Spent two weeks in October traveling solo around China (male, early 30s). Had an amazing time, thought I could share my experiences.

General info:

I opted to use an esim from Trip.com instead of getting a Chinese phone number. All of my non-Chinese apps just worked, didn't need to setup a VPN at all. I believe you do need a local phone number for some scenarios (e.g. food delivery) but I never ran into those.

Trip.com is ridiculously handy for booking hotels, trains and most museums, it's got a great app and everything is in English.

I stayed at Chinese chain hotels (Ateur and Ji) and was really happy with them, cross-checked the location on ChatGPT before booking. The rule of thumb is to prefer the hotels that have been built or renovated within the past couple of years as the older ones age quite visibly.

Absolutely nobody speaks English so you need to get comfortable with translation apps. I used Google Translate and ChatGPT.…