30/10/2025
China with kids 🇨🇳 -the real story
We spent 12 days exploring China with the kids, and what a journey it was.
We kicked off in Xi’an, walking the ancient city walls, wandering the Muslim Quarter markets (wild!), and checking out Saga Mall, total sensory overload. It’s also the base for the Terracotta Warriors, which was honestly a wild ride with four kids in tow.
Next up, Zhangjiajie, the mountains that inspired Avatar. We saw the Tianmen Mountain show, saw some incredible landscapes inside the park but we did not luck out with weather! It was so cloudy and drizzly the whole time. There is so much to see in this area and it’s so spread out, so you need a few days!
Then Beijing, where we climbed the Great Wall of China, rode back down on a toboggan, did a spot of shopping and wandered a couple of other sites.
Not gonna lie, China was hard, fascinating, but hard. It’s a total tech maze if you’re not set up right.
You must have a VPN before arrival (Google doesn’t work).
Download Didi for taxis.
Get Alipay, you can’t pay for anything without it, not even coffee.
Forget Google Maps, use AMaps instead.
And grab a translation app, you’ll need it.
It was probably easier for us because we’ve been full-time travelling for a while. If you were coming straight from home, it would be quite an adjustment. Food was a bit of a challenge too, especially as a vegan, but we survived. There were plenty of funny translation mix-ups along the way, and the people are incredibly friendly, sometimes a bit too friendly with the kids. They love taking photos and getting up close, which can be a lot at first, but once you see the eccentric, good-natured side of it all, it’s actually pretty endearing.
It’s not an easy destination, but it’s one of those places you have to visit once.
