Thread 2832101

Has anyone actually visited the Forbidden City or the National Museum in Beijing or is it only reserved for scalptroons and tourfags nowadays?

>>2832101 (OP)
I did but that was back in the early 2010s when you could pay in cash for everything and rock up to the Forbidden City same day and go in no problem
I wouldn't bother traveling to China now, or at least not until they unfuck the retarded rules for hotels/tickets/transport/payment systems for tourists and foreigners
>inb4 noooo bro you just gotta get 3 VPNs (in case the other vpns don't work) and you gotta get a second phone and you gotta give your credit card to wechat and alipay and sometimes those don't work either so take cash (but they may not readily accept it) and make sure the hotel is foreigner friendly because most aren't and...
China can fuck off with this shit. I'll just go to Taiwan or Japan instead and have a better experience anyways

>>2832116
>the retarded rules for hotels/tickets/transport/payment systems
I agree with the sentiment, but almost all that stuff can be booked on trip.com easily enough

>>2832123
>*tries to buy a drink at the 方便点*
>*try out Alipay*
>*payment declined*
>"hold on, my home bank declined the payment, let me turn on a VPN so I can approve the payment"
>"oh shit, that didn't work either, VPN is fucking up right now, let me try Wechat pay"
>*payment declined*
>"I'll try my other VPN, this one has to work!"
>*payment declined*
>"FUCK I JUST WANT TO MAKE A SIMPLE PAYMENT"
Imagine dealing with this shit every time you want to buy something without a chinese bank account
No thanks!

>>2832101 (OP)
I went there a few weeks ago, you have to get the tickets for the forbidden city and the square separately but it's possible. however there is a fuck ton of queuing thanks to all the domestic tourists. avoid the mao corpse tour
>>2832116
>>2832126
my wechat and alipay were totally fine connected to my debit card, I even made some big purchases and had no issues whatsoever as a euro

>>2832101 (OP)
Been in January this year, so your experience may vary since it was hardly crowded by then.
>Forbidden City
Didn't have to book shit. Just go around the moat and you'll end up behind Tiananmen at the ticket office. Walk up, buy the ticket and go in. Might be a good idea to do this early in the day since they probably have visitor limits.
>National Museum
Haven't been, but I went to check out Mao's corpse and the square. I feigned ignorance to a checkpoint guard before I went to the Forbidden City and he was kind enough to book me a slot for the next day at 11AM through his Weixin.
DO NOT do anything that requires an entry ticket on weekends by the way. Weekends are of the devil.
>>2832126
I connected a Revolut card to AliPay and had no issues once I got past verification (which admittedly shat itself and some chink had to flip the switch manually which took two days). Other than that, despite what people online say, everyone in China took cash without grumbling and ATMs charged no fees.

>>2832199
>ticket for Tiananmen too
Lmaooooooo, no idea it was that bad
>no payment problems
My friend from Canada just got back from a trip and said payment in China was nightmare mode (he's also fluent in Chinese and arguably the most traveled person I know). He did say that China had advanced a lot since he visited a decade ago, but yeah, when I asked him about the trip the first thing he mentioned was how difficult and impossible payment can be in China.
I will not go back to China until I know I can have a reliable and easy payment system as a foreigner. If China doesn't care about making payments easy for foreigners, that's fine. I just won't go. As I said earlier, I will go to Taiwan or Japan instead.

>>2832203
>My friend from Canada just got back from a trip and said payment in China was nightmare mode (he's also fluent in Chinese and arguably the most traveled person I know). He did say that China had advanced a lot since he visited a decade ago, but yeah, when I asked him about the trip the first thing he mentioned was how difficult and impossible payment can be in China.
idk what to tell you mate, I guess it probably depends heavily on your bank though. The main issue I had with payments are that you don't know if the vendor wants you to use wechat or alipay, and then it's hard to tell if they want you to scan their code or they want to scan your code, and then if you scan their code you have to type in the payment amount yourself - it's so much unnecessary hassle compared to just using a card reader or cash like you do in the rest of the world.

By the way, I completely agree with the general sentiment that China is a massive ballache for what you're getting out of it when you could go to Taiwan or Japan instead (t. spent 3 weeks in Japan early this year and 3 weeks in China last month). I think it's worth going at least once though since it's a very unique destination.

>>2832201
>which admittedly shat itself and some chink had to flip the switch manually which took two days
Yeah, I have no interest in dealing with this. They can fix the payment system or I will go elsewhere. I'm a simple traveler. I can jump through some hoops for a trip, but for china, the hoops simply aren't worth it at this time.

>>2832207
I think we are on the same page. I've been before, so I don't care so much if I ever go back. I just don't want to deal with this bank and payment shit. I don't fucking know how my bank will react if I go to China, and honestly, I don't think they would know either until I get there and try the card. If there is a 1% chance none of my cards (visa/mastercard) will work reliably in China, I'm not going. Simple as

>>2832209
Totally reasonable. I think if I recommended anyone go there, I would tell them to call their bank to explain that they're going to be in China between X and Y dates to be safe. Funnily enough despite how generally hard to navigate the country is for foreigners, I noticed a lot of mid-20s normie backpacker couples and in Shanghai there was the usual massive contingent of improbably tall normie European chads dominating the nightlife.

>>2832101 (OP)
i went to those places when i worked in china years ago
do you really have to get tickets for tiananmen square now? how does that even work? it's a massive fucking square in the middle of the city.
also i didn't pre book for the imperial palace (forbidden city), i just bought a ticket on the spot. of course i had to fight my way through the legions of touts and "tour guides" and so on first. but i had good practice beforehand from pushing aside the masses of pirate dvd sellers who lined up outside my hotel, and dodging the child beggars who zigzagged in front of me as i walked down the street, and the fake rolex sellers who pestered me as i just sat doing nothing in particular, and the girls who wanted me to go to their cousin's tea shop, etc etc
fucking china. it's second on the list headed "places i'll probably never go again and i'm really not that bothered about it", after saudi fucking arabia

>>2832492
>also i didn't pre book for the imperial palace (forbidden city), i just bought a ticket on the spot. of course i had to fight my way through the legions of touts and "tour guides" and so on first. but i had good practice beforehand from pushing aside the masses of pirate dvd sellers who lined up outside my hotel, and dodging the child beggars who zigzagged in front of me as i walked down the street, and the fake rolex sellers who pestered me as i just sat doing nothing in particular, and the girls who wanted me to go to their cousin's tea shop, etc etc
The more thirdie coded stuff like the beggars, pirate DVD sellers, tea shop scammers, touts etc have mostly been removed these days (although you still get the fake rolex guys everywhere in Shanghai particularly), but in its place Beijing has become much more... I guess you'd call it boring and mechanical. You have to get tickets to everywhere with weixin miniapps in Mandarin, there are unbelievable domestic tourism hordes everywhere remotely touristy in Beijing, more and more of the nice looking areas are filled with Chinese marketing streamers (if you haven't seen them before you'll know what I mean when you see one).

China probably won't improve in experience until they open up a bit more to foreign tourists (obviously not too far like Japan did) and the old people start dying off so they aren't hell bent on paving over everything and designing all sightseeing experiences around 60 year old Chinese peasants who demand to be ferried everywhere and have a stand where they can buy street food every 20 metres.