China , Yangtze River & Hong kong

Good afternoon fellow Travelers:
I am ready to leave for China for the September6th trip. Just want to ask if there is anything I should bring or pack that was not mentioned . I booked this over a year ago and finally it is almost here.
Thank you for any tips.
Regards June S

Comments

  • A mask for the air pollution. Or you could ask the concierge at the hotel in Beijing.

    Also, if you convert currency, in Hong Kong, they won't accept the 1 yuan notes from the mainland that you have (not that it's a big deal, being worth .16 each when I was there last year), so get rid of them in mainland China.
  • Has anyone traveled this area on The Golden Week?
    We're booked Oct 1st 2020.
    Your experiences?

  • Isn’t Golden week in Japan?
  • edited December 2018
    British wrote:
    Isn’t Golden week in Japan?

    Both:

    The Golden Week, in the People's Republic of China, is the name given to a semi-annual 7-day national holiday, implemented in 2000:

    The "Chinese Lunar New Year Golden Week" (Chinese New Year) begins in January or February.
    The "National Day Golden Week" begins around 1 October.

    A third Golden Week holiday, which spanned 1 May and celebrated Labour Day, existed until 2007.

    In Japan, Golden Week (Gōruden Wīku, Gōruden Uīku) (or GW) is a week from the 29th of April to early May containing a number of Japanese holidays:

    April 29

    The Emperor's Birthday
    The Emperor's Birthday, 1949-1988
    Greenery Day, 1989-2006
    Shōwa Day, 2007-present[3]

    May 3

    Constitution Memorial Day

    May 4

    Citizen's Holiday, 1985-2006
    Greenery Day, 2007-present

    May 5

    Children's Day
  • Hello Alan, good info. We go to China in mid October next year, we just booked our flights. The price Tauck gave us for business class was $2000 more each on Cathay Pacific than we could book it on AMEX. Mr B used to use Cathay a lot for business and we can fly from JFK. He’s excited to finally take me to one of his favorites, Hong Kong.
  • bcorre2 wrote:
    Has anyone traveled this area on The Golden Week?
    We're booked Oct 1st 2020.
    Your experiences?

    I haven't done that myself, but from all reports and travel tips I've read, it sounds like everything's extraordinarily crowded, as it's a holiday for everyone, and there are a LOT of people in China! I went later in October, which was great, good weather and crowds not so bad. There's a lot of pushing and shoving; you just have to shove back.

    Also, the pollution was bad in a lot of areas, but not that many people were wearing masks, and nobody on my trip wore one.

    Last thing--I almost didn't go to China because of all I'd read and heard about horrible bathrooms. That was probably true in the past, but they really cleaned things up for the 2008 Olympics and added Western toilets to most bathrooms we went to. Even in the older areas, most of the bathrooms were pretty clean, and I didn't have to use any of the TP I brought.

    If I ever went back, I wouldn't do any shopping there. Poor quality, high prices.
  • Golden week is more than CROWDED! China is normally crowded - no sense of personal space for 1.4 billion people. Keep your elbows out! As for shopping, there are no bargains, and coming from NYC, I can buy many of the same items in Chinatown and SoHo. I’ve never spent so little on souvenirs! (I went on the China Odyssey)

  • edited November 2019

    We have just returned from China and from what we learned it is indeed very busy in China in Golden week. I can’t imagine the Great Wall nore crowded than when we were there.
    Toilets—-many toilets do not have toilet paper, they are clean but many have squat toilets with few if any western style.
    Pollution was not too bad while we were there, it was much worse when we were in Delhi.
    Shopping is expensive but we were able to buy some unique things like hand painted snuff bottles, the sort that are painted inside, we watched the artist paint them. Also, hand embroidered art, just took mine to be framed.

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