Original reporting and research from China's road — written by our team, every fact checked against an official source.
A record 22.9 million foreign arrivals in the first half of 2026. The part that actually changes your trip: the departure tax refund was rebuilt on 1 July, and most travellers no longer queue.
China added Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam to its 10-day transit visa-free list on 20 August 2026. What changed, who can use it, and what to show at the border.
More than 2,400 travel agencies closed or exited in China in the first half of 2026, while domestic tourism kept setting records. The shakeout says a lot about how travel in China now works — and almost nothing about the parts of your trip that matter most. Here is what actually changed, and the three checks that still apply if you book through an agency.
At Wenchang, on Hainan's northeast coast, orbital rockets leave the pad a few kilometres from a public beach, and anyone can stand on it: no ticket, no gate, no registration. Getting there is easy. Knowing when to be there is the entire problem — here is how a launch date actually surfaces, where to stand, and which rule will get you into real trouble.
In the third week of September 2026, the cruise terminal in Tianjin logged its busiest single day of the year while, 1,800 kilometres south, China's first homegrown mega-ship tied up in Shenzhen at the end of its summer season. The two stories are one story: cruising into China is getting easier, and the mechanism doing the work is a 15-day visa-free rule most foreign travellers have never heard of.
On 15 September 2026, a passenger's power bank burst into flames as travellers were getting off a Hunan Airlines flight in Changsha. Nobody was hurt, and the crew put it out in moments — but it was exactly the scenario behind a rule that foreign travellers keep discovering at the security line: since June 2025, power banks without a legible 3C certification mark are banned from China's domestic flights. International legs are different, and that difference is the trap.
On Friday 25 September the full moon gets its festival: three days off, mooncakes by the ton, a 67-metre fire dragon in Hong Kong, mooncake dice games in Xiamen and a tidal bore near Hangzhou. How China celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival, region by region — and where a traveller can join in.
Inbound bookings on China's largest travel platform grew 95% in the first half of 2026 — and the hotels seeing the fastest growth are not in Beijing or Shanghai but in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. One province shows what that looks like on the ground: Guizhou, where a village football league, a 19-degree summer and a waterfall that stays open at night are pulling in overseas visitors, and where the unglamorous plumbing of payments and border queues has quietly been fixed.
Tencent's travel app lets visitors sign up with an email, bind a foreign card and scan into WeChat Pay's network. What works, what's missing, and the fees.
On 15 September 2026, China Southern flew the first direct service between Shenzhen and Surabaya, Indonesia's second city — two flights a week on an A321, replacing a journey that used to mean a Jakarta layover. By itself it is a footnote. Read together with a doubled Jakarta service, a new through-check-in scheme and Indonesia's place on the 240-hour transit visa-free list, it is a sign of how quickly the South China–Southeast Asia corridor is thickening.
Chongqing's monorail through a building, Zhangjiajie's floating peaks, Shenzhen's robot cafés: 10 China destinations going viral in 2027, with prices.
China's travel peaks are structural: golden weeks, shifted days off, toll-free motorways. What to avoid, what to book, and where to go by season.
China counted 826 million domestic trips over the seven days of National Day 2026, 2.98 million inbound visitors and 107 million night-time visits. The crowd figures are the least useful part. Here is what the rest of it changes about your plans.