So I’m going with my school for a 10 day trip to China, and the organizers of the trip have warned those going on the trip not to touch any stray animals on the street (which is obvious), that we can only drink bottled water, and that we can only eat certain foods. So I have a couple of questions for those who have traveled to China or perhaps the few who are currently living there:
Can I shower/wash my face with the tap water? I know I’m not drinking the water when I wash, but is it still safe?
I’m a vegetarian, so what type of things for me are actually safe to eat?
What are the risks of getting hepatitis (Hepatitis A I think they said was common in China, forgive me if i’m wrong)? What other illnesses am I running the risk of getting and is there any way I can prevent it?
This is a touring trip, so we’re going to be on the go a lot:
4) What is the weather in China in March usually like? I think they said the temperatures are usually in the 40s and 50s (Fahrenheit, I mean), so should I pack warm layers?
5) Should I bring something to cover my face so I won’t get sunburnt?
Those are the only questions I can think of right now, but if anyone has any other suggestions/advice for an American’s first time visiting China, please feel free to contribute!
I traveled to China for three weeks in the fall of 2005. I can help answer some of your questions.
I washed in tap water but brushed my teeth with bottled water. My boyfriend and I bought a few large bottles of water every day and carried them with us for drinking, teeth brushing, making tea, etc.
Every vegetable we ate was cooked (either pan-cooked or in soup, etc.) We didn’t want to run the risk of hepatitis. The apples (which were the best apples I’ve ever had in my life, btw.) we washed with our bottled water. Citrus we peeled. There should be plenty of menu options that exclude meat, and if you’re going with a group, chances are somebody with you speaks some Mandarin. Have that person write down a phrase on a piece of paper like “I do not eat meat or fish” that you can show to servers in restaurants so they know not to bring you a meat dish. There was a particularly good egg/tomato dish that I enjoyed in Beijing and Xi’an that I found on menus in a lot of restaurants, but there’s plenty of tofu and other non-meat main dishes.
If you drink and brush with bottled water and wash all your fruit/eat only cooked veggies, you should be fine. People warned me about eating street snacks/street food, but I found that kind of food to be fresher and tastier than a lot of restaurant food, because you can watch them cooking it right in front of you. It’s up to you how risky you want to be, though.
I can’t speak for weather in March, as I was there in October/November. Don’t worry too much about packing a lot of clothing - you can always buy warmer clothing or an umbrella if you need them when you get there.
I always wear a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen when I travel, but that’s because I’m really paranoid about sun damage (I actually tan and don’t burn). Do what feels comfortable to you. In the cities, the air is really smoggy/polluted, so you won’t be getting a lot of direct, bright sun. And you might want to pack a bandana or scarf that you can tie around your face if you’re stuck on a bus or train with a lot of people who are smoking.
As to other suggestions, it would definitely help if you mentioned what part of China you’ll be visiting. My suggestion would be to get a little phrasebook that also includes pictures of people doing the finger-counting thing (1-10 can be counted on the fingers, but it’s done differently than by westerners). I found that to be very handy when bargaining for food at little stands or when buying souvenier-type things. Be prepared to bargain a lot, as it’s part of the culture, and you will look like a dumb western tourist if you don’t at least try to bargain a little. Remember, just because it sounds cheap to you (Hey, Chinese money! Everything is cheap!) doesn’t mean you can’t get a better deal , and you can’t give the person you’re bargaining with a good story to tell his wife later on (I had a tourist who actually only paid 10 times what the thing was worth, not 100 times!). Also, do the math in your head - the first price they give you is rarely a good deal if translated into dollars.
If you are going on a school trip with other people and under supervision or with a guide and you are going to non-super rural areas - you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Just don’t drink tap water and take insect repellant for your skin. I’ve travelled all over Asia whilst living in Japan and China was one of the more safer countries when it comes to food and diseases.
Counting to ten using your fingers is done differently in China? That’s news to me. And I lived there for 20 years (although it was HK and Taiwan, but still).
