Exploring the “New China” First stop: Shanghai

Friendly robot waiter

The sound of a bell from a delivery cart breaks the silence as we walk out of our hotel in Shanghai on a Sunday morning. 

Cars, motorbikes, buses and bikes whiz by, but there‘s barely any traffic noise. Nearly all are electric.

Rush hour near the Bund in Shanghai

Later that afternoon, Tom and I visit a showroom for Nio, a high-end Chinese  EV car company where we’re invited to sit inside a $80,000 SUV that allows the driver to let go of the steering wheel, move to a reclining seat in the back, relax with a massage, and watch a movie while the car navigates itself. 

Back seat drivers

The $80,000 Nio EV

Searching for a bathroom while we are out and about, we decide to try a hotel with a third-floor restaurant. Getting off the elevator, we see robot sporting a bow tie delivering a meal to someone‘s room. A few minutes later, we see “him” again as he rolls back to the kitchen.

For dinner, we order a pizza by down loading a QR code, placing the order on our phone and paying for it with an app called AliPay, the digital replacement for cash for everything from an apple to a hotel bill.

We have come to China for the first time in 20 years to see what’s new in what some consider the country of the future. 

After a brief re-visit to Shanghai, we will move onto Chengdu in Southwest China, then travel by bullet train to Chongqing, Seattle‘s sister city; and finally onto Kunming near the Vietnamese border. 

In the meantime, one deviation from our plan to focus on the “New China” is our choice of a hotel in the French Concession, a century-old  area of leafy streets and colonial-style homes built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when by Europeans who occupied Shanghai after the  first Opium War of 1842.

The Old House Inn

We found the Old House Inn almost exactly as we remembered it when we stayed here 20 years ago. The building, on a back lane too narrow for a taxi to navigate, dates to the 1920s. Creaking wooden floors give away the building’s age (We had to climb four flights to reach our room), but important features such as the bathrooms have been updated, and the owners took care to decorate the rooms with Chinese antiques and lacquered furniture. 

The surprise was finding an Italian restaurant called Bella Napoli on the first floor. We ate breakfast each morning surrounded by posters of the Italian countryside as we dug into platters of buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes along with eggs, coffee and croissants. 

Pudong at night

Nightime on the Bund 

The Huangpu River divides Shanghai into two parts, Pudong or modern Shanghai on one side, and Puxi, Old Shanghai, including the French Concession on the other. Pudong is known for its massive skyscrapers with night time light shows starting after sun set, while the most famous landmark on the other side is the Bund, a semi-circle of more than 50 waterfront buildings of different European architectural styles built by Western banks and trading companies.

Squeezing pomegranates street side

Fancy coffees: Starbucks not

In reality, old and new Shanghai intersect at every turn. On our walk to the subway in the morning, we pass soup dumpling shops, hair salons, bakeries and a woman squeezing fresh pomegranate juice on the sidewalk. There‘s a recycling operation in our alley where carts piled high with flattened cardboard sometime block the entrance.  Two blocks away there are gentrified streets lined with wine bars, sushi restaurants and minimalist coffee shops selling $7 lattes. And of course, Starbucks.

To get the lay of the land, we signed up for a walking tour of the French Concession area with FreetourChina.com, a tip-based guide service; an evening food tour with a similar group called GuruWalk; and a paid high-tech tour that included the visit to the EV showroom, a ride in a driverless taxi and a visit to a store in a shopping mall with dancing robots on display. 

Deina with FreeTourChina leads a walk through the French Concession. The city bike next to her says “Thank you” when you use the AliPay app to pay for a ride.

The Prada store: Good shopping but bad vibes

Our tour with Deina, a guide with FreeTourChina, met in front of a Uniqlo store across from a good stall selling sticky rice cakes. 

On our three-hour walk with a dozen travelers from Spain, the UK, Serbia and Mexico, we witnessed a wedding shoot in the French Club, an elegant mansion built in the 1920, and explored a neighborhood of European-style houses, formerly single-family homes, now housing for five or six families. Along the way, Deiina pointed out a skyscraper housing a Prada store known locally for bad feng shui (energy) because of the number of people who have committed suicide by jumping off. 

Bill serves Soup dumplings 

Tom mastered the art of eating soup dumplings

Bill from GuruWalk introduced us to soup dumplings while walking us through some traditional neighborhoods, not-yet-gentrified with Starbucks stores or designer boutiques. The dumplings - veggie, pork or egg- are filled with a pork skin soup. The way to eat them without squirting hot soup all over the table, he explained, is to pierce them with a small hole, then suck out the soup before eating the dumpling itself. 

