China

China is the trip that most rewards preparation and most punishes turning up unprepared. Two things will define your experience more than anything in a guidebook: whether you have set up mobile payments before arriving, and whether you have a VPN running. Cash is nearly extinct in the cities, foreign cards are refused almost everywhere, and the apps you rely on for maps, messaging and search are blocked.

Get those right and the country is astonishing to travel in. The high-speed rail network is the best in the world — Beijing to Shanghai is four and a half hours, city centre to city centre, for around $80. And the food is not one cuisine but eight, which differ from each other more than French does from Italian. Sichuan numbs, Cantonese steams, Hunan burns, Shandong is wheat and vinegar, Jiangsu is delicate and sweet.

Two weeks gets you three regions properly. Do not try for more.

April to May and September to October are the two windows: mild, dry and clear. Avoid the first week of May and the first week of October — the national holidays put hundreds of millions of people on the move and every train and hotel is booked. Northern winters are severely cold and dry; Beijing sits below freezing for weeks. July and August are hot, humid and the wettest in the south.

Rail is the line most people underestimate — three long legs is $205, though it buys back three days you would otherwise lose. Food is remarkably cheap for the quality: a bowl of hand-pulled noodles is ¥15, a full Sichuan meal for two with beer is ¥120. Entry tickets add up faster than in most of Asia, and the popular sites now require advance online booking with a passport number.

Accommodation is the biggest line in a China budget and the one with a rule attached. Every hotel must register foreign guests with the police within 24 hours of check-in, and a hotel that is not set up for that system cannot take you. This is why bookings are sometimes refused at the desk: a licensing and software question, not an attitude one, and it is usually the cheapest places that are not equipped.

Book somewhere that states it accepts foreign passports, and for anything small or independent, message ahead and get a clear yes before paying. The national chains — Hanting, Ji, Atour, Orange, Home Inn — run from budget to mid-range, sit near metro stations and are used to foreign guests. Expect a passport scan and a refundable deposit at check-in.

Paying is no longer the obstacle it was. Alipay and WeChat Pay both accept international Visa and Mastercard; set them up before you fly rather than in an arrivals hall. Payments up to ¥200 are free and there is roughly a 3% fee above that. Carry some cash and two physical cards as a backup, because hotels are among the few places that still take a card directly.

Guangzhou is not on the route above and most first trips skip it, but it is the home of Cantonese food and a rail hub for Hong Kong and Shenzhen, so it earns a stop if you have the days. One warning if you do: the Canton Fair fills the city twice a year, in mid-April to early May and mid-October to early November, and hotel rates rise sharply for about six weeks in total.

If you stay with friends or in a privately booked apartment, the registration becomes yours to do: local police station, in person, within 24 hours in cities, with your passport and the owner’s documents.

Take the Great Wall at Mutianyu or Jinshanling instead of Badaling — the restored, crowded, coach-served section is the one to leave alone. In Shanghai, the observation decks charge for a view of a skyline that looks better from the Bund at street level, for nothing.

For tea, sit down in a Renmin Park teahouse in Chengdu rather than accepting an invitation to a tea ceremony from someone who approaches you near a tourist site — that particular script ends in a large bill. And give your three regions their full time rather than adding a fourth: seven cities in fourteen days means you have seen seven railway stations.