Six Tips for First-Time Visitors to China

The newly futuristic city of Guiyang

For the past two months I have been traveling around China, and it is my favorite country that I’ve traveled in as a tourist. From when I first touched down in Beijing to when I got on my last bullet train ride back to Beijing, I had so many incredible experiences backpacking in more than 10 different Chinese provinces. I met friendly people who I will stay in touch with, I ate tons of amazing food, and the historic and architectural sites I saw were stellar. Most interesting to me was the extent to which China’s provinces feel very different from one another, despite the Han Chinese “cultural glue”.

Due to the langauge barriers, traveling here as an English-Speaker is not a chill, relaxing walk in the park, but it is very engaging and encourages you to learn. Here are six tips to make your trip to China more enjoyable and rewarding.

Read about the history and culture of China before you go.

This should be done wherever you go, but I would argue that in China it is deserves even more attention. Chinese culture is thousands of years old, not hundreds. There is such a huge diversity of traditions and ideas that have developed over the years. With the oldest continuous civilization that exists today and a ton of regional variation, you are bound to find aspects of Chinese culture that interest you. There’s no way anyone, especially a tourist on a visit, can learn everything about a culture, but it is very important to understand the basics. So read the pages in the back of the Lonely Planet book about the culture of China as a whole, and then go online (or if you’re at college, take an elective) to learn in more detail about specific elements of the culture that interest you. For me, it was the Buddhist sculpture and architecture that I found the most interesting.

Especially outside the biggest cities, you are likely to get stared at or asked questions if you don’t look Chinese. Get used to it.

Inland China does not have an established western backpacker trail. Whether it’s in the restaurant cars of the K-class intercity trains or those hole in the wall restaurants in the alleyways behind the office buildings, there will be plenty of times outside the big cities when being a foreigner (laowai, or the Cantonese term, gweilo) gets you attention. From my experience, older people were more likely to just stare, and the younger people are often keen to practice English. Try not to take it as a bad, uncomfortable, or offensive thing. You may be one of the only westerners they’ll ever see in that vicinity.

Travel by train in the hard seat or sleeper carriage-. It’s affordable, and a great way to get to know the locals.

Even if you don’t speak Chinese, the trains in China are easy to use once if you do advance research and you get the hang of it. Buy your tickets in advance online and pick them up at the station, because you never know if it may be fully booked. Also, get to the station at least 40 minutes in advance, so there is time to wait in line and go through security. If you don’t speak mandarin well, research the train schedule beforehand so that you know how long it should take before you reach your destination, as announcements on older trains are not in english often. Also, memorize the chinese characters for your destination. But all of this is worth it. On the hard-seat and sleeper carriages, travel is cheap, and you will meet many locals, some of whom will be keen to practice English, share snacks with you, or just be curious about you. You should also converse with them in their native language, and demonstrate your Mandarin or Cantonese knowledge.

Accept that you aren’t going to see everything.

Trying to visit every cool highlight in every region of China would be as time consuming as trying to do the same in all of Europe. China is extremely diverse and gargantuan, and should be treated as a contiennt when planning trips. It’s not like Vietnam or Thailand, where there are well-defined tourist trails with easy-to-name highlights along the way. So choose several provinces of the country, and see the “must sees” or whatever you are most interested to see in those provinces. You’ll never be able to see it all.

Learn basic mandarin. Even a little effort goes a long way.

Outside of the most touristy areas in big cities, you will need a little bit of mandarin knowledge. But it’s a huge misconception to say that this means you need to be fluent in mandarin. From my experience, newer backpackers often over-estimate the difficulties posed by language barriers, and the more experienced ones who continue to do so are generally the ones who don’t make any effort whatsoever to speak the language. Folks, do the world a favor and learn at least a bit of langauge, and try to use it as much as you can. In China, it is a necessity, and even if a non-english-speaking chinese-speaker will try to understand an english-speaker, they will be far more polite and receptive if you make just the slightest little bit of effort. Sometimes nowadays, service people will have guests type in english in phones so that they can use translator apps to figure out what tourists want. But don’t be demanding. They are under no obligation to speak english, and shouldn’t feel that they are so.

