From December 1st, 2023 to November 30th, 2024, visitors can stay in China for up to 15 days without a visa. Below are several easy steps for planning a first China tour.

Decide How Many Days to Stay

We suggest you take at least a week for your first trip to see the highlights in the top three cities: Beijing (3–4 days), Xi’an (2 days), and Shanghai (1–2 days).

To discover more of China, like charming Guilin and lovely Chengdu pandas, you would need a few more days.

Consider When to Travel to China

Things to do in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai are seldom affected by the seasons.

Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October) are generally the most comfortable and recommended times for a China tour. They are neither too hot nor too cold, but fall is generally drier and warmer than spring.

A more ideal travel time for you could be March and early April or September when there are smaller crowds, favorable prices, and still good weather.

China is a good summer holiday destination too.

Consider Your Budget

The biggest cost could be international airfares. The cost of airfares from the US or Europe to China varies a lot depending on when you fly and which airline you use, from around US$1,200 to US$3,000 for an economy round trip.

The biggest price difference between the off and peak seasons is in the price of hotels and airfares. Prices in peak seasons can go up by 50 to 100%.

For a private tour, the average cost per day is about US$220–350 per person, including flights/trains within China, 4- or 5-star hotels, lunches, attractions, guides, and private transport.

We Believe Private and Tailor-Made Tours Are Best

With our private tours, you would have much more personal choice in how your tour goes. You could have more hand-picked and interactive experiences, like visiting a local family with your own local guide.

With private guiding and transport, we would make full use of your time. You could focus on the sightseeing you want to do, skipping what’s not of interest and the long queues in the most crowded attractions.

Three years into my postdoc (博士后), I started to wonder whether I needed a new career plan. After applying for more than two dozen teaching jobs, I hadn’t landed a single interview.

I had once considered going to art school but had put that idea to the side when I decided to pursue chemistry as an undergraduate. In the years that followed, I kept up my interest in art by taking painting classes at night. My family was bursting with mathematicians, computer programmers, and engineers, so it felt natural to have my daily life center around science.

But in the spring after my failed job search, that started to change after a friend excitedly showed me proofs of a review article. She was astonished by what the journal’s scientific illustrator had done with her fundamental sketches (速写). “That would be such a fun job.” I thought.

I decided to test out a new career direction by volunteering to create similar illustrations for my institute’s newsletters. I spent my nights and weekends reading scientific papers and thinking about how to illustrate the results. It was a fun task. I felt I was perhaps on the right path. But could I make a full-time career work?

Searching online, I tracked down people who had that kind of job. I found many had training through scientific illustration master’s degree programs. After living on graduate student and postdoctoral salaries for years, I didn’t have enough money saved up for the programs, so I decided to get a certificate in digital design.

I now work as a visual designer at a biomedical research institute where I spend my days working with research to communicate their work visually. I love the fact that I get to combine my scientific and artistic sides.

Administrators of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, are striving to harmonize tourists’ exploration of the site with the need to safeguard murals and artifacts, through innovative measures such as digital presentations.

Sandstorms, rainfall and tourist visits constitute the most severe threats to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, said Wang Xiaowei, director of the Dunhuang Grottoes Monitoring Center at the Dunhuang Academy.

Since the Mogao Caves opened to the public in 1979, the number of visitors has been growing at an average annual rate of around 20 percent, reaching 2.15 million in 2019 before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the site is expected to receive a record 3 million visitors.

“If you enter the caves during the peak tourism months of July, August and September, you’ll find it hard to breathe,” Wang said. The carbon dioxide and moisture exhaled by visitors accumulate inside the caves and cause damage to the murals, Wang said.

To preserve the caves, the duration of visits is limited and sometimes stopped during rain or dust storms. To try and ensure visitors aren’t disappointed when restrictions are in place, the center provides a digital exhibition, he said.

Currently, the center is being expanded to cater for an additional 3,000 visitors on top of the existing capacity of 6,000.

The Dunhuang Academy began digitally recording and storing images of murals and painted sculptures over 30 years ago. The digitization project has successfully covered over 200 caves, with a dedicated team of 110 experts currently undertaking the work.

The Mogao Caves are immovable, and transporting them is impossible, according to Su Bomin, head of the Dunhuang Academy. And he added, “However, with digitization, we can perfectly replicate Dunhuang art and showcase it worldwide, introducing Eastern culture to the world.”

In 2016, the Digital Dunhuang repository went live, sharing high-definition images and panoramic tours of the most exquisite 30 caves globally. Currently, visitors from 78 countries have accessed the repository, totaling over 16.8 million visits.

Su said Dunhuang can provide diverse cultural exchanges through its cultural relics. “By digitizing these relics, we enable people worldwide to understand Dunhuang’s culture, thereby gaining a deeper appreciation for China’s historical commitment to diverse cultural exchanges — that is, an ethos of inclusivity, mutual learning and a shared future,” he said.

The road to Mars is long and fraught with peril. One challenge is getting humans to the red planet; another is ensuring that once they’ve arrived, they’ll be able to manage life there.

To prepare astronauts for an extended stay on Mars, NASA’s latest simulated mission, CHAPEA — Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog — will isolate four people inside a mock-Mars base in Texas for 378 days — roughly the time a manned mission to Mars would spend on the surface.

Once inside they will adopt a pre-planned schedule taking part in simulated activities and science work, eating like astronauts, and dealing with maintenance and equipment failures, while undergoing strenuous psychological and physiological testing.

The first simulation will begin in June, and will be followed by two more, each with a different crew in identical conditions, with the last simulation starting in 2026.

“We’ve built a high-accuracy Mars surface mission scenario,” says Scott M. Smith, co-investigator for CHAPEA. The participants will experience a 22-minute delay in external communications, as astronauts would on Mars. Ambient noise will be played through speakers around the base, ensuring no outside sounds can be heard by participants.

Aiming for accuracy has resulted in a habitat that could be feasibly built on Mars, Smith adds. The base, called “Mars Dune Alpha”, is a custom design by Bjarke Ingels Group and 3D-printing company ICON, and resides inside a hangar at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Printed in a month from ICON’s concrete formula dubbed “Lavacrete”, on Mars, the idea is to build using Martian soil.

“NASA has evaluated a tremendous number of options for off-world habitat construction — repurposed rockets and landers, inflatables, assembled buildings, etc.,” explains ICON CEO Jason Ballard. “They’ve come to believe what we believe: that when you evaluate it from a financial, safety and flexibility standpoint, robotic construction using local materials is far and away the best option.”

Tablescapes (桌面景观) are creatively designed table arrangements or decorations for the center of a table, which show or highlight a specific object or collection. Usually, it’s dinner tables that are transformed into tablescapes.     16    

Tableseaping allows people to express their creativity by adding a personal touch. This is often achieved through the use of valuable collections or specialized themes.     17     Themes can be based upon a particular event, season, hobby, or collection. Finding a suitable theme for tablescape displays depends on personal preference as well as the style of its surroundings.

    18     Each item within a tablescape relates to other elements around it. While the objects in tablescapes do not necessarily have to match perfectly, they should stay in harmony with each other or make each other more attractive.

When it comes to organizing the selected objects for tablescapes, the easiest method is to think in terms of levels.     19     The other relatively unimportant ones include the spaces both above and below the table. Including similar or repeated items in all of these levels will help pull everything together.

When the appropriate tablescape design is carried out, the surrounding area should fit in. The highlighted table arrangement should stand out in a pleasing manner rather than looking like a mess. As everyone’s view can be different, not all tablescapes will hold the same appeal.     20     It’ll create a comfortable appearance regardless of someone else’s personal taste.