How to Travel to China On Your Own – Part 1
My first trip to China, Day One
1) Preparing for the trip
Hello everyone!
Though I have to do a lot of work helping JOuTrip customers and my friends to purchase goods from trusted Chinese manufacturers and suppliers, I didn’t have a chance to go to China myself until recently. Unlike the other guys on the team who spend at least 5-6 months a year in the field, i.e. in China, my major responsibility is to deal with orders and customers.
During that time I built good work relationships with Chinese managers and electronics specialists through my job duties. We became good friends with some of them, keeping in touch via Skype or email. Many of my Chinese friends have been flying to Moscow at least once. Business communication allowed us to get to know each other better as a mutual interest in our countries was growing day by the day. I lived in Belarus back then, so I couldn’t meet them even when they came to Moscow, that’s why I had to form my opinion about my friends without ever seeing them in person.
In most cases they visited Moscow to represent their companies at international exhibitions of security technology and electronics. On returning to China, my friends spoke enthusiastically of their recent Moscow trip and always invited me to Shenzhen. Yet, I didn’t seem to have any opportunity to see China, though I was eager to do it. Working on the website section dedicated to delivering Chinese goods and digesting the information provided by my JOuTrip colleagues (JOu LTD being the primary company at that time), I often caught myself thinking that it would be great to meet all my friends in their native country! That’s why I was thrilled with a colleague’s unexpected suggestion to visit China with her.
Julia’s company (Julia is the colleague’s name) specializes in designing and manufacturing printed circuit boards in China. It has been cooperating with several major factories in Shenzhen for more than 10 years now. As the subject interested me a lot, I agreed to accompany her on the trip, hoping not only to help Julia to realize her plans, but also to learn something new from the immediate communication with Chinese specialists.
After a brief discussion of the agenda (Julia asked me to help her with a trip to an electronics exhibition in Shenzhen, and then she was going to visit a few factories) we had practically no time to prepare for the trip. Julia took it upon herself to make the necessary travel arrangements without resorting to third-party companies in China. I decided to entrust myself to her experience and write a big article about traveling to China on one’s own after we returned. The only thing I did was tell my Chinese colleagues and friends that I was planning to be in China on 16-21 November 2015.
It turned out to be a kind of experiment when some theoretical knowledge was implemented into practice. For the sake of integrity of the experiment I decided to act like someone who only knows a few things about China and who has never been to Chinese trade fairs and exhibitions as well as plants and factories. That’s why while preparing for the trip I used the minimum of information obtained from my Chinese friends – it boiled down to a 7-day weather forecast and how to get from Guangzhou to Shenzhen. I made up my mind to get everything else sorted out independently and act according to the situation.
There was only a little time for the preparations – a little more than a week, actually, that’s why everything had to be done quickly. Julia booked an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Guangzhou, after which we submitted our passports to get a visa with the “Kitaeast” company, fairly well-known in Moscow. Here’s the link to their website in case you need their help: http://www.kitaeast.ru/
Submitting the documents didn’t take long. The whole thing cost us 2500 rubles. We were promised to get our passports back in 6 days if we were granted the visas.
Sadly, Julia and I were swamped with work all the way, that’s why we didn’t have time to prepare for the trip properly. Yet, we did find time to buy small gifts for our friends. A friend helped me to buy two sets of handmade nesting dolls (forgot to take pics, sorry), and I also bought some sweets produced by a famous confectionery founded as far back as the Soviet times. The gifts were supposed to make a great topic for conversation and they were good per se. As I don’t drink, it didn’t even occur to me to buy alcohol as a “gift”. Naturally, we informed our friends and business partners of the upcoming visit. I must say, they were no less happy about it than us. The thing is, our Chinese friends are very nice and sociable people, with whom we have developed close relationships over the years. The only upsetting factor was that I hadn’t met them in person yet. To be fair, during her previous visits to China and our Chinese partners’ trips to Moscow exhibitions Julia met a few of them, and eventually they became good friends. Nevertheless, Julia knew some of them through Skype and email only.
As I’ve already said, I had wanted to see China for many years, but couldn’t do it for various reasons. Creating video instructions for the website, I would dream of flying to China and later sharing the details of the trip on the website. To be honest, I couldn’t believe that my dream would come true till the very last moment…
A day before getting our visas, we phoned “Kitaeast” to ask about them, and we were assured that the company would have known about a visa denial the day after submitting the documents. We also found out that there is a direct flight to Hong Kong, but to fly back from Hong Kong one needed a double entry visa, whereas ours was single entry. As Julia lives in Moscow and I don’t, we agreed that she would get my passport and bring it with her to Sheremetyevo airport on the day of the departure. It looked like a convenient decision, but eventually it became clear that it was not perfect. Usually, when I’m preparing for a trip inside Russia, I make a list of things that I need to take with me, how many of them etc. One of the items on the list is buying some currency as I don’t want to rely on my Visa card only (unfortunately, there have been discomforting incidents). Following my list, I scheduled buying currency for the last moment, completely forgetting the fact that some banks require passports for this generally simple procedure. So my visit to a nearby bank was unsuccessful. In the end I had to go to the airport with Russian rubles, hoping that I would have time to exchange currency there.
Aeroflot offers online check-in 24 hours before departure. You can do it on a personal computer or a mobile phone, after which you can choose your seat. If anything, it’s not difficult – it only took me a few minutes. After completing the check-in you can email your boarding pass (which is equivalent to a plane ticket bought from a ticket office) as a PDF file or print it out right from the website.
