A week in China - Where/What?

[anat0l]

By the time there’s two of you, didi can *almost* be classified as better value for money, cutting out the need to find a metro station and muck around.

Didi is so cheap we didn’t take the metro in shanghai unless we fell over the station entrance and the line happened to take us exactly where we needed to go.

Just to be clear, for those not in the know, there is a separate Didi app for China/HK; the existing Didi app for