Frequently asked questions

A Trip Check ($29) is for travelers who have already made a plan. A local planner reviews it within 48 hours — route and pacing, trains versus flights, reservation deadlines and hotel areas — and sends back fixes.

A Custom Itinerary (from $149) is built from scratch: a day-by-day plan with trains, a hotel shortlist, a reservation calendar and two revision rounds. Upgrade within 14 days and your Trip Check fee is credited in full.

For a Custom Itinerary, four to eight weeks before you fly is ideal. That leaves time for the plan (delivered in 5 business days after your kickoff call) and for train and ticket booking windows. Around Chinese public holidays — Spring Festival, the May Day holiday and the National Day “Golden Week” in early October — earlier is better.

A Trip Check works any time, even the week before you leave.

No — prices are per trip and cover up to 4 travelers. For groups of 5–8, a Custom Itinerary is +$30 per extra traveler. For 9 or more travelers, or longer trips, we’ll send a quote.

Yes. Tell us ages and anything that affects walking, stairs or food, and we’ll plan the pace, hotels and transfers around it — for example, which Great Wall sections have a cable car, and where a car transfer beats a long walk through a station.

All of mainland China for planning: the classic Beijing–Xi’an–Shanghai route, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guilin and Yangshuo, Zhangjiajie, Yunnan and more, with Hong Kong as a start or end point. We know Beijing and Hebei best, because we live here.

If your first draft isn’t right, we’ll redo it. Still not happy? Full refund. Every itinerary also includes 2 revision rounds for changes along the way.

With your first message, not when you buy it. A 7-day pass covers the 7 days from that first message, so you can buy it before you fly and start it when you land.

08:00–22:00 Beijing time (UTC+8), and we reply within 30 minutes during those hours. Outside them, we give urgent guidance on a best-effort basis.

No. In an emergency in China, call 110 for police, 120 for an ambulance or 119 for fire. Once you’re safe, message us and we’ll help with what comes next — translation, hotels, changing plans.

Translating photos of menus, signs and forms; app and payment problems; Didi, metro and train questions; and restaurant and sight reservations — including the ones that only work in Chinese. One chat covers your party of up to 4.

Yes. Message us before it ends and pay with Alipay or WeChat Pay.

By card or PayPal. After you send the planning form, we reply within 1 business day with a payment link — nothing is charged when you send the form. Already in China? You can extend an On-Trip Pass with Alipay or WeChat Pay.

In short: a Trip Check is refunded in full if we haven’t started, or if you’re unhappy within 7 days of delivery. A Custom Itinerary is fully refundable before the kickoff call and 50% refundable until the first draft; after that, our redo-then-refund guarantee applies. An On-Trip Pass you never activate is refunded in full.

Read the full refund policy

Yes — 100% credited toward a Custom Itinerary if you upgrade within 14 days.

Only the add-ons you choose, each listed with its price: rush delivery in 72 hours (+$50), an extra revision round (+$25), and +$30 per extra traveler for groups of 5–8. Done-for-You bookings are priced in your quote.

It depends on your passport and your route. Citizens of many countries can currently visit visa-free for up to 30 days, and travelers from many others can use the 240-hour visa-free transit when flying on to a third country. The rules change often, so check the National Immigration Administration and the Chinese embassy or consulate in your country before you book.

We’ll point you to the right official page, but this isn’t legal advice.

It lets travelers from eligible countries spend up to 240 hours (10 days) in mainland China without a visa when they arrive from one country and leave for a different one, through designated ports of entry, staying within the permitted areas. Check the official eligibility list and rules before you fly.

Our planning form asks for your passport country so we can flag which official rules look relevant — 30-day visa-free entry, the 240-hour transit or a visa — with links to the official sources. The final check is yours (and your airline’s at check-in): we can’t give legal advice.

With a Custom Itinerary, you book using our step-by-step links, so everything is in your name and on your card. If you’d rather not, choose Done-for-You: hotel, train and ticket bookings, private guides and tours are contracted and operated by our licensed partner travel agency, [Licensed partner name] (license no. [xxxx]).

No. Our plans have no shopping stops, and we take no kickbacks from shops, restaurants or tour sellers. If we ever use an affiliate link — for an eSIM, say — we label it.

How we handle affiliate links

A named planner from our team in Hebei. You can see who we are on our About page, and the same small team answers your On-Trip Pass chat.

Yes. Our China desk builds itineraries and supports your clients on the ground at trade rates. Use the planning form, choose “Travel advisor”, and we’ll send our trade sheet.