Travelling to China — What to Actually Pack

Q: Do I have to buy anything for travel to china?

No. This site covers the same ground for free — 15 free travel situation guides with audio, Printable travel phrasebook (PDF), free, 1,000+ travel phrase flashcards, free — and those pages need no account and cost nothing. The items on this page are for the things a website cannot be.

Q: Are these ranked by what they pay you?

No, and they structurally cannot be: the data record behind a recommendation on this site has no field for a commission, a rate or a partner, so the ordering cannot follow the money. Every item is ordered by who the reader is.

Q: Why is there no price shown?

Because we have no licensed way to keep a price current, and a stale price on a page like this is worse than none. Cost is shown as a band instead — budget, mid-range or premium.

The small number of things that are genuinely harder to solve after you land.

Free on this site, right now

Most packing advice for China is padding. Almost everything is buyable there, usually more cheaply and often more conveniently than at home, and a suitcase of contingencies is a suitcase you carry through three airports for nothing. The short list below is the exception: things that are awkward to solve after you land, either because you need them in the first hour or because sorting them out requires the Chinese you do not yet have.

The single most useful preparation is not on this list because it is free and it is on this site: the fifteen travel situation guides, which print what the other person is likely to say to you before what you say to them. Not understanding the reply is what actually goes wrong at an immigration desk or a ticket window, and no phrasebook organised the usual way prepares you for it.

Every item below says what it does not do. Nothing is ordered by what it pays — see how this page is written.

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Beginner Budget

Universal travel adapter (Type A, C and I)

various makers

China uses three plug types and you will meet all three, sometimes in one hotel room: flat two-pin Type A, round two-pin Type C and the angled three-pin Type I. Voltage is 220V, so check that anything you bring is rated for it — most modern chargers are, most hair appliances are not. Buy one with several USB ports and you will cover a phone, a power bank and a pair of earbuds from a single socket, which matters in an older hotel with one outlet.

What it does not do: An adapter changes the plug shape, not the voltage. It will not protect a 110V device, and the cheap ones make poor contact with worn Chinese sockets. This is also the easiest item on the list to buy after you arrive.

Free here first: Free hotel check-in phrases

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Beginner Mid-range

Airline-safe power bank

various makers

Your phone is your payment method, your map, your translator and your train ticket in China, and a dead phone is a genuinely serious problem in a way it is not at home. Around 10,000 mAh is the sweet spot: two full charges, and comfortably under the 100 Wh limit that lets it travel in carry-on. Buy a named brand with the watt-hour rating printed on the case — from 2025 Chinese domestic flights have required a visible CCC mark or capacity label at the gate.

What it does not do: It must go in your cabin bag; lithium batteries in checked luggage are refused everywhere. An unbranded bank with no printed rating can be confiscated at a Chinese domestic gate, which is the specific failure worth avoiding here.

Free here first: Free getting-around phrases

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Beginner Budget

Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook & Dictionary

Lonely Planet

A paper phrasebook does one thing a phone cannot: you hand it to someone. When the pronunciation has failed and the signal has gone, pointing at a line of characters works, and it works in a taxi at midnight with a flat battery. This one is pocket-sized, organised by situation, and prints characters large enough to be read across a counter — which several competitors do not, and which is the entire point of the format.

What it does not do: The romanisation system is simplified for English speakers and will not teach you correct tones; treat it as a pointing device rather than a pronunciation guide. Its dictionary section is too small to look up anything unexpected.

Free here first: Our travel phrasebook PDF, free

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Beginner Budget

Digital luggage scale

various makers

Chinese domestic carriers enforce baggage allowances far more strictly than most North American and European airlines, including on cabin bags, and the excess charges are levied at the counter in cash or by phone payment. A scale that weighs a few grams and costs less than one excess-baggage fee is straightforwardly good arithmetic — and it is most useful on the way home, when you are carrying things you did not pack.

What it does not do: Pure contingency. If you travel with a half-empty carry-on and buy nothing, it is dead weight. The cheap ones drift out of calibration and read a kilo light, which is worse than no scale.

Free here first: Free airport and immigration phrases

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Beginner Budget

Packing cubes

various makers

Relevant to China specifically because of how much of a trip there is spent on trains. You live out of the bag rather than out of a wardrobe, you repack in a hurry on a platform, and you open your luggage in front of other people far more than you expect. Cubes turn that from an ordeal into a ten-second job, and they make the security check at every station entrance — which is every station, every time — considerably less tedious.

What it does not do: They add a little weight and no capacity; anyone who packs light already does not need them. Compression cubes in particular tempt you into carrying more than you can comfortably lift onto a luggage rack.

Free here first: Free train travel phrases

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Beginner Mid-range

Lonely Planet China (guidebook)

Lonely Planet

Worth buying for one reason above the itineraries: a printed guidebook works when your map application does not, and several of the services a Western traveller relies on by reflex behave unpredictably in China. Having the shape of a city, the transport options and a few addresses in characters on paper removes a genuine category of stress. Read the transport and etiquette chapters before you fly and ignore the restaurant listings.

What it does not do: Guidebook listings go stale quickly and China changes faster than most places — treat every opening time and price as indicative. It is heavy, and the country coverage is so broad that any single city gets less depth than a dedicated guide.

Free here first: 15 free travel situation guides

Look it up on amazon.ca