I normally tune out when the conversation turns to electric cars, but I found myself fascinated by a tour of the Nio showroom with our guide Sean from a travel agency called China in Sight.

“A car is not just a car anymore,” Sean told us as he demonstrated a seat back massage function with 22 massage points; three video screens for watching movies; a refrigerator; and a surround sound stereo system.

“Self-driving” EVs in China are authorized for what’s called Level 2 autopilot driving, meaning the driver can take his or hands off the wheel briefly, but must keep eyes on the road. The $80,000 SUV he showed us has Level 3 capabilities that once approved, allow the autopilot to go a step further and take over total navigation. 

Robot  taxis are still being tested in Shanghai in restricted areas. We went with Sean on the subway to the test area where he used an app to call a driverless Lexus for a 12-minute trip to the Shanghai Museum of Art. The “driver” was polite but firm about telling us to buckle our seat belts. Unlike real drivers, it kept to the speed limit on a three-lane highway. Upon delivering us to our destination, it warned us to watch out for traffic on the side of the road.

Rooftop ornament indicates to other drivers that this is a self-driving taxi

We ended the day with a visit to a shopping mall where a company called Robots and Pets demonstrates the capabilities of mechanical robots to dance, carry heavy loads and do Bruce Lee impressions.

Their robo dog sells for around $2,000. He can carry 33 pounds on his back. Search and rescue teams in China use them for missions too dangerous for actual humans.

Onto Chengu, but first a ride back to the airport in Pudong on the high-speed Meglev which we missed on our first trip here. The technology is “old.” The Meglev began running in 2002, but it’s a thrill ride nonetheless as it levitates over “tracks,” traveling at 186 miles per hour.

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Exploring China: The focus is on the future in the country of tomorrow

 

                          The future: Chengdu's bamboo towers with waterfalls that mimic bamboo shoots 

The past: Tiananmen Square

It was just after midnight when the taxi driver dropped us off in an alleyway surrounded by sacks of concrete and piles of bricks. It was hard to believe this is where we would find our hotel in Beijing, but this was 17 years ago, and my husband, Tom, and I had decided to opt for staying in a hutong instead of a four-star hotel. 

Hutongs have mostly disappeared, but at the time, they were like villages inside the big city - basically communities hidden in and around alleyways surrounding common courtyards. A few, like this one, housed tiny family-run inns that welcomed visitors with comfortable courtyard rooms and cafes.

The alley entrance to our hutong in Beijing in 2009

In 2009 and 2005 while I was reporting for the Seattle Times, we concentrated on historical sites, remote villages and cultural encounters in the rural countryside. We biked an undeveloped section of the Great Wall, visited Xian's terracotta soldiers, road the "hard sleeper" train to small towns and spent the night in an ethnic village reached by a mile walk along a dirt path after a 100-mile drive that took five hours.

Fast forward to 2026 as we get ready for our third trip to China, this time focused not on the past, but the future. Rather than traditional sites such as Tiananmen Square, above, we're off this time to see modern landmarks like the Chengdu bamboo fountains, pictured above, and find out what it is like to stay in one of the gigantic Raffles City towers in Chongqing pictured below. 

The futuristic Raffles City hotel and shopping complex in Chongqing

Apparently we're not alone in our quest to experience a cashless society, ride in driverless cars, try out facial recognition at a vending machine and walk across a sky bridge that stretches across the tops of four 800-foot- tall skyscrapers. 

While the U.S. is discouraging foreign travel with visa restrictions and generally unwelcoming policies, China is encouraging international visitors any way possible, reports Wendy Lu, a Seattle-area consultant and author of a book titled "My First Impresssion of China- Washingtonians' First Trips to the Middle Kingdom." 

Writing for the online publication Post Alley, she sites a Pew Research Center survey on world opinions of 36 countries that concluded that many people now have a more favorable view of China than of the U.S.

With looser visa rules (If you are transiting through China to another country, you can stay in China for 10 days without a visa), China logged a 20.4 percent increase in inbound trips by foreign nationals in the first half of this year.

"China has had a blockbuster summer of international tourism, Lu reports. "One new trend that makes tourists to China more excited about is that they can now go beyond the conventional sightseeing of landmarks and historical sites to take immersive industrial or rural tours, watching robotic arms operate in an EV factory, for instance, or spending time with residents of ethnic villages." 

