China vacation 2024
At the University of Michigan, I became friends with Harry and Daniel. We used to enjoy exchanging cultural tidbits from India and China, and have been talking about making trips to both countries. Eight years later, we finally made the China trip happen!
In October 2024, the three of us traveled to Macao/Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. Here are some photos and takeaways from my trip.
On this page
Overview
Macao
After arriving in Hong Kong, we drove in a hotel-limousine across the border to Macao.
Although both are part of China, they are both "Special Administrative Regions" (SARs) – this means that they have their own individual governments, laws, citizenship/visa policies, etc. Hence, there are strict border controls between the different administrative zones.
Cars can’t just drive across the borders – the car needs to be registered in each administrative region (which is not only expensive, but requires justification to the authorities). That’s why:
- Very few cars use the newly-constructed bridge between Hong Kong and Macao.
- All the cars on this highway had 2 or 3 license plates, one for each region!
Macao felt like a larger, fancier version of Las Vegas, full of casinos, hotels, and shopping malls. Like Las Vegas, every casino is itself a hotel and shopping mall!
We stayed at the Wynn Hotel/Casino/Mall, and we could immediately feel the grandeur and luxury. Outside the hotel was a musical fountain with shows every 10 minutes.
Every hotel/casino/mall we visited had some fancy attraction to draw in the tourists. Here’s the Galaxy Hotel (where I learned to play Black Jack and lost less than expected):
Another part of the Galaxy hotel, featured a light & music show:
And of course, Macao has its own Eiffel Tower (The Parisian hotel), Westminster Abbey (The Londoner hotel), and Venice (The Venetian hotel).
Eiffel Tower at The Parisian
The outside of The Londoner hotel resembles Westminster Abbey
The connector between The Londoner hotel and other nearby hotels features attractions like a post box and Platform 9 3/4.
The Venetian hotel, looks very similar to the one in Las Vegas
For all its glitz and glamor, Macao’s residential areas look far more modest. It almost felt like a small town in India, slightly run-down, but far cleaner.
We also visited the Ruins of St. Paul’s, a picturesque ruin of a 17th century Portuguese Catholic church.
According to Wikipedia, the church was constructed by Japanese Christian craftsment who were converted by Jesuits and expelled from Japan.
Shenzhen
We drove from Macao to Shenzhen, a tech hub in China (the "Silicon Valley of China"?). Since Shenzhen is in Mainland China, we again encountered a strictly-controlled border cross at Hengqin.
The crossing was interesting because the driving-side flipped — Hong Kong & Macao drive on the left-side of the road (like the UK/India), whereas Mainland China drives on the right (like Europe/US). Just past the border-crossing, an overpass allowed cars traveling in our direction to seamlessly move from the left side of the road to the right!
We continued to drive through Zhuhai to Shenzhen.
The city features high-rise apartments and offices, several vast parks, and a beautiful shoreline.
The loudspeakers from the stretching group was drowning out a public Hulusi (gourd-flute) concert.
My favorite area was the “Dating Corner”. Adults put up their own matrimonial profiles, grouped by gender and age-range.
There were a bunch of older people walking around reading the profiles. We got a lot of stares, but surprisingly (to Harry), no one talked to us.
(Probably because we were speaking in English, and I was obviously a foreigner 😂)
Guangzhou
Guangzhou is the big old city next-door to Shenzhen (as though Shenzhen wasn’t big enough). Harry told us how modern Shenzhen was only built in the last few decades, whereas Guangzhou has a history spanning centuries.
The key attraction of Guangzhou was the iconic Canton Tower.
The tower is 1,975 feet tall, taller than Toronto’s CN Tower.
The most stunning aspect of the tower was that it hosts amusement rides on its roof! This is a Sky Drop, featuring a 100-foot drop from 1,900 feet above the ground 😲
We also visited the Guangxiao Temple. I enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere, and acted as a tour-guide for my friends since its structure reminded me of Hindu temples in India!
The temple has existed since ~400 AD. According to legend, Bodhidharma stopped here and dug a well to fill his water bowl.
A lot of people pray at the temples, but most Chinese people aren’t Buddhists and don’t really believe in God. However, they continue to pray for specific desires/goals. (At least, that’s my understanding.)
Shanghai
Shanghai – one of the best-known cities in China. But I liked Shenzhen better 😅. It certainly didn’t help that it rained for the entire duration of our visit there!
The famous Bund. We took in the dazzling lights all around us, the skyscrapers, the Oriental Pearl tower, and the Huangpu River.