Avoid “Laowai-passing”

Laowai passing (or as it is known in Japan, Gaijin-passing) is when you use your status as an ignorant foreigner to get away with things you aren’t allowed to do, since you know that officials (who possibly dont speak english) may avoid confronting you. An example would be if, say, you don’t have enough money on your subway ticket to be able to leave at the station you get off at, and the staff don’t speak english and aren’t able to explain how to use the subway properly. And so they’d just let you through the side gate. While many foreigners get away with this sort of thing, it really isn’t cool. You may well be the only foreigner someone on that subway line sees that day, and if you make a bad impression by doing this sort of thing, you are collectively hurting the reputation of foreigners in the local area. Learn how to do basic things that may be different from at home, like paying for the bus or subway. Learn the Chinese characters for ‘entrance” and “exit”, or “male” and “female” (for toilets). Also, if you’re going to be talking to locals (which you should), make sure to learn Chinese etiquette around gift-giving, meals out, and asking about things. There are many online resources that can help with that. Don’t be overly anxious about it, if you mess a few things up they will understand. But you need to show that you care about trying to fit in with etiquette. Also, know that 4 and 7 are unlucky numbers (which is why this post has six tips instead of seven). 

Respect in Developing Countries: 7 Behaviors Travelers Should Avoid

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I recently got back from traveling around Peru for a month, and as it was my first major trip in a developing country, I’ve taken time to think about the most important tips for being respectful while traveling in developing countries.

I think that in rich countries, people get an image of poor countries as being hopeless places. When positive trends take place in developing countries, the US media doesn’t report on it, unless the supposedly positive trend is that white people are going over to help them. By watching the news footage of whatever tragic event has recently happened in a poor country, or by seeing charity ads with poor, starving African children, you wouldn’t know that extreme poverty has decreased from 30% of the world’s population to 10% of it since 1990. You wouldn’t know that Sub-Saharan Africa has several of the world’s fastest growing economies. You wouldn’t know that literacy rates in developing countries have seen incredible gains in the past 50 years. You may know that many Africans have no access to clean tap water, but you wouldn’t know that more Africans have mobile phone service than have access to clean tap water.

We get such a warped view of developing nations in the media, to the point where even when well-meaning backpackers visit those countries, they are influenced by this, using travel as a chance to confirm their pre-existing biases rather than learn things they may have otherwise not learned.

For example, a person may go to a country in Latin America and have no problems getting around on buses most of the time (as I did). But as soon as they have one experience sitting on a delayed bus with a driver running late, they see it as evidence of the “laid back culture” of Latin America. And so, it makes them feel adventurous, as if it’s an interesting story to tell. But if these same people had more delayed bus rides in the United States, it wouldn’t be about a “laid back culture”. Instead, they’d be complaining about America’s infrastructure problems nonstop, and talking about the failures of the US government to build High Speed Rail and improve the nation’s congestion problem.

When Western tourists visit developing countries, they can contribute to local businesses and help their economies. But they can also give locals a sour impression of westerners, sometimes deservedly so. I think that in developing countries, it’s especially important to respect local norms and respect the people.

And so, this list is of 7 problematic behaviors westerners should avoid in poor countries.

1) Taking photos of local people without permission

This is problematic because it violates the privacy of people, and also turns human beings into “props”, or trophy pictures for your Instagram profile. It’s important to remember that when people take these photos, they often selectively choose the most “exotic” looking people in the most “exotic” places. In Peru, hardly anyone takes photos of the local people in Miraflores, a wealthy suburb of Lima. But many people take pictures, without permission, of rural, traditionally dressed indigenous people in the Sacred Valley region near Cusco. And since that’s the image that many westerners get of Peru, they don’t realize the fact that wealthy suburbs exist in the country too. This contributes to the problems with how developing countries are perceived by westerners. No one ever goes to wealthy places in the US and takes photos of the “strange Americans going to work in their business suits”. So neither should you do that with people in developing countries, unless they really want you to.

2) Making tasteless jokes or remarks

You’d think that travelers who go to developing countries would know better, but unfortunately, many will make tasteless or downright racist remarks or jokes, often to other tourists, about how local people live. On the first trekking tour I did in Peru (in Colca Canyon), there was one woman who kept making offensive jokes and remarks about “primitive native people believing in evil spirits”. This shouldn’t be happening. Traveling should be an experience that teaches people how insignificant we are as individuals in this world of seven billion, and how millions of people are fine living differently than we do. Sadly, some travelers don’t realize this.

3) Choosing tour companies that don’t have ethical business practices

It’s important to research the business practices of companies that offer tours. Make sure tour companies give back to their local communities with the money they make from tourists. Not all of them do. For example, In northern Tanzania, there is a lot of competition among safari companies, and many have unethical business practices. These practices can include racism, a lack of commitment to preserving wildlife, not giving back to locals, and cutting corners with safety.