Thanks for the suggestions. Here’s a list of the places we’re going to (there are some others but these are the main ones):
-Beijing
-The Palace Museum (The Forbidden City)
-Tiananmen Square
-The Great Wall, Ming Tomb
-Xian
-Tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Hua Qing Spring Pool
-Hangzhou
-Suzhou, Wuzhen
-Grand Canal, Panmen Gate
-Shanghai
One through five were the same, six was forefinger crooked, rest of the hand in a fist, I can’t rembember 7-9, ten was done with both index fingers tapped one against the other in a plus sign shape.
I’m sure it would work fine to do it the western way, but lots of people I dealt with, many of whom didn’t speak Mandarin but dialects, did the number counting on the fingers this way.
Cockatiel, that’s a really full list of sights and places. And all in 10 days? We didn’t do that much in 3 weeks.
The things I liked best about Xi’an that aren’t on your list were renting and riding bicycles atop the old city wall, and exploring the Muslim quarter, including the mosque. And I liked shopping best in Beijing, in the Panjiyuan marketplace (which is an outdoor marketplace only held on weekends). I don’t know whether you’ll have any time to do things on your own, though. We didn’t go to Hangzhou, Suzhou or Shanghai.
Heh, looks like the exact tour I was on a year ago, only we had more time. Ten days mean that you’ll be moving very fast. As others have said, drink bottled water or soft drinks. Some people on my tour only brushed their teeth with bottled water, but I didn’t. Most of my rooms had hot water dispensers and we took advantage of that to boil water before using. Other suggestions:
– Don’t overpack.
– Wear very comfortable shoes.
– Have extra memory and batteries for your digital camera.
– Get your shots before going … your dept of public health can advise on the shots.
– Watch out for traffic … the cars don’t pay any attention to the signs or cops. My technique was to stick close to some natives and follow them across the busy streets.
– Don’t expect too much from the food. Except for Shanghai, I found the food in the places on the tour sort of bland (but that’s just my taste).
– March is not a bad time because the hot weather and rains haven’t arrive yet, but it can get cool at night.
– You’re gonna have a ball!
Can I shower/wash my face with the tap water? I know I’m not drinking the water when I wash, but is it still safe?
Yes, but don’t get it in your mouth. And as noted above, brush your teeth with bottled water. People forget, so drape a bandana over your bathroom tap. Also, take a pair of flip flops to wear in the shower.
I’m a vegetarian, so what type of things for me are actually safe to eat?
As above. Still lots of vegetarians in Asia.
What are the risks of getting hepatitis (Hepatitis A I think they said was common in China, forgive me if i’m wrong)? What other illnesses am I running the risk of getting and is there any way I can prevent it? Before you go, you can get the first or first and second of the Hep A/B vaccination series, and update your DPT and MMR. However, there are no specific travelers’ recommendations for urban China.
My only advice on travelling in Asia is to prepare to get a little sick. You might not get sick too - but then you’re lucky.
Don’t miss out on some of the great food there because of being too careful. How careful should you be? Up to you. I boiled drinking water for five or ten minutes. I tried to avoid unwashed vegetables too. But I got tempted and ate seafood against my doctor’s orders (but seafood in Vietnam is bloody unbelievably good), and I got lazy and brushed in tap water.
I got a mild stomach bug on my last day there, and it lasted a few days back home.
On subsequent trips (I travelled there a lot in a short time around 1999 - 2000, I progressively observed fewer and fewer of the rules, and I didn’t get sick. I guess my body decided I was a local by that stage (but to go back there now, I’d need to start from Square One again, I guess).
Get your shots before you go. Be careful to a sensible extent, but don’t miss out on too much of the good stuff.
Bathing with the water isn’t a problem; eat anything that is cooked or peeled, vegetarian options are plentiful (although vegetarianism isn’t really all that common); Hep A can be transmitted by food (unfortunately you never know what veggies or fruits were fertilized by night soil) and the smart and safe thing to do would be to get the Hep A vaccine as well as up to date on all your other jabs as your doc would recommend.
I seem to remember Beijing being around 50s or so in March, with quite a stiff breeze common. I’m betting Xian will be chillier. Rule of thumb: pack less and buy extra clothes there. They’re so much cheaper it is silly, and gives you a cultural experience. And as far as sunburns, it’s not like you’re going to the Sahara. Bring whatever sunscreen you would personally require for a week out of doors.
Even though you’re going with a group, I recommend bringing a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide travel book. Even with guides, it’s nice to have a little literature to read about the stuff you’re not able to see.