KFC delivery robot

Twenty years ago, no one thought about taking a vacation to China the way they did to Thailand or Vietnam, but after traveling there twice with the help of many English-speaking Chinese, I asked myself, why not? 

I would pose the same question today, given that it's even easier now to plan an independent trip without going on an organized tour.

 China was and still is a great value for U.S. travelers, given the dollar-yen exchange rate. The historical and modern inventions are incomparable. The food is cheap and tasty. The hotels are great values. Even the international air fare is a good value compared to fares to Europe.

Online sites such as booking.com and trip.com make booking hotels, trains and buses easy. Walking tours and day trip can be arranged and paid for in advance through sites such as freetour.com, GuruWalk and  and GetYourGuide.  

Armed with the payment app Alipay, used instead of cash for even smallest transactions; WeChat (the Chinese version of WhatsApp); and DIDI (ride share app), we are set for a three-week do-it-yourself  trip that will take us first to Shanghai on Delta's non-stop from Seattle, then onto Chengdu and Chongqing in the center of China and finally to Kunming and the ethnic minority villages of Dali in the southwest.

A nighttime light show at Chengdu's Twin Towers 

Chengdu pandas 

We'll take in some traditional sites -the Panda Research Base in Chengdu, the Dongchuan Red Lands near Kunming, and the ethnic villages near Dali, but the city we're most excited about is Chongqing, a sister city to Seattle located along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, best described as the "biggest city nobody has ever heard of."

Suspension bridges connect various parts of Chongqing

With a population of 32 million, Chongqing (formerly called Chungking like the American noodle company that once made canned chow mein) is the largest municipality in the world by population, although third behind Tokyo and Jakarta when measured in terms of metro area. The city's biggest mark on Seattle is the Seattle Chinese Garden on the South Seattle College campus, designed in the Sichuan style by architects and artisans from Chongqing and Seattle.

Famous for its fiery hotpot, dramatic skyline, monorails through buildings and stacked highways, Chongqing is called the "8D city" or vertical city because it is built in a steep mountainous area, resulting in significant elevation differences and the need for suspension bridges at various heights to connect various parts of the city.

Public transportation

Due to its layout, the streets are so steep that the ground floor of a building might open to a busy street, while the 22nd floor opens to a completely separate street or a public square on the other side.

The Liziba monorail

A train station inside a building in the Liziba district is located eight stories above ground. The monorail system allows trains to pass without causing disruptive vibrations, thanks to an advanced soundproofing system.

How to see all off this? We've booked a three-hour walking tour our first day through freetour.com with a local guide and later, through a local travel agency, a market tour and visit with a family for lunch in their home.

Our hotel is a far cry from the inn in the hutong we booked so many years ago in Beijing. In Chongqing, we will be staying in the Ascott Raffles City, a hotel inside Raffles City, complex of four skyscrapers sitting 820 feet above the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. 

Raffles City hotel and shopping complex

The price was a bargain $117 per night, booked on booking.com, with breakfast for one-bedroom apartment with a washing machine in the room.

Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, the key feature is a top-floor observation deck called the Crystal walkway that includes the Sky Mirror, a  glass-bottomed outdoor viewing deck that cantilevers over the edge of the building.

Raffles City skywalk 

The view is straight down at the 820-foot drop to the streets and rivers below. 

If this isn't enough of a thrill, there's a Cloud Walk for those willing to gear up in a full-body safety harness and walk along the open-air spine of the crystal, with no glass walls between you and the drop. The highlight: You can sit on the edge and dangle your feet over the city. 

Sadly, China has age restrictions on the lower and higher ends. The cut-off for the Cloud Walk is 65, so we will have to see what other closer-to-the ground thrills await.

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Ignore the Airbnb pushback; Choose wisely and everyone wins

 

An Airbnb in Taxco, Mexico. The owner lived next door

Should you feel guilty about staying in an Airbnb, given the pushback around the idea that they displace locals, create a shortage of housing and ruin neighborhoods once reserved for long-term residents?

Hotel industry lobbyists are winning support from city governments to restrict or eliminate Airbnbs in many places. Even consumer advocates, such as syndicated columnist Christopher Elliott, urge travelers go back to being tourists rather than "pretending" to live in a neighborhood at the expense of permanent residents."

