Entry requirements

Passport and visa requirements

Health precautions

Once in the country

Time and time difference

It is 01:27 AM in Beijing (GMT+8 )

Summer time period

Map of the time zone

Type of climate

The extent of the territory can explain the extreme climatic amplitudes. In the North, winters last from December to March and are extremely cold. In Beijing, the temperature easily drops below 0°C, with a generally dry and sunny weather, but in the Northern part of the Great Wall or within Mongolia, temperatures can reach - 40°C. Over the summer, the temperature usually exceeds 35°C in Beijing, with numerous showers of rain. Spring and autumn are pleasant, with diurnal temperatures oscillating between 20 and 25°C and cool nights. But, caution, winter can last for long in the capital.
In the centre region, including Shanghai, summers are pretty long, warm and wet. Wuhan, Chongqing and Nankin were nicknamed the " three ovens " by locals! Winters are short and cold, with negative temperatures. Except over the summer, weather can be humid and unpleasant at any time of the year.
Around Guangzhou (Canton), the warm and wet season (up to 38°C) extends from April to September. It is also the rain and cyclones season. Winter, without being as rigorous as in the North of the country, can be surprisingly cold. Autumn and spring, are often pleasant, but it can also rain or drizzle continuously.
In the North-West, summers are warm and dry, even hot in desertic regions (up to 47°C in Tourfan, Xinjiang), and winters are icy. In Tibet, you can easily have the four seasons in a single day: biting cold then intense heat, biting winds, storms of dust, sand, snow or (rarely) rain.

Average annual temperatures and rainfall

Getting around

By road

The condition of the road network, which is in fast growing development, is satisfactory on the main roads, although it is badly signposted. The bad weather conditions, that the North of the country faces, can explain the damages on the road surface and sections are sometimes hard to pass. To drive in China remains a dangerous exercise: the total lack of discipline, the mass of rolling vehicles of all kinds, and animals on the roads, require to be constantly on the alert. The highest caution is therefore recommended. The rate of fatal accidents has been increasing, especially since more and more Chinese can afford a car. If you can, you should avoid driving at night. Fuel supplies are correct. Car rental is possible. There is an highway connection between Canton and Shenzhen.

By rail

Good general condition, even though connections are generally quite slow (for example: Canton - Peking takes 36 hours), except for the Canton-Hong Kong connection, which is fast and comfortable.

By air

The domestic airlines have excellent records in terms of accident rates. Schedules are generally respected although airports are jammed.

Find an itinerary

Eating

Culinary specialties

The Chinese gastronomy is one of the richest and most sophisticated in the world.
There are four regional variants: the Beijing and Shandong food makes the most of noodles rather than rice and has for specialties the Peking duck and the beggar's chicken, wrapped in sheets of lotus and cooked for a whole day on embers; the Cantonese and Chaozhou cooking privileges steamed dishes, boiled or fritted preparations and counts among their specialities the dim-sum, eggs of a thousand years (eggs dipped into horse urine), snake soup, dog stew, rat or owl; the food of Eastern China specialises in pork spareribs, seafood and soups; finally, the Sichuan cookery is said to count more than 4,000 dishes, of which the gonbao jiding, fried chicken with peanuts and hot pepper, mapo doufu, pork with soya yoghourt and onions, the guoba roupian, rice served with pork in its cooking juice.

Dietary taboos

Culinary taboos vary from one religion to another.

Paying

Domestic currency

The currency is the Yuan.

To obtain domestic currency

To find out the locations of ATMs in China, click on the link to your credit card: Visa, Mastercard or American Express.

Speaking

Official language

Mandarin Chinese.

Other languages spoken

There are more than a hundred dialects which limit a lot oral understanding of the language.

Business language

English is used for commercial correspondence. However, an interpreter is often required during personal contact with Chinese businesspeople.

Getting some knowledge

Free translation tools

Babel Fish - Free English-Chinese-English translation of texts and web sites
Zhongwen - Free English-Chinese dictionary
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Visiting

Highlights

Beijing: the Tiananmen place is dominated by a huge Mao's statue, the heart of the city, witness of numerous historic and political events. All around, there is a curious mix of monuments from the past and the present : Tiananmen (the door of the heavenly Peace), national symbol, the museum of History of the Chinese revolution, the palace of the People's Assembly, Qianmen (the front door), the Mao's mausoleum and the monument dedicated to people Heroes. Then, the Forbidden City is worth visiting: it is the most gigantic and best protected of the Chinese architectural sets. Built in the XVth century and reconstructed in the XVIIIth, it was used as a place of pension and leisure for emperors and their courtiers; today the offices of the eminent members of the PCC are located there.
Shanghai, Queen of the East, city of the adventurers, the players, the idle, the dandies, the missionaries, the opium takers, the gangsters and the swindlers... Shanghai has always haunted memories. Today, it tries hard to throw away the rags of collectivism and makes an obvious archaism coexist with the attributes of the most advanced modernism. Located in the mouth of Yangzi, it occupied an ideal position to become a commercial harbour and built its fortune on opium, silk and tea.
Xi'an once competed with Rome, then Constantinople, for the title of " biggest town of the world ". For more than two millenniums, it witnessed the rise, and then the decline, of numerous dynasties; its monuments and its archaeological sites remind that it used to be the centre of the Chinese world. Today, Xi'an is one of the major attractions of the country. Several historic vestiges are spread in the surroundings. There is over there a certain Islamic influence with a Muslim district and the mosque. Finally, this is where the famous terracotta Army of soldiers, buried in the ground for about 2.000 years, was discovered in 1974.
The Great Wall, also called the "Long Wall of the 10,000 lis" (the li being a measurement unit corresponding to 539 m), extends from the coast up to the Gobi's desert. The construction started 2,000 years ago and required the participation of hundreds of thousands of workers. It is interesting to note that the wall, which had been forgotten for a long time, but was saved by tourism is, for numerous Chinese, more a symbol of tyranny than of beauty.
Protected by the Himalaya fortress, Tibet has been occupying for a long time a special place in the Occidental myth : Sometimes called either Shangri-La, "country of the Snows" or "Roof of the world", it remains surrounded with a particular aura. For years and years, rare are those who had the privilege to go to Lhasa. When it opened, in the 80's, Tibet was no longer this magic Buddhist realm, which impassioned travellers of the first half of the XXth century.

Tourism organizations