The first-night survival kit

Every bad China trip story starts the same way: a long flight, an arrival hall at the wrong hour, a payment that doesn't go through, and a hotel conversation nobody can finish. The fix isn't cleverness. It's four boring things, sorted before you board.

Cash, split two ways

¥500–1,000 in small notes, half in your carry-on and half in the main bag. Cards and phones fail at the edges, and the first night is all edges — the taxi queue, the bottle of water, the bowl of noodles at the place next to the hotel that doesn't take foreign cards at 11pm. One lost bag shouldn't also mean a cashless first day.

The hotel's name in Chinese

Screenshot the confirmation, including the part that shows they take foreign passports, and save the name and address in characters. Taxi drivers work from the Chinese address. So does the map app you'll be squinting at on the curb.

Arrival transport, decided in advance

There are three honest options: the metro (cheap, signed in English, and it stops around 23:00), a licensed taxi from the rank (follow the signs inside the terminal, ignore the men asking in the arrivals hall), or a name-board meet booked ahead — worth it if you're landing after midnight, with kids, or on your first-ever trip. If your flight lands after 23:00, don't build the night around the metro. There's a full hour-by-hour version of this in the blog: it's 23:55 and you've just landed.

What's actually in the bag

• The passport — real-name checks at hotels, trains and sights. Not a photo of it, the passport.
• A power bank and a short cable. Your phone is the wallet.
• Tissues and hand sanitiser. Public toilets often supply neither, and this is a small thing until it isn't.
• Shoes you can walk a metro day in. Not the ones you'd wear to dinner.

Leave the rest. Convenience stores sell water, chargers, SIM top-ups and snacks, 24 hours, in every neighbourhood — the country is not short of shops, and overpacking for a city is the classic first-timer error.