The Yuyuan Garden was built in the 16th century, and is one of the many traditional Chinese gardens we visited across the country. The gardens are known for their pavilions and ponds.
A key feature of Chinese gardens is their rock formations, especially the presence of ‘scholar rocks’. (The name actually translated to ‘spirit stones’.)
Nanjing
Nanjing’s best "attraction" was the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. Curated and presented in the manner of a Holocaust Memorial, this museum presents the story of atrocities committed by soldiers of the Japanese Army after they invaded Nanjing during World War II. For various political reasons, Japan attempted to cover-up the situation in Nanjing, and the Chinese government continues to pressure Japan’s government to acknowledge and apologize for the incident. Like most popular attractions in China, free tickets need to be booked days in advance. However, unlike other attractions, foreign citizens are admitted without a ticket – presumably so that they may learn about the grave history of Nanjing.
The Presidential Palace was the office of the President of the Republic of China in the early 20th century.
There were plenty of portraits of one of Modern China’s founding fathers, Sun Yat-sen.
However, the most memorable "attraction" in Nanjing: Bathrooms in the Deji Plaza mall! Each floor was themed 😂
The Mirror Lounge had a baby grand piano. Here, Daniel plays jazz piano to entertain washroom guests 😆
Zhouzhuang
Zhouzhuang is an ancient water town. Built in the 1300s, its canals and buildings are preserved as a cultural and tourist attraction. IMO this was the prettiest spot I visited in China 😃
We took a boat around the canals. Our pilot decided to serenade us with traditional Chinese folk songs while navigating the quiet, tranquil canal 😌
Beijing
As a city, Beijing was my least-favorite. The infrastructure felt dated, and the air quality was abysmal. (I tried not wearing a mask at first, but could feel particles in my lungs a few hours later 😢)
However, we visited iconic attractions and ate excellent food!
The Forbidden City was the palace and residence of several generations of Chinese emperors. In a sense, it’s a gigantic version of the Zhouzhuang mansions or Nanjing’s Presidential Palace, but far more imposing and regal.
It’s built intentionally on hills/mountains, so the Wall is actually much steeper than I expected. Walking along the wall involves climbing hundreds of lofty steps (it’s steeper than it looks in these photos).
The building outside Tiananmen Square has a massive oil portrait of Mao Zedong – 6 x 4.5 meters, weighing 1.5 tons!
The entire area is tightly controlled, with several ID and bag checkpoints (and, of course, throngs of domestic tourists). Opposite Tiananmen Square is a memorial housing Mao Zedong’s preserved body (yes, I saw him!).
The Bird’s Nest Stadium was constructed for the 2008 Olympics, and also hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics. They let us walk along the roof as well, with great views of the stadium construction and the city itself.
Inside the Bird’s Nest Stadium, some rehearsal of a March Past was in progress. Groups of people would march along the track, then do a mini performance. After a minute of listening, Harry did a double-take — he couldn’t believe that these performers were all bank employees from different branches of the Bank of China!
The announcer was saying things like: “Next is the contingency from the Nanjing branch. Make sure to visit for all your loan needs, we offer the best interest rates” 😂
Kun Opera
I loved so many parts of this trip to China, but the highlight for me was watching traditional Kun Opera in Beijing.
We watched a performance of excerpts from classic operas at the Mei Lanfang Theater. Each excerpt was ~1 hour long, narrating a very short story through song and dance.
It doesn’t seem to be super-popular: The auditorium was small and was only half-full. We were easily the youngest people there, and my friends were bored out of their minds. But I enjoyed every bit of it!
The plot for each can be told in 3 sentences, but the singing and dialogue take a huge amount of time 😂
This is a scene from Journey to the West, one of the 4 epics from China. It tells the story of a monkey God, Sun Wukong escorting a Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage to India while fighting demons that are trying to eat the monk (to achieve immortality). Sun Wukong bears some similarities to Hanuman from Indian mythology.
Live music was played by an ensemble of traditional instruments. To the right of the stage, a digital screen showed captions of what the characters were saying. (Even if you know Chinese, it’s hard to understand song lyrics because they tones are important to distinguish Chinese words).
Listen to the actors speaking and singing in a drawn out manner – it takes them 3x time to speak their dialogues!
The women speak-sing in a specific style at a high pitch, rising sharply up and then down.
