I very well could have unique experiences, but Zhejiang is always great for me. Normally I am in Yiwu, Ningbo, and Hangzhou, and I have always felt safe and welcomed. Guangzhou and Pudong I have admit can be kind of crazy at times. But the smaller cities have always provided me a wonderful visit with no problems or concerns so far.

Let's cross our fingers that WaterDragonWings has a wonderful time.

pudong, crazy?? i used to live near lujiazui (until late last year) and found it to be quite a ghost town. what sort of craziness have you encountered there? (the only time i found it unpleasent was during the october holiday when half the country descends upon beijing and shanghai).

fyi, most of those airport merchants like to charge face value for their phone cards -- the going rate is around 40-50% of face.

as far as phone card types go, i'm partial to the 17910 liantong (联通）cards. they're a little pricy on a per minute basis, but the quality is better and you can register them to any phone (so you don't need to enter the pin each time).

Hey Moondog,

Don't get me wrong, I'm the one who loves visiting China. My last visit was in October for a trade show, the end part of October. And that was when we encountered a problem. IMHO, The larger qty of foreign visiters at any time I think brings out some potentials for problems. And this could have been the case during the trip.

But I will stand to my opinion that the smaller cities in China are friendlier, more helpful, and safer, then the larger cities and the larger cities can be kind of crazy at times (think Canton Fair in GZ). Now before anyone jumps down my throat here, I think that is the same for any other country in the world also.

no worries there. (even if you loathed visiting china, my feelings wouldn't be hurt.) i guess i was just a little surprised to see "crazy" and "pudong" in the same sentence. tmk, you can't even ride bicycles in the proximity of the financial district. iirc from the urban planning museum, the government is going after a san jose, sunnyvale, shallow alto feel over there and i think they're doing a pretty good job at it.

now, shanghai itself certainly has some craziness (xujiahui, nanjing rd. e, etc) going on, but almost all of that is on the puxi side.

Definitely Puxi is an adventure itself, majority of the people I know live in Puxi and transit to Pudong each day. I think Pudong overall was a success, I personally like how they built it up. Nanjing is fun near the Bund if I have the right area but don't forget about Maoming Lu. That's a totally different world compared to Pudong.

Thinking about it, it was porbably the fact that the trade shows were going on and brought in some roving groups to the Pudong Side.

Also my first visit-Reliable Visa sources?
 

I did a search and see travisa.com and passportsandvisas.com recommended. Any others you might recommend? Thanks.

Hi everyone! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply. I got caught up with final exams and papers.

Thank you all so much for the great advice! I really appreciate all the help! I'm leaving Dec. 26. Only 9 days to go!