China Guide
China Guide
• Population: 1.404 billion
• Capital: Beijing
• Religion: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism
Popular Sites
Beijing – the capital and cultural centre of China
Shanghai – the largest city, famed for its riverside cityscape
Xi’an – home of the Terracotta Warriors
Guilin – scenic city with sensational mountain and river scenery
Guangzhou – a prosperous and liberal city near Hong Kong
Lhasa – “Land of the Gods”
Chengdu – hometown of Giant Panda
Hangzhou – beautiful city with lake view
Lijiang – famed for UNESCO Heritage Site, Old Town of Lijiang
Popular Foods
Peking Roast Duck is absolutely the most famous dish in Beijing. It was an imperial dish during ancient China, some thousand years ago. The roast duck is renowned for its bright color, crispy skin and juicy meat. Have a roast duck meal is somehow, becoming a highly recommended thing to do for those first-time consumers during their Beijing tour.
Dumplings is a food that can be made and cooked in many different ways. They are small lumps of dough, and you can eat them as staple food or snack. Dumplings have many different flavors according to different fillings and ingredient in it. Popular ones are beef with carrot, mutton with carrot, pork with green onion and mushroom with smashed stir-fried egg.
Hot Pot is a very popular dish in china nowadays. It origins from north part of the country, today it is welcomed both south and north China. Hotpot in Sichuan province is famed for its authentic spicy soup, and hotpot in the north like Inner Mongolia is famed for its quality mutton.
Ma Po Tofu or Ma Po’s Bean Curd, is a very typical and famous spicy dish in Sichuan and is very popular among people in Chengdu. It is a home-made dish and very easy to cook as well. The main ingredient of this dish is tender bean curd that set in a spicy and bean-based sauce, usually an oily and bright red suspension, and often cooked with minced meat, usually pork or beef.
Chow Mein is a Chinese term indicated a very convenient and popular dish in China – the stir-fried noodles. Generally speaking, a stir-fried noodles will include noodles (flat or round), meat (port, beef or chicken) and varied vegetables like onions, celery and carrot sticks.
Sweet and Sour Spareribs is a quite common home-made dish in China. With creative design, it has well-mixed two totally different flavors – Sweet and Sour. The dish consists of fried pork in bite sized pieces and the subsequently stir-fried in a more customized version of sweet and sour sauce that made of sugar, ketchup, white vinegar, and soy sauce. The additional ingredients include pineapple dices, green pepper and onion pieces.
Language
Chinese (Putonghua or Mandarin) is the official language of China and it is also the most used language in the world.
Weather & Climate
When planning a tour to China, you should consider your tour time and tour spots. You may know that China climate and weather and season have relations with sceneries. In a different day with a different weather, you may see a totally different sceneries.
In spring (February – April), China gives a warm welcoming for you to tour in China, for spring is the most advisable tour time in most tour spots, especially for natural sceneries. Summer (May – August) is a bit hot, suitable for activities like bamboo drift and canoe drift and a series of tours like tours to water towns, tours to beaches and islands, tours to mountainous tour spots, and tours to see splendid waterfalls. Autumn (September – October) is cool, with few rainfall, and suitable for tours to the Great Wall and activities like mountain-climbing, and rock-climbing. Winter (November – January) is cold, and suitable for activities like skiing in the outdoor and for tours to places with snow like Harbin, Jilin, and Xinjiang to see the frozen world.
Currency
The Chinese currency is Renminbi, designed and issued by the state bank, the People’s Bank of China. The unit of Renminbi is Yuan and its fractional currency is Jiao. One Yuan equals ten Jiao. The paper money is divided into Yuan and Jiao. Renminbi coins include Yuan, five Jiao and one Jiao. The nominal value of Yuan is divided into 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. The nominal value of Jiao is one, two, five Jiao. The abridged form of Renminbi is RMB.
Exchange rate:
1 USD = 6,9372 CNY
1 EURO = 8,1815 CNY
Getting Around
Airplane tour is available in some scenic areas. You may take a helicopter to have a bird’s eye view of a scenic areas or a city. If you are interested, helicopter sightseeing is available in cities like Sanya, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Guilin. In Yangshuo ten-mile gallery scenic area, Guilin, helicopter sightseeing is available to see its beautiful scenery from a high place.
A cruise along rivers is made for a sightseeing about river scenery. In China, there are several famous cruises, the Yangtze River cruise, the Grand Canal cruise, the Huangpu River cruise, the Pearl River cruise and the Li River cruise. A cruise along the Yangtze River is featured with steep cliffs along the river, and breath-taking scenery. The section from Shanghai to Chongqing, is one of the best for sighting, and it extends for 2,399 kilometers. For the cruise in the Grand Canal, the 146.6km Suzhou-Hangzhou section is the essence part, and it gives tourists a visual feast by its natural beauty. The 83km-long Guilin-Yangshuo cruise route is tailor-made for a sightseeing of karst landscape, and Guilin scenery.
Train sightseeing is another way of sightseeing, and in China, there is a luxurious train tour by taking the Orient Express, which is praised as one of the world’s top ten luxurious trains for its service, food, accommodation, scenery, course and tourists’ experience, and it has a maximum passenger capacity of 160 persons. This train has several courses, and one course travels from Beijing to Urumchi, passing through Hohhot, Xila Muren Prairie, Yinchuan, Shapotou, Jiayuguang, Dunhuan, and Turpan, for a 12 days tour, and the middle and back section of this course are overlapped with the course of Silk Road.
