Travel

Open suitcase, charger in one hand, extra pair of jeans in the other. Does either one really need to come to China? I still remember my first trip around Southeast Asia. I was new to traveling and packed like I was moving house: a backpack stuffed with full-size toiletries, too many clothes, and every little

At airport security in China, an officer may pick up your power bank, turn it over, and check the label. They are looking for a tiny mark on the body: CCC. If your trip includes a flight within mainland China, those three letters can decide whether the power bank travels with you or stays behind.

Laundry never makes it into the fantasy version of a trip. Nobody plans a China itinerary by saying, “Tuesday: temple, noodles, wash socks.” Then day five arrives, the clean T-shirts are gone, something in your suitcase smells suspicious, and suddenly the most beautiful words on a hotel listing are self-service laundry. This is one of

A suitcase behaves very differently on a Chinese train than it does on a flight. At an airport, your big bag disappears at check-in and becomes somebody else’s problem for a few hours. On a Chinese train, it stays with you. You take it through security, onto the platform, into the carriage, and then find

On a trip through Southeast Asia, an American friend of mine got thirsty, walked into the hotel bathroom, turned on the tap, and started filling a glass. I stopped her almost on instinct. “Wait — don’t drink that.” She looked at me. I looked at the glass. For a second, we were both probably wondering

Landmarks tell you what a city wants to show you. Markets, libraries, and restrooms tell you how ordinary life actually works. Chinese has an old phrase for the basics that keep a household going: chai mi you yan jiang cu cha (柴米油盐酱醋茶) — firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. Toilet paper never

Your phone charger might plug straight into a wall in China. Your hair straightener might plug in just as easily, and then cook itself. That’s the catch with power in China. The shape of the plug is only half the question. The other half is voltage, and it’s the half that ruins travel gadgets. What

For a foreign visitor, your passport is effectively your train ticket in China. The booking is tied to your passport number, so you normally don’t need to collect a paper ticket or show a QR code. At the station, the same passport is what gets you onto the platform. It also means the one thing

At a fruit stall in China, the price on the sign isn’t per kilo. It’s per jin, and that small word changes the math. In mainland China, one jin (斤) is 0.5 kilograms, so to convert jin to kg, divide by 2. Ten jin is 5 kg. One hundred jin is 50 kg. That’s the

My American friend had just landed in Beijing and needed a few clothes. Nothing on the racks seemed to come in her size, so she picked the one she figured was closest. Back at her place, she couldn’t even get it on. Nothing was wrong with the clothes, or with her. She’d just read a