I argued against those arguments in a recent blog post countering the assumption that Airbnb lost its way when it began opening up its listings to investors with hired managers. Some are, but many are owned by individuals supplementing their incomes by renting out a room, suite or mother-in-law apartment never intended as a full-time residence. 

 "How do you tell the difference?" a reader asked.

A classic Airbnb on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia

Making the right choice when choosing an Airbnb requires research, not only when it comes to ownership, but also the neighborhood, bottom-line price and refund policies. Do your homework, and you won't need to feel guilty about deciding on a spacious Airbnb as opposed to a tiny room in a high-priced hotel. The bonus is not only a larger, more private accommodation, but the chance for a unique cultural experience, especially if you are booking in another country,

Here's what to consider:

After searching for a listing that meets your criteria, scroll down to below the map showing the location to "Meet your host." My husband and I rented a suite in White Rock, British Columbia recently. The owner and her family lived in a house attached to the unit which appeared to have been remodeled to include a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The entrance was near the back of her house, and although the unit was well-equipped, I doubt that anyone would find it suitable as a full-time rental.

A typical Airbnb listing with photos. This was our White Rock Airbnb

A unit that is not owned by an individual but rather by a company that hires out the management might list their own name or the names of the same two or three different "hosts" on multiple listings. 

The studio apartment we rented a couple of years ago on Rua das Flores, the main pedestrian street in Porto, Portugal was one of several managed by the same people, a good indication that the owners were investors. The host, Sofia, confirmed she was a real estate consultant who, along with her parents, started buying up units on the street a few years ago.

The view from our Airbnb in Porto

We stayed three nights in the Airbnb and two nights in a small hotel owned and managed by a local couple. Both we lovely, but I admit I felt better about supporting the local innkeepers as opposed to the investors who likely did displace some permanent housing. 

Pricing

The initial price that appears on an Airbnb listing will not be the bottom-line price you see when you hit the "reserve" button. The initial listing will include the Airbnb service fee, but not taxes. Example: I have been looking at an Airbnb in Mexico City where the listed price was $$373 for thee nights. That jumped to $439 when I went to book and $67.12 in taxes were included. Some cities or countries have a per-day tourist tax required to be collected on-site. We discovered this in Malta last spring when the Airbnb owner left a note requesting that we leave 7 euros in cash on the kitchen table before leaving. 

Refund/Cancellation policy

Always check refund and cancellation policies which vary according to the listing. Many Airbnbs have liberal policies allowing for cancellation with a full refund up to a few days ahead of arrival. Pass on bookings that are non-refundable or return just a partial payment minus the Airbnb fees.

Check the reviews

Airbnb publishes all reviews, good or bad, from both customers and owners. Check them carefully as well as the dates they were posted. Only people who have actually stayed in the Airbnb can do a review, so there is no danger of fake postings. 

House rules and amenities 

Some hosts think of everything. Cindy, our host in White Rock, left blueberry muffins, grapes and cheese in the fridge along with half- and -half for coffee. Other hosts leave the cupboards bare except for salt and pepper. Almost all provide a code for opening the door rather than a key. Some make an effort at personal contact; others don't unless you need something. 

Coffee makers are one of the quirkiest variables. Some hosts provide easy-to-use drip machines with ground coffee; others, like Cindy, supply K-cups and a Keurig or Keurig--like coffee maker. Coffee purists tend to stock their units with complicated equipment such as elaborate espresso machines and whole bean grinders.

The most unusual non-amenity I have encountered was at an Airbnb on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. The owner provided no indoor trash can, just an outdoor compost pile. Guests were expected to provide their own receptacle for taking coffee grounds or food to the compost pile, and pack everything else out when they left.

   

Columnist mounts case for traveling like a tourist, not a local. I disagree

 

Going local with volunteer greeter Oskar Sandoval in Mexico City

"Why you should be a tourist- not a local - when you travel," was the headline above a recent column by Christopher Elliott, a columnist who calls himself the "Travel Troubleshooter. 

Starting with upending the idea of staying in an Airbnb in a local neighborhood instead of a hotel in a tourist district, he goes on to advise hiring licensed guides instead of amateurs and resist thinking of over-crowded and expensive historic sites as "tourist traps." 

"Maybe the most ethical — and enjoyable — way to travel now is to stop pretending you live there, and embrace your status as a tourist," Elliott writes. "The problem with living like a local is simple math. "When everyone does it, no locals are left. Tourists push out the very communities they claim to love."

