Visa-Free Wanderings
Bouncing through China, from Hong Kong to Tianjin.
October 23 - 29, 2025 -- compiled by Jeff DePree
featured on jeffdepree.com
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Bouncing through China, from Hong Kong to Tianjin.
October 23 - 29, 2025 -- compiled by Jeff DePree
featured on jeffdepree.com
www.strava.com/activities/16247871217
When I decided to fly to Korea for a bike trip, I looked for cheap tickets from Denver to the west coast (where roundtrip tickets to Asia are consistently $400 cheaper). Finding none, I broadened my search and found a random one-way from Denver to Hong Kong for $325. Since I was intrigued by the newly expanded 10-day visa-free transit program, I decided to hop through various Chinese cities en route to my goal. The program, and China travel in general, is rather nuanced, so I’ve written up a quick guide.
In recent years, China has begun to resemble a Star Trek-style utopia, with spotless, futuristic cityscapes, ridiculously efficient transit, and fantastic pedestrian infrastructure (Xiamen built a 14-mile flyover). Seemingly overnight, they managed to replace their hundreds of millions of gas-powered, 125cc scooters with electric mopeds that silently whiz along the sidewalks and bike lanes (you quickly learn to always walk in a straight line). Things are still crowded and chaotic, but in a much cleaner, more intentional way.
Notably, prices have not risen to match those in Singapore or even Hong Kong. You can typically get a decent hotel room for around $10, a hearty breakfast snack for 25 cents, or a full mapo tofu dinner for $2. The various metros run around 40 cents and the bullet trains are maybe $8/hour. However, in the land of tea (25 cents), a coffee shop Americano will set you back about $4.
Shortly after I left, a new episode showed up in my podcast feed, where the host interviewed the author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future – I found it to be quite illuminative. www.searchengine.show/america-vs-china/
Visa-free program
It's pretty critical to have tickets that create a stopover between two other countries or SARs (HK, Macau). You can’t fly from the US to China, then straight back to the US. I entered the ferry port in Shenzhen from Hong Kong and then flew out to Seoul (the HK rail station won't work). If you enter through a permitted port, and leave through a permitted port, you should be able to travel freely within and between the 24 eligible regions for up to 240 hours (but maybe not sleep outside of the listed "stay cities"?).
Intra-China stopovers, even those that don’t leave the airport, must be on the list of ports and stay within the alotted timeframe. My departing flight from Xiamen stopped in Tianjin for a day, and this really confused immigration, but since Tianjin is on the list of ports, and inter-regional travel among the permitted regions is allowed, I was able to get away with it. But this might have been at the discretion of the local officials, and had I gotten someone else, I might have been forced to book a new direct flight. I would suggest, wherever possible, booking a direct flight out of the country. The two times I’ve done this, I’ve encountered other parties that had booked an unfortunate stopover and been detained. Keep it simple.
Internet
Google doesn’t work in China. My whole world runs on Google. Nearly every website has invisible captchas that will invisibly break when Google is not available. In a pinch, Chrome can be set to use Bing instead, and this will get you somewhere, but probably not far enough. Because of this, wifi will be mostly useless. You should buy an esim, with plenty of data for your entire trip, that works both in Mainland China and Hong Kong, and this should allow for a pretty normal internet experience (I had luck using Trip.com to buy one).
Google Maps isn’t terribly effective in China. There are other navigation apps, but they are all in Chinese. Expect some friction with finding your way. I've heard Apple Maps works well, so maybe this is mostly an Android problem.
Money
China is largely a cashless society, but your credit card won’t work. Everyone uses the apps WeChat and AliPay to pay for everything. I never figured out how to make either of these operational – my credit card company was rather upset when I tried to load my card into the app – but you should definitely try (maybe with a virtual card number?). While most businesses will take cash, all vending machines, many ticket machines, some restaurants, and every bikeshare will only work if you have access to one such app.
When I decided to fly to Korea for a bike trip, I looked for cheap tickets from Denver to the west coast (where roundtrip tickets to Asia are consistently $400 cheaper). Finding none, I broadened my search and found a random one-way from Denver to Hong Kong for $325. Since I was intrigued by the newly expanded 10-day visa-free transit program, I decided to hop through various Chinese cities en route to my goal. The program, and China travel in general, is rather nuanced, so I’ve written up a quick guide.
In recent years, China has begun to resemble a Star Trek-style utopia, with spotless, futuristic cityscapes, ridiculously efficient transit, and fantastic pedestrian infrastructure (Xiamen built a 14-mile flyover). Seemingly overnight, they managed to replace their hundreds of millions of gas-powered, 125cc scooters with electric mopeds that silently whiz along the sidewalks and bike lanes (you quickly learn to always walk in a straight line). Things are still crowded and chaotic, but in a much cleaner, more intentional way.
Notably, prices have not risen to match those in Singapore or even Hong Kong. You can typically get a decent hotel room for around $10, a hearty breakfast snack for 25 cents, or a full mapo tofu dinner for $2. The various metros run around 40 cents and the bullet trains are maybe $8/hour. However, in the land of tea (25 cents), a coffee shop Americano will set you back about $4.
Shortly after I left, a new episode showed up in my podcast feed, where the host interviewed the author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future – I found it to be quite illuminative. www.searchengine.show/america-vs-china/
Visa-free program
It's pretty critical to have tickets that create a stopover between two other countries or SARs (HK, Macau). You can’t fly from the US to China, then straight back to the US. I entered the ferry port in Shenzhen from Hong Kong and then flew out to Seoul (the HK rail station won't work). If you enter through a permitted port, and leave through a permitted port, you should be able to travel freely within and between the 24 eligible regions for up to 240 hours (but maybe not sleep outside of the listed "stay cities"?).
Intra-China stopovers, even those that don’t leave the airport, must be on the list of ports and stay within the alotted timeframe. My departing flight from Xiamen stopped in Tianjin for a day, and this really confused immigration, but since Tianjin is on the list of ports, and inter-regional travel among the permitted regions is allowed, I was able to get away with it. But this might have been at the discretion of the local officials, and had I gotten someone else, I might have been forced to book a new direct flight. I would suggest, wherever possible, booking a direct flight out of the country. The two times I’ve done this, I’ve encountered other parties that had booked an unfortunate stopover and been detained. Keep it simple.
Internet
Google doesn’t work in China. My whole world runs on Google. Nearly every website has invisible captchas that will invisibly break when Google is not available. In a pinch, Chrome can be set to use Bing instead, and this will get you somewhere, but probably not far enough. Because of this, wifi will be mostly useless. You should buy an esim, with plenty of data for your entire trip, that works both in Mainland China and Hong Kong, and this should allow for a pretty normal internet experience (I had luck using Trip.com to buy one).
Google Maps isn’t terribly effective in China. There are other navigation apps, but they are all in Chinese. Expect some friction with finding your way. I've heard Apple Maps works well, so maybe this is mostly an Android problem.
Money
China is largely a cashless society, but your credit card won’t work. Everyone uses the apps WeChat and AliPay to pay for everything. I never figured out how to make either of these operational – my credit card company was rather upset when I tried to load my card into the app – but you should definitely try (maybe with a virtual card number?). While most businesses will take cash, all vending machines, many ticket machines, some restaurants, and every bikeshare will only work if you have access to one such app.
$2 for a large plate of mapo tofu!