Insights
Vegetarian food
All of my Chinese colleagues told me to be prepared for a hard time finding Vegetarian food in China. This is because most Chinese people don’t really understand what constitutes a Vegetarian diet. However, I had too much good food everyday. (Depite walking much more than normal, I gained 5 pounds during this trip 😅)
In Shenzhen, Harry’s mom prepared delicious home-cooked meals over three days. She took the time to learn about my requirements, explain them to her helper-chef, and even cooked using separate woks and utensils to avoid cross-contamination ❤️
Being a vegetarian tourist in China isn’t too bad if:
- You have a Chinese-speaker accompanying you everywhere. Harry would ask servers if they can customize some of their dishes, and they’d often consented.
- You’re willing to spend [relatively] large amounts on Michelin-rated vegetarian restaurants. There are more of them in China than in the US!
The fancy vegetarian restaurants were all Chinese cuisine, sometimes adding creative touches to classic dishes. Each of these meals cost around USD$80 per person.
My favorite restaurant during this trip was Fu He Hui in Shanghai, a one-Michelin Star restaurant.
In 无味舒食(思南店) ,Shanghai, the server showed us the ingredients that would be used for the 10-course meal. The chefs started working on them live over the next couple of hours as we ate!
In Wujie, Suzhou, the menu included a Jain-vegetarian-friendly section! 🤯
The menus at most Chinese restaurants are long, and usually contain pictures of each dish. This is 上蔬无瑕·创意素食, Nanjing.
This is Mapo Tofu, a prototypical spicy Sichuanese dish. One of my favorite Chinese dishes, IMO it’s even better when it contains Sichuan peppercorns (numbing spice).
King’s Joy, Beijing, is a TWO-Michelin Star vegetarian restaurant. (It was recently demoted from three stars.)
Other food I had in China:
Boba shops are aplenty in China... but believe it or not, none of them sell boba as a topping any more! Just 'healthy' toppings like whipped cream or pistachios.
On Diwali, my friends suggested that we eat Indian food for dinner. Some servers were Indian, but the Chinese manager took good care of us. I was the only Indian guest, everyone else was Chinese.
The Indian servers also spoke better Chinese than English 😂 (their native language was Hindi)
At the Conrad, Beijing, I enjoyed eating Tianjin-style pancakes for breakfast. It tasted kind-of like godhuma dosa (wheat dosa) but with a crunchy rice cracker filling and vegetables, served more like a quesadilla.
National pastime: Cosplaying!
Something that astounded me: ~10% of all the women I saw in all “historical” tourist attractions across China were “cosplaying” (wearing elaborate traditional costumes and makeup). Almost all of them were accompanied by a shabbily-clad boyfriend/husband carrying a bag of stuff and a camera 😂
It’s almost like it’s a national pastime activity for women in China. I even saw a couple of French teenagers dressed up and taking photos in Beijing, accompanied by their father. (Because they looked clearly non-Chinese, they got a lot of attention from onlookers and plenty of appreciative comments.)
Transportation
Scooters
In Shenzhen (and other parts of China), it’s legal for scooters to share the pedestrian path!
Trains
The train stations in China are enormous, and also tightly controlled. Just to enter the terminal, I needed to go through a bag check and ID check. We can only enter the platform (which is on a different floor) 10 minutes before the train departs, and they again do an ID check (since your ID is tied to the train ticket).
The all-electric bullet trains themselves are awesome. I was especially surprised that they were buttery-smooth on the tracks, despite speeding at 350 km/hr. The trick: Ballastless railway tracks, a technology developed in Germany.
Traditional railway tracks are elastic (they expand in hot temperatures), hence there has to be gaps between the rail segments. Ballastless tracks are inelastic and are set in concrete or asphalt, so there is no gap in the rails.
Airports
Just like the train stations, the airports were also ginormous. In fact, Beijing airport felt empty – there was way too much space!
Shenzhen Airport was architecturally pretty. It also had the fanciest Dairy Queen I've ever seen 😂
Place names
In most cultures, names of people and places have sometimes-unrelated archaic meanings. However, most places in China seem to be named literally after what/where they are.
Some examples of places going North to South:
Bei
+Jing
==> Nort + Capital city (city)Nan
+Jing
==> South + Capital city (city)He
+Bei
==> River + North ==> North of the Yangtze River (province)He
+Nan
==> River + South ==> South of the Yangtze River (province)Hu
+Bei
==> Lake + North ==> North of the Dongting Lake (province)Hu
+Nan
==> Lake + South ==> South of the Dongting Lake (province)Nan
+Shan
==> South + Mountain (district of Shenzhen)