Following the deadly terrorist attacks in November, airports stepped up security measures. That’s why I had to remember that it’s desirable that I should arrive at the airport not 2 hours before the flight, as usual, but 3 hours in advance at the very least. Sadly, I failed to do it. I will tell you why. The trouble is that I seldom travel by plane. The last time I did was in 2010, during my unforgettable trip to Norway. I often travel by train or by bus, even if it’s a long-distance journey. That’s why I prefer to use an ordinary travel bag. I’ve never had a hard shell suitcase for the simple reason that I didn’t need it. Being serious by nature, I prepare for any trip thoroughly. This time was not an exception. As usual, I made a list of things to take with me for my own personal use and as gifts. As to clothes, I just made some changes regarding the warm weather in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I decided against packing white shirts because no business negotiations with our Chinese partners were planned. I chose black formal trousers, jeans and casual lightweight trousers. There was a problem with T-shirts because I had only a few lightweight summer tees. When I was leaving for Moscow last time, I mostly took warmer tees – after all, winter was coming.
Reasonably concluding that it should be hot and humid in a seaside town, I decided to take all the T-shirts I had, planning to use two tees a day. I packed my personal belongings and gifts (to prevent the gifts from getting damaged in transit I put them into soft protective bags). I also took a few electronic items to show to the business partners. After spending a lot of time packing, it turned out that the bag wouldn’t close. Realizing that I couldn’t leave anything out, I had to re-pack the bag several times until I finally managed to zip it. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me to take a photo of the overpacked bag, but it was quite a sight… The bag wasn’t heavy as it mostly contained clothes and qualified as hand luggage due to its size, which I was happy about, because it meant that I wouldn’t have to check it in. I have bad memories of this long and exhausting procedure during the memorable trip to Norway.
Right before posting the article, I remembered that I still have one picture of my travel bag, which became noticeably lighter after the trip.
Struggling with the bag took me over an hour. Then I got a call from my brother, who has been living near Moscow for quite a long time now. He offered to use his suitcase. As we had planned a farewell party with some friends before the flight, he promised to send the suitcase with one of them. He couldn’t deliver it himself as his kids had fallen ill. We gathered at a friend’s place not far from Sheremetyevo. I took out all the things from the bag and began to pack the suitcase. Unfortunately, the suitcase turned out to be even smaller than my bag, so I had to put everything back into the travel bag. Unsurprisingly, I only managed to do it properly at the third attempt. Bottom line: I lost an hour and began worrying that I had too little time to go through customs at the airport… A friend took me to Sheremetyevo (Terminal F), after which I met Julia. On receiving my passport, I quickly bought some currency at an airport currency exchange office (by the way, they didn’t ask me for my passport), and we moved on.
2). Departing from Moscow
I’m not going to tell you about going through customs and passport control.
Let me just say that it was tough. To my great surprise, both of our cameras as well as Julia’s laptop were scanned, though (theoretically) it might lead to data loss. Yet, I can’t say that for sure – perhaps modern security equipment doesn’t damage gadgets.
It had started freezing and even snowing the day before our departure. That’s why I faced another dilemma – how to dress in such a way that I wouldn’t be too cold in Moscow and wouldn’t be too hot on getting off the plane in China. 
So I decided to take a hooded jumper and a denim jacket instead of a warm one. To be honest, the airport unpleasantly surprised me with how little passenger information it provided. Right after going through customs we moved closer to our gate and began waiting for our boarding announcement. You can imagine our shock when it turned out that the gate had changed, and so now the gate was about 100 meters away from where we were! We hadn’t heard any gate change announcement, despite our listening to all the announcements carefully. It’s possible that they did make the announcement, though, but only those who were in the new gate area could hear it. We joined the queue and had our passports and boarding passes checked once again, after which all the passengers went down the stairs and found themselves outside. A big bus took us to our Airbus A330.
I couldn’t take a picture of the plane as it was dark, so I found one online:
The plane turned out to be nice and well-kept. A flight attendant directed everyone to their seats. I put our things in an overhead bin. (Julia also took her suitcase with her as carry-on luggage). The passengers began to settle into their seats. Sadly, we immediately noticed that there isn’t really much legroom on Airbus A330. My knees touched the seat in front of me, which made me realize that I was in for an uncomfortable night…
We spent another hour on board waiting for transit passengers traveling to China via Moscow. No one was particularly nervous about it, though. Those who had to change flights were worried that they might be late, but the flight attendant assured them that the plane would make up the time in the air and arrive in Guangzhou as planned.
At last the plane took off and we’d been admiring the fantastic view of brightly illuminated Moscow below until the plane entered the clouds. After passing the clouds and gaining altitude, the plane began level flight. I was surprised at how noiselessly and smoothly it was able to fly.
The flight attendants proved to be very friendly and were performing their duties just fine. Every time the plane hit turbulence, we were kindly requested to fasten the seat belts and stay seated. The flight attendants were working efficiently. Say what you will about Aeroflot, but the airline with its long-time traditions is impressive. In the evening we were offered a meal – unsophisticated but quite nutritious. On the other hand, I couldn’t expect to see any posh economy class food. The temperature on board was very nice and cozy, that’s why during the flight we were neither cold nor hot. Yet, I couldn’t sleep comfortably as the pain in the knees crammed up against the seat in front of me woke me up repeatedly.
Dear friends! You will see a continuation of the story about my first trip to China on the website a bit later, so eventually you will learn about almost each of the 6 unforgettable days that I spent there. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below or via the contact form on our site.
As usual, I will try also to share my observations which might be of use to you when you’re preparing for your own trip.
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