Touristy China

Some of these are my own, but many of the tips below come from Sophie Chou, a former Beijing resident.

Wo ting bu dong (I don’t understand)

Bu yao (I don’t want that)

Tai gue! (Too expensive!)

Hen hao (very good – your masseuse will get a kick if you say this during a massage ;-)

Beijing:

·         go for a drink or dan dan mien at the Stone Boat bar in Ritan Park (afternoon or evening)

·         rickshaw tour of hutong near Houhai Lake

·         Great Wall at Mutianyu – take the alpine slide down

·         Tailors – bring something to be copied

·         Get a massage

Beijing eats

Peking duck

• Duck de Chine (upscale), in Sanlitun on Gongti Bei Lu/Street behind the Pacific Century department store. There's a hidden courtyard called 1949 which has several restaurants including Duck de Chine. 
• If any nice place will do, Da Dong Roast Duck is good and they have several outlets. 
• Avoid Quanjude, which many guidebooks include because one of the locations is the oldest restaurant in Beijing. It is ok but if the emphasis is on good duck, the other two places are much higher quality.

Yunnan cuisine 

• Yunnan is not super famous for its cuisine but it is distinctive. Known for wild mushrooms, not typically found in the USA.  
• The Dali Courtyard restaurant has two set menus to choose from, a longer and a shorter one, so it simplifies the ordering process. Nice outdoor courtyard on nice days. 

Sichuan - spicy food!.  Suggested dishes: 

• "ma-la" (spicy and numbing). 
• shui zhu yu (fish in an oil soup - you have to choose the type of fish you want and they can show it to you before they kill it; the price varies considerably but I think even the plain old catfish tastes fine)
• Mouth Watering Chicken / Kou Shui Ji - this is a cold dish so it often arrives quickly
• Gan Bian shi ji dou - green beans that have been cooked twice and with minced meat.

Visit: the Feitengyuxiang chain.  

Beijing food - go to Xiao Wang Fu in Ritan Park (after their drink at the Stone Boat bar!). This location has rooftop seating so it's another good option if the weather is nice. The ribs here are good... 

SHANGHAI

M on the Bund – elegant dinner

·         Drinks at the Park Hyatt – great views (it’s the building that looks like a bottle opener)

·         Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall in People’s Square

·         Check out the streets around People’s Square (Renmin Square) = there are some where you can get a pet grasshopper in a bamboo cage or other animal pets.  Also, on Saturday/Sunday evenings, parents & matchmakers set up in the square with “head shots” of their children or clients to make matches.  Incredible!

·         Step into a Walmart if you come across one.  It’s fun/ny to compare it to what we’re used to.

·         My favorite neighborhood is the French Concession, not too far from the Bund.  Great restaurants and shops, fun to stroll.  The Jinjiang Hotel is in this neighborhood. 

Shanghai

Din Tai Fung for soup dumplings / xiao long bao. Din Tai Fung is a Taiwan restaurant although I think it's Shanghainese cuisine. The original location is in Taipei and was a hole in the wall that was discovered by the NY Times and declared one of the best restaurants in the world, maybe 20 years ago. It has since expanded everywhere, including to one of the LA suburbs so your friends might know it already. The regular pork dumplings and the special crab dumplings are the staples and they also make good hand-pulled noodles. 

Hong Kong

·         One of my favorite things is to take the city bus to Stanley Market – it’s a fun way to see a lot of the city

·         Definitely visit one or more of the islands, the one with the big Buddha statue is a good half day trip

·         Absolutely essential: go for dim sum

·         World-famous tailors in Tsimshatsui

·         Of course: take the Star Ferry from Kowloon

I recently saw an Anthony Bourdain travel show on a plane where it was all about “what to do on a 24 hour layover in Hong Kong”.  I think he bought a cleaver, had a suit made, and of course, had some great food!  If you can find it, it had good suggestions

Xian

Visit the Muslim Quarter.

Cycle the City Wall: Try biking on the Wall, you will have an enjoyable and interesting experience. To cycle round the wall for a whole circle takes 1.5 to 2 hours at a medium speed. The bicycle deposit is CNY 200. The single bicycle costs CNY 40/100 minutes. The tandem bicycle costs CNY 60/100 minutes. The triple bicycle costs CNY80/100 minutes.

The wall was originally built with layers of dirt, with the base layer consisting of lime and glutinous rice extract. The wall was restored three times, starting from the 16th century until the 20th century. The wall has four gates and stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall, 12-14 meters (40-46 feet) wide at the top and 15-18 meters (50-60 feet) thick at thebottom. It covers 13.7 kilometers (8.5 miles) in length with a deep moat surrounding it. It has a rampart at every 120 metre, a total of 98 ramparts. Each rampart is equipped with a sentry building.

Local specialties: 

(1) rou jia mo - shredded lamb in what looks like a pita, sometimes described as a Chinese hamburger. 

(2) Yang-niu pao mo - a soup with lamb and beef (or sometimes just lamb).