Modern China: the country as it is now

The gap between the image and the place

Most visitors arrive with one of two Chinas in their head: the imperial past of silk and emperors, or the political caricature from the news. Both are real and neither is what you meet.

What you actually meet is a country where a farmer pays for vegetables by scanning a QR code, where a 1,000-kilometre journey takes four and a half hours on a train that leaves every twenty minutes, where a hot meal arrives at your door in twenty minutes for less than a cup of coffee, and where a Ming-dynasty temple sits next to a shopping mall and nobody thinks this is strange.

Infrastructure: the thing that changes how you travel

• High-speed rail 高铁 — the backbone of travel in the eastern half of the country. Beijing–Shanghai in 4.5 hours, Chengdu–Xi'an in 3, Guangzhou–Guilin in 3. Trains depart every few minutes on main lines, run on time, and are comfortable. Book 15 days ahead for popular routes.
• Metro systems — Shanghai and Beijing have the two largest metro networks on earth. Clean, cheap (¥3–10 a ride), signed in English, and the fastest way across a city.
• Airports — new, enormous, efficient domestically. Domestic flights are cheap and frequent but rarely beat the train under about 1,000 km once you count the airport journey.
• City bikes and e-scooters — dockless, unlocked by app, everywhere. A revolution for short trips.
• Delivery — food, medicine, groceries, phone chargers, umbrellas. Cheap, fast, and available in even small cities.

Digital life: what works and what doesn't

Two systems coexist. On a normal Chinese connection, Google services, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, X/Twitter and many foreign news sites are unavailable. Everything Chinese works fine, and better than most of what you use at home.

• The visitor's solution: an eSIM or roaming plan so your data routes through your home carrier. Everything you normally use then works normally. This is now the standard answer and it costs very little.
• Apps to install before you fly: WeChat (messaging, mini-programs, payment), Alipay (payment, metro, taxis, hotels), Amap 高德 or Apple Maps (navigation), Didi (taxis — has an English interface), Trip.com (trains, hotels, flights), Pleco (dictionary), and a VPN if you want one — but note that a roaming eSIM is simpler.
• What surprises people: QR codes are the interface for almost everything, including ordering in a restaurant, hiring a bike, and paying a street vendor. QR codes were invented in Japan but China is where they became infrastructure.

The character of the big cities

What things actually cost

China is mid-range by global standards: much cheaper than Western Europe, North America, Japan or Korea, noticeably more expensive than South-East Asia. A comfortable independent trip typically runs¥400–800 per day (roughly US$55–110) including a decent hotel, all transport, good food and entry tickets.

Prices are indicative for 2026 and vary by city tier. Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are the most expensive; Xi'an, Chengdu and Kunming are notably better value.

Misconceptions visitors arrive with

The green transition you can see from the train window

• Electric vehicles are everywhere — roughly half of new car sales, and nearly all buses and a very large share of taxis in cities. Chinese brands (BYD, Nio, Xpeng, Zeekr) are now the most advanced mass-market EVs in the world.
• Solar and wind at enormous scale: China installs more renewable capacity each year than the rest of the world combined, and vast solar farms are visible from trains in the north-west.
• Reforestation — satellite data shows China as the largest single contributor to global greening over the last two decades, much of it from tree-planting programmes.
• Electric two-wheelers — the default urban vehicle. Silent, ubiquitous, and the reason Chinese streets sound different.
• Rubbish sorting is enforced in Shanghai and several other cities; bins are colour-coded and sometimes supervised.