We’ll be in China for a couple of weeks in May to June. This is not our firts trip, so we’re just doing the Beijing and Shanghai areas and taking it leisurely. (Although this will be my wife’s first time in Beijing.) You’re packing in quite a lot in 10 days. We chose that time because spring will be in full force. I think it might still be rather chilly in parts in March.
As for hepatitis A, I that’s one vaccine I always urge everyone to keep up on regardless. It’s not like the hepatitis B vaccine, which requires several shots over several months, but rather pretty straightforward. If you DO contract hep A, it will be a long slog until you recover.
I also urge you and everyone else to have a rabies vaccine. I let mine lapse, and sure enough, I was bitten by one of our mangy street dogs here in Thailand once a few years ago. As a result, I had to have several shots over a couple of months; if I’d kept up on my vaccine, I would have needed only a single booster shot. If nothing else, get the hep A and rabies vaccines, although I don’t know if rabies is as big of a problem in China as it is in Thailand. But if you are bitten, you are a goner once symptoms begin to appear; you can’t wait and see whether they will or not.
On that, I would caution that this is true if you are a normal size. I’m 6’3" and a bit over 200 pounds, and it is rather difficult for me to find clothes that are big enough to fit me on the street in a lot of these countries. That’s been true for me in China, too. If you’re a more smaller than I am, then it should not be a problem.
One more thing - I have no cite for this, but have been told many times that black coffee is good for - to use a medical term - keeping the sluice gates at both ends closed, as it were.
I’ve had a recommendation of eating a spoonful of dry instant coffee, but I couldn’t come at that, so I started every morning with a Vietnamese short black coffee at a street stall. I didn’t get sick on that trip, but I’m not going to use that as a cite. Even if it doesn’t work, Vietnamese coffee is the bee’s knees, so you’ll enjoy a nice cuppa.
Another thing I did - in Thailand where Western food is more readily available - is not to waste my holiday eating the same old Western crap I can get at home, but on about every third day to have one big hearty Western meal. I chose breakfast, and went to a cafe that sold this stuff: bacon, eggs, toast, sausages, fried tomato, mashed potato, then apple pie and custard for afters. Then back into the local food for a few days. I like to imagine it helped.
weather is pleasant spring in the suzhou shanghai area.
get a hep a shot before you come. it’s not an epidemic but you don’t want to catch it.
you need to have someone print out ‘i am a buddhist and do not eat meat (this means I don’t eat pork, beef, poultry, fish, grasshoppers etc)’
trust me on the veggie stuff, the buddhist thing people can relate to. any other reason generally doesn’t make sense, and more importantly the waitstaff & cooks won’t get it either. most temples have great veggie food.
On the veggie thing, is food there cooked using lard or vegetable oil? A lot of so-called vegetarian food in Thailand is cooked in lard. Unsuspecting tourists don’t realize this.
The OP didn’t say he was buddhist, only vegetarian. i don’t think a sign saying he was buddhist would be entirely appropriate? What if he was being offered sex as well as food? He would have unwittingly turned it down!
I used to be a hardcore vegetarian in China. Doesn’t matter if you’re buddhist or not, the most effective way of getting vegetarian food is by saying so. No one here will think differently of you if they understand this is just an expeditious bending of the truth for dietary sakes. No buddhist in China will get bent out of shape either.
Otherwise, you’ll probably have food cooked in lard, cooked with meat, etc.
I agree with China Guy. Here in Thailand, too, religious reasons seem to be the only acceptable reason for vegetarianism. If you say it’s for health or lifestyle reasons, they scratch their heads and wonder what’s wrong with you. Vegetarianism is not common in Thailand, but they will recognize religious concerns. (Then they will still cook your food in lard, as they seem to think not having any meat per se in the dish is good enough.) I see no problem with fudging the truth a little and saying you’re Buddhist.
Um, before I get jumped all over for this religious thing, let me say that saying you’re Buddhist in Thailand when you’re not is not like saying, for example, you’re Catholic in America when you’re not. It’s more along the lines of saying you’re Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Everyone is Irish on Saint Paddy’s Day, and so everyone is Buddhist in Thailand if they choose to be, even if they’re not really, if you know what I mean. I’m sure it’s the same in China.