Still no easy laundry in China? It's a very funny thing. Before I travel to any country I've never been to, I try to figure out "the laundry situation" so I know what to bring. In some places, laundry is amazingly easy: I was just in Ecuador, and I paid only $1 per kilo, and it was done in a few hours.

And then there's China.

I still think staying in a Holiday Inn Express somewhere along your trip is a good solution. Not sure they all have self-serve laundry, but I've done it in several of their Chinese locations. Not my favorite hotel otherwise, but they're more than decent, and if you need to do laundry, they're great!

Last time I was in Shanghai, I stayed at the Grand Mercure Hongqiao. Not my favorite location (a little too far west for my taste), but my room actually had its own washing machine! No dryer, though, so we had to hang our laundry on the AC vents to dry. A bit odd, but it worked.