I’ve had a fascination with China for as long as I can remember. I have spent countless hours learning about this country – reading articles, watching documentaries and taking an introductory Mandarin class. Until now though, my views on China were entirely academic and certainly biased; they were formed entirely through hearing the opinions of others. I had never set foot in the country. So as we planned our trip, China was #1 on my list of places to visit. I’ve now scratched the surface, and my curiosity has only grown.
For a country of this size, population and regional diversity, I’m sure it would take years to truly get a good understanding of the cultures and ways of life in China. In total we only spent about 8 days there, so my opinions below are really an unvarnished first impression.
Our introduction to China had a tumultuous start. Before we left Canada, we were busy getting organized and applying for our Tanzania VISA, and ran short on time to apply for our China VISA . I did some online reading and found out that many Canadians take a short trip to Hong Kong, and apply for a VISA in 24-48 hours – so no worries, we’d get our VISA in Hong Kong.
Skip forward a couple months and we landed in Hong Kong, with the intention of staying for three days to secure our VISA to mainland China before moving on to a 10-day trip starting in Guilin and then taking a train North to Beijing. We walked over to the little VISA booth in the Hong Kong airport, and were shocked to hear that due to the fact that Debbie was born in Taiwan, this could cause some challenges with securing our VISA to China.
For most Canadians, getting a mainland China VISA in Hong Kong, is a smart and convenient way to go about it, but if you were born in Taiwan, beware! Debbie was travelling on her Canadian passport, so we assumed she would be treated like any other Canadian, but due to the current political situation between China and Taiwan, and China’s “One China Policy”, she was subject to some “special” restrictions. The end result was that our Chinese VISA was rejected in Hong Kong. In fairness to China, they do clearly state the policy that those born in Taiwan need to apply for VISA’s in their home country, so it was our error, but nonetheless it was beyond frustrating.
After a few minutes of losing my shit, we quickly began to replan our trip and cancelled our train tickets and hotels. I discovered, that Beijing (and numerous other cities in China) have a 144-hour VISA free transit exemption, whereby you can visit the city without a VISA if you are continuing onward to another country i.e. doing an extended layover in the city between flights. There was still the chance though, that we could be rejected upon arrival in Beijing, but my desire to see China was so strong, that we decided to gamble and go for it. Getting rejected in Beijing would mean losing more than a thousand dollars, so we were pretty freaked out about the possibility, but we didn’t have a lot of options.
We already had a flight out of Beijing to Japan booked, so we needed to kill a few days before heading to Beijing. Since Bali was on Debbie’s bucket list, we decided to make the best of a bad situation, and booked a last minute trip there (literally booked a flight for the next day).
Before leaving for our impromptu Bali trip, we spent the next day and a half in Hong Kong., sweating like pigs. Hong Kong is an interesting place, but it has the most disgusting, hot and humid weather that I have ever encountered. We stayed in Mongkok, and spent the majority of our time on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is definitely the most intensely crowded and fast-paced place that I have visited, far more intense than New York. The combination of the crowds, the sweat, the bright lights and the smells of street food definitely give Hong Kong a unique vibe.
With our limited time we had to be selective about what we saw. The first day we slept, toured Mongkok and one of the massive malls in Kowloon. The next day, we grabbed the best tasting and most authentic Kosher Chinese food I’ve ever tasted, and then took in the view of the Hong Kong skyline. Our last day we visited the ladies market, and bought lots of cheap souvenirs for our friends before heading to the airport to catch our flight.
Hong Kong is definitely a neat place to visit, but three days felt like just about enough time to see the highlights. If I were planning a Hong Kong visit again I would say that 4 days is about the right amount of time.
I’ll cover the rest of our China visit to Beijing and Guangzhou in an upcoming post – stay tuned!
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