4) Volunteering to do work that locals could do themselves

In March 2012, The Atlantic magazine published an article called “The White-Savior Industrial Complex” by Teju Cole. See the article here. It talked about how a voluntourism industry has grown massively in the years following the Haiti Earthquake. Many westerners who want to do good in developing nations will pay money for the chance to volunteer in a rural village for a couple of weeks, laying bricks for a local school, taking pictures with the kids, and then going home with a huge ego and idea that they are a hero. It may sound harmless, but it really isn’t. The problem is that in many of these communities, the work tourists do is work that locals could do themselves. When tourists do this work, it contributes to the problematic “white savior” narrative and takes work opportunities away from local people. So unless you have a really specialized skill that no one in the local community has, it’s best to avoid being a “voluntourist”.

5) Ignoring Local Customs and Etiquette

In developed nations like those Western Europe or Japan, American tourists are made fun of for being ignorant and not knowing the local customs. And while it annoys the people who live there and do business there, it is often given a pass. But when you ignore the local customs in a developing country, you are doing more harm, leaving the people with a very sour view of the few Western tourists they get (relative to developed nations), and sometimes leading them to lose faith in the ability for tourism to help their communities. Vang Vieng in Laos is notorious for attracting backpackers who go tubing, party, and trash the place while ignoring local customs. This has really hurt the locals’ relationship with the tourism industry. Just don’t be another neocolonialist. Learn basic etiquette.

6) Eating the same food you could eat back home

This isn’t common among all backpacker circles, but still does happen. There are people who will go to Southeast Asian countries and eat cheeseburgers, pancakes, and pizza, and only eat from touristy restaurants. Sometimes it is because people don’t want to venture outside their comfort zone, but It’s often because of an irrational fear of local food. It’s usually very safe to eat local food as long as you do your research on food safety beforehand, and avoid places where locals aren’t eating.

7) Becoming a pretentious, “enlightened” narcissist after your trip

Look, I’m sure three month trip in South America was great. You learned a lot. You gained a lot of knowledge about the world. But it doesn’t make you superior to your friends back home. It doesn’t give you an excuse to be a pretentious narcissist. Travel shouldn’t just be about you “finding yourself” (whatever that means), it should be about the places you go and what you learn about the world from it. An insecure person becomes an arrogant know-it-all after traveling, who talks about travel when it isn’t wanted. A happy, knowledgable traveler should become more humble after traveling, as they learn more and more that it’s impossible to know everything about the world. Listen to what friends back home say, especially if they’ve had a different travel experience then you. And don’t dismiss those who love to read about other cultures but haven’t traveled much. Travel is a great way to learn about the world, but it isn’t the only way. Travel is a privilege and costs a lot of money too. Many people can’t, no matter how many articles on the internet talk about someone who “visited 100 countries for free” or how “Anyone can travel if they put their mind to it”.

 

So there you have it. These are seven very problematic behaviors to avoid in developing countries. It’s important to keep these in mind as you travel and plan future travel.

 

Tips for visiting Boston from a true local

As I live near Boston, I have decided to write about visiting Boston.

Boston is a wonderful city filled with great historic sights, restaurants, and museums. More than anything else, Boston is a city that blends the old and new. You can be right next to tall modern buildings and colleges with international students, and then be walking around an area with old colonial buildings soon after. The city is not only a blend of old and new, but is also a blend of traditional New England and cultural diversity. It is provincial and multicultural at the same time. The city’s immigrants who come to Boston for an education have a lot to do with this. This is a great city to explore, and here’s my tips for seeing it.

1. See Faneuil Hall, but don’t eat there

There’s a lot of restaurants in Faneuil Hall that seem like they have good food. Most of these places, however, are tourist traps. Plus, you’ll never find a place to sit that hasn’t been taken. Don’t eat at Faneuil Hall. Go out to other parts of the city such as the North End, Chinatown, and the South End. You’ll have much better food at a much better price.

2. Don’t Drive

Don’t drive in Boston. Just don’t. The public transportation has its faults but it is good enough to get you around to the major tourist areas. The drivers here in Boston are very aggressive and in most of the city, finding parking is a nightmare. There can also be heavy traffic. Instead, use the new bike share system, or take the T (the subway). Most of the MBTA system is safe. Just don’t ride the Orange line through Roxbury at night.

3.Take a walk!

Just walking around Boston is a historical treat in itself. Walk through its patchworks of different neighborhoods to get a feel for just how diverse this city truly is. You’ll feel like each neighborhood is a different world. You can walk between the quaint houses of Beacon Hill, then cross a busy street, go past Charles MGH station, and walk across the bridge to cambridge. It’s a very interesting experience, more so than in most US cities. Another great walk is the harbor walk. You can start in Charlestown, then go around the North End and down to South Boston while clinging to the edge of a harbor.

4. Go to more squares than just harvard square

Harvard Square, while it’s got some good restaurants and shopping, is touristy. Make sure you also eat at restaurants near some of the other squares, like Kendall Square or Inman Square. You’ll see another side to the city than many tourists see.