booking sequence and which routes are better flown.

The single most useful distinction is between a connection routed through a mainland operator and one routed internationally. A travel eSIM that runs through a Hong Kong or international carrier is effectively outside the firewall, while a local prepaid SIM bought at the airport is inside it. Vendors describe this inconsistently, so verify before you rely on it.

If you plan to use a VPN instead, install it, log in and test it before departure: provider sites are blocked inside China, so you cannot download or subscribe once you arrive, and reliability varies sharply between providers. Note that only government-approved VPN services are legal, and that enforcement against foreign visitors on personal phones is rare but the legal position is unsettled for tourists.

Whatever you choose, download offline maps and an offline translation app in advance. The internet and apps guide covers which apps to install before you fly.

Weather is only half the calculation. The other half is domestic travel volume. Spring Festival runs from 15 to 23 February 2026 and brings the year’s largest travel rush, while 1 to 7 October is Golden Week. During both, trains on popular routes sell out, major attractions hit their daily caps, and hotel rates commonly rise by 50 to 200%. Many smaller restaurants close for part of Spring Festival.

Region by region, the windows differ sharply: Beijing and Xi’an suit late March to May and September to early November; Hainan is best from November to April and should be avoided in the August to October typhoon season; Harbin works only from late December to February; Tibet’s season runs roughly May to October, with winter offering quieter, cheaper travel.

Our month-by-month best time to visit guide sets out weather, crowds and prices month by month, including the secondary holidays such as Qingming and Mid-Autumn.

Street crime is uncommon and the things most likely to cost you money are confidence tricks rather than muggings. The patterns worth knowing are the friendly stranger who leads you to an overpriced tea ceremony, black taxis quoting several times the correct fare, counterfeit notes given as change, payment QR codes that have been swapped, and coach tours that are mostly commission shopping stops.

Traffic is the most likely cause of a genuine injury. Look both ways even on one-way streets, expect scooters on pavements and riding against the flow, and use licensed taxis or a ride-hailing app rather than an unlicensed car.

Two further points that catch visitors out are altitude on plateau itineraries such as Lhasa and Shangri-La, where the right response to worsening symptoms is to descend rather than continue, and air quality in northern cities in winter. Our health and safety guide covers emergency numbers, hospitals, insurance and lost passports.

Shanghai Circus World stands on Gonghexin Road in Jing’an, with Metro Line 1 stopping at the station of the same name beside it. ERA is the house production, and the show most tour groups and Shanghai families end up seeing. There is almost no spoken dialogue: contortion, aerial work, balancing and tumbling are broken into segments and threaded through projections, music and group dance. The technique is genuine, and the fluency that comes from a long residency shows — nothing is lost if you do not speak Chinese.

Why it earns its evening

It is a finished piece of stagecraft. An evening performance runs for roughly an hour and a half, the pacing holds, and there are few dead stretches, which makes it an easy choice after a full day of walking when nobody wants to think hard. The absence of dialogue does real work too: families with children, first-time visitors who have just landed, and anyone facing a rainy evening can walk in cold. The theatre is not far from the People’s Square area, the metro goes straight there, and getting back into the centre after the finale is quick.

Three things to know before you buy

First, this is a commercial production built for visitors. The skills are real, but the choreography, costumes and multimedia material look dated by current standards, the auditorium is large, tour groups make up a sizeable share of the audience, and it does not sit at the edge of contemporary Chinese acrobatics.

Second, tickets are expensive by the standards of a Chinese theatre and are sold by seating tier, with prices and discounts differing between dates and between sellers. Treat only the official box office’s current listing and seating plan as reliable, and do not budget from second-hand figures.

Third, the show has run for years and has been reworked more than once, so older guides and older photographs circulating online may not match the version now on stage.

How to plan around it

Evening performances are the norm, extra dates and dark periods shift with the run, and the official box office’s listing for the day you want is the only thing worth trusting. Arrive about half an hour before curtain; the entrance backs up and the auditorium takes time to cross. The stage is wide, so the big set pieces read best from the centre and lose something from the far sides. The surrounding blocks are roads and housing, so do not count on eating near the theatre: have dinner first, or come back into the centre afterwards.

If you want an evening filled without a language barrier, this fits. If you want small-scale contemporary circus or a traditional variety programme, it does not.

You can travel the classic routes, Beijing to Xi’an to Shanghai, with very little language. Signage on high-speed rail is bilingual, metro systems in big cities are labelled in English, and hotel staff usually manage enough English to help with bookings and taxis.

The friction appears in ordinary situations: ordering food, buying a pharmacy item, explaining an allergy, or telling a driver where to go. Two habits solve most of it. First, screenshot your hotel name and address in Chinese before leaving each morning, and ask reception to write it on a card. Second, use a translation app that works offline, because mobile data is not guaranteed and Google Translate needs a connection that is filtered by default.

Baidu Translate and Youdao both handle camera, voice and offline Chinese, and Pleco is the standard offline dictionary. Installing these before arrival, along with an eSIM or SIM that gives you data, is covered in our internet and apps guide.