China with children: is it worth it?

China is an excellent destination for travelling with children, provided three conditions are accepted: age from six upwards, one highlight a day, and naps in the middle. Outside of that, it is one of the easiest countries in Asia for a family: it is safe, children are treated with an affection that surprises anyone arriving from Europe, and there is always white rice for the child who wants nothing to do with the rest of it.

It is not, however, a beach destination. It involves walking, and the scale of the Chinese monuments — the Forbidden City covers 720,000 square metres — frightens anyone who arrives without a plan.

The right age

Before six, the trip is possible but it is work. Twelve hours of flying, eight hours of jet lag, walking over gravel and flights of stairs, and a pushchair fighting every pavement. And there is one practical problem: pushchairs do not get through many monuments and stations — the Great Wall at Mutianyu and the hutongs of Beijing are incompatible with wheels.

Six to twelve is the ideal age. Children of that age already understand what the Terracotta Army is, already get excited about the pandas, and already eat anything that comes with rice. It is for this age that we build our family itineraries.

Teenagers get a different trip: they are more interested in the cities, the shopping centres, karaoke and street basketball. Shanghai and Hong Kong work better than the classic monuments.

There is also a practical point about the flight, and it is not a small one: twelve hours seated is hard at any age. Book the seats in advance, prefer the night departures out of Lisbon, and bring whatever the children need to sleep — headphones, a small blanket and the same soft toy as always. Arriving in China at seven in the morning without having slept is the worst possible start to a family trip.

The rhythm: one highlight a day

The most important rule of an itinerary with children is not to see less: it is to see one thing a day, and see it properly.

A typical day that works: one big visit in the morning (the pandas, the Wall, the Terracotta Army), lunch, a nap at the hotel between 2 and 4pm, and then something light in the late afternoon — a boat ride, a street market, an observation session on a rooftop.

It is the exact opposite of the rhythm adults adopt when travelling alone, and it is why family itineraries drawn up by people without children rarely work.

The places that work

The pandas, first. We always put Chengdu at the beginning of the trip, not at the end. Seeing a giant panda ten metres away resolves any childhood scepticism about China and changes the rest of the trip. The rule is to arrive at 7:30am, when the animals are eating and active; after 10am they sleep.

Our Panda Route was designed around this, and includes the volunteering programme for older children.

The Great Wall, at Mutianyu. It is the only section with a cable car up and a toboggan down, and the toboggan is the moment of the trip. Avoid Badaling: it is the section of the coaches and the crowds.

Shanghai. The city that interests teenagers most: the Bund at night, the lift to the 118th floor of the Shanghai Tower, the Science and Technology Museum. And there is Disneyland for a whole day, if the appetite is there.

Guilin and Yangshuo. Landscape instead of monuments: a raft on the Li river, bicycles through the rice fields, climbing for the older ones. It is the place where you can spend two days without going into a historic building.

Xi’an. The terracotta warriors impress an eight-year-old, and the city wall rents out tandem bicycles.

What changes in the logistics

Tickets by height. In China the discounts are counted by the child’s height: under 1.20 m is free at most monuments and on the trains; between 1.20 and 1.50 m you pay half; above that, adult. A tall nine-year-old pays full fare. It is worth knowing the height before you ask for a quote.

Rooms. Always ask for a twin room with two beds — large double beds are rare outside the international hotels. Connecting rooms exist in the international chains and should be booked months in advance.

Transport. Between cities, the high-speed train always wins: there is legroom, you can walk through the carriage, and children are not strapped into a seatbelt. Flying saves time but is worse with kids. Within cities, a private car with its own child seat saves you the metro at rush hour.

Food. White rice, fried noodles, baozi and wonton are accepted by every child in the world and exist everywhere. There are no children’s menus — and none are needed. Nappies, powdered milk and baby food are bought in any Chinese supermarket.

Toilets. Carry tissues and hand gel. And know that not every place has a seated toilet.

The three real problems

There are three moments when family trips to China get complicated, and all three have a solution:

The first day. Eight hours of jet lag turns children into different people. Plan it as a short day: arrival, hotel, a walk around the neighbourhood, and an early night. Nothing gets booked.

The stairs. The Forbidden City, the hill temples and the Wall at Jinshanling have a great many steps. We always choose the variants with fewer: Mutianyu by cable car instead of Jinshanling, the Huashan cable car instead of the walk up.

Attention span. On a trip for children, no monument beats a rice-dough workshop, a Chinese shadow puppet show or a calligraphy class. We always slot one of these activities in halfway through — and it is what the children remember of the trip.

What it costs

For a family of four, a private twelve-day tour with a guide in your own language, a car, four-star hotels and the entrances comes to between US$ 2,900 and US$ 4,500 per person in a double room, depending on the season. Children under 1.20 m do not pay most entrances, which is a real saving of 100 to 200 euros per child over twelve days.

The detail of what is included, and above all of what is left out, is in our budget guide.

Our final advice

Take fewer cities and more time in each one. The temptation to fit Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai and Chengdu into twelve days with two children is the origin of almost every family itinerary that reaches us to be corrected — and correcting a family itinerary always means cutting a city.

If you want to see how we do it, our children itinerary has the day-to-day planned around naps, and the Panda Route is the starting point most often chosen.