There is a case to be made for how over-tourism and the resulting gentrification of non-touristy areas can displace residents, inflate housing prices and drive out the butchers and bakers in favor of chic boutiques and trinket shops. 

Elliott's counter-offensive, called "In defense of the tourist trap," starts with urging people to stay in hotels rather than Airbnbs, the theory being they attract transients "pretending" to live there at the expense of permanent residents. Hotels, on the other hand, he says, are "created for visitors. They employ locals, pay commercial taxes, have security, and don’t displace families."

Next comes advice to stick to hiring licensed guides, citing a horror story from a tour operator who "got lost and nearly died of thirst" after veering from the beaten path in a jungle,

Finally, Elliott nudges travelers to embrace the well-known landmarks rather than looking at them as tourist traps.

  "There’s no shame in seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum," he writes. "These  icons are in tourist areas, and your ticket price often supports their conservation."

Do this instead

I would suggest there are better ways to travel responsibly while at the same time "becoming a (non-invading) temporary local," a phrase coined by travel guidebook author and T.V. host Rick Steves. 

Let's start with lodging. One reason most people stay in Airbnbs is to avoid sky-high hotel prices that inflate further with resort fees, parking fees and extra charges for early check-in. The other benefit is the chance to become familiar with a neighborhood outside the tourist zone, an experience that usually includes using public transportation, patronizing local restaurants and going to the grocery store.

Our Airbnb in Tasco, Mexico. Tito, the owner, lived next door

The key is to pick an Airbnb owned by a person trying to supplement their income rather than an agent who manages dozens of apartments that might otherwise be rented to local residents.

My husband and I will  be staying in the downstairs mother-in-law apartment owned by a couple in White Rock B.C. when we visit the Vancouver area soon. I'd much rather funnel my tourist dollars to them instead of a downtown hotel that charges $200 a night and $50 for parking. 

Another alternative is to pick a family-run hotel, easier when traveling in Europe than in the United States. Steves steers his followers to small hotels, often mom-and-pop businesses, located outside the main tourists zones but accessible by public transport.

When it comes to tour guides, hiring someone with a license guarantees little more than a high hourly rate.  The guide may be quite knowledgeable, or may just read from a memorized script translated from his or her language into English.

I've had much better luck and more personal experiences by spending a few hours with a greeter from the International Greeters Association, a network of volunteers from around the world who organize strolls for travelers.

Oskar was our greeter in Mexico City. We have remained in contact and see him whenever we are there.

Greeters are not tour guides, but rather temporary friends anxious to share what they love most about their city.  My husband and I have met greeters in Paris, Marseille, Japan and Mexico, and are now working on making connections in Shanghai and Chengdu, China. 

 Soufiane, a surfing instructor who moonlights as a walking tour guide for Freetour.com, was our Freetour guide in Rabat, Morocco.

Online groups such as freetour.com and guruwalk.com offer a similar services for those looking for small group walking tours, food tours or specific experiences such jogging or exploring a neighborhood's nightlife.The guides might be students, university professors or professional guides who are moonlighting. They work for tips, the amount of which is up to you. One of our most memorable walks like this was a morning spent with a GuruWalk guide in Aman, Jordan who invited the whole  group back to his home for a multi-course lunch.  

When it comes to the big sites, there is nothing wrong with seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum. First-time visitors should, but they should also budget time for alternative experiences.  

An Eatwith dinner in Mexico City

The eatwith.com program connects travelers with locals who host lunches and dinners in their homes. The site includes a brief bio, a sample menu, dates, times and prices.  We have spent long evenings with hosts in Bucharest, Paris and Mexico city - all of whom lived outside the tourist areas.  One of our best Eatwith experiences was a visit to a farm outside of Hanoi which included a tour by the owner, and a short cooking class at her house followed by a lunch.

In the kitchen with Mandy, our Eatwith host in Hanoi

Becoming a "temporary local" without disturbing the local way of life can be as easy as visiting the same cafe twice. One of our favorite parts about staying in Nyaung Shwe, a town on Lake Inle in Myanmar, was becoming regulars at the tea house down the street. The town has plenty of tourist places where you can get a good cappuccino, but we became addicted to Burmese tea served with sweetened condensed milk. We sipped ours while seated at low tables on child-sized plastic stools below a picture of a golden Buddha image sitting on a pile of money.  

Starbucks Not. Sipping tea in Myanmar