it's quite scary. we were detained at hangxhou airport because we had no visas and they were going to put us on next flight back. in a room, communist country, green military uniforms!
im chinese but i cant speak mandarin. luckily there was a chinese tour guide on our plane and she spent almost an hr with us to help translate. we were able to tell tgem that we want to use the 5 day shanghai hangzhou visa free stopover. because hangzhou usnt normally a stopover airport the didnt know anout the stopover policy. our flight was bris - hangzhou - singapore -brisbane on Scoot. I had checked this with chinese embassy in oz and they said it was allowed.
Anyway because between bris and hangzhou we changed planes in singapore so the flight number isnt the same from brisbane then they wouldnt allow it. it had to be same flight number. although they were strict but they were nice enough to suggest an alternative. if we bought a ticket to anywhere else besides singapore then she will let us through. So because so many websites are banned in china! the tour guide let ys use her phone and helped us to book flights to hong kong. cost $300 which was ok so its now bris -singapore -hangzhou - hongkong at 11pm we finally got our visa free transit and out of the airport!! the tour guide and i exchanged whatsapp and she's just so nice n we still keep in contact.
next day i phoned expedia and was able to get a full refund on my hong kong flights. they r cheap non refundable fares but expedia has their own polucy of refunding everything if youcancel within 24 hrs.. mistake etc Seriously best company ever.. It was no drama and so so easy. the flight to hongkong was same date and similar time to our flight back to singapore and we weee able to get through customs n everything fine. my husband was a bit worried it would be in the system and we would get in trouble leaving china.
we did shanghai, suzhou, tongli, hangzhou in 5 days by ourselves. omg what an adventure.. we even caught the wrong bus to the wrong city! i got by on very lil mandarin. even the taxi driver made fun if my mandarin telling me how awful i was. but i wouldnt enjoy it uf i went with organised tour. we had the most amazing time and the highlight was spending a night in tongli which is a beautiful water town that takes you back hundreds of yrs.
even my family who can speak mandarin wouldnt dare travel china on their iwn.. they all go on packaged tours. but the experience is 100x better free n easy. now that i gave been there im confident to do the rest by ourselves. i cant wait to go back!!
it was so clean, food was amazing, people were so nice n helpful.. i think we were just very very blessed. we had help at airport and again many times over the week. we almost ran out if money and a stranger took us to my atms before tge last one worked! i dont think we would have found any on our own. very blessed.
we have a great impression of china. the only disappinting thing is the pollution.
I would recommend forget abt free visa, just save the hassle and get a visa before you go. I suppose it may easier at shanghai's pudong or beijing airport.. be ause major airlines do stopover there.
with cheap flights from air asia snd scoot im surprise china is not the new hit destination! scoot now flies direct to lijiang province.. google it.. so amazing n beautiful. photographers dream.
though i cant imagine if ppl know absolutely no chinese. i could do the minimum like speak to taxi, ask for directions, buy, bargain, ask for a table, order food, give change, etc and my chinese is so so basic n crappy. no one speaks cantonese.
That was game… Communication isn't always the greatest in china (as you've discovered), and the penalties for getting it wrong can be severe. As an example, I had a colleague taking happy snaps around a town we were working at once.. He'd taken a shot that had a don't photograph building in the background. Next thing the defence force was over, dragged him into a guard house, worked him over for about an hour. A local colleague (with serious connections) got him released, but he was given 10 minutes to pack his bags at the hotel and escorted straight to the airport for next next flight to anywhere outside china.
My own personal experience has been quite polar. It could be summed up as if the people knew you or had some interest in you, they were were quite friendly. Otherwise if a stranger was dying in the gutter, they would just step over them on their way. I've been to some places that are pristine and free of rubbish, and other places that have been ravaged by industry and pollution. I was also frequently skinned alive in taxis - the drivers suddenly forgot how to read my instructions written in chinese.. I didn't really care too much as the difference was $3 vs $15, but was getting annoying to have them see me as a piggy bank…
To be fair though, I've been to plenty of other places where everyone's out to extract as much as possible from foreigners, where they treat strangers like dirt, and are quite happy to destroy significant natural / cultural areas for a quick buck… But China's the only place where someone I've known has had their nose smashed by a gun stock after taking a photo of the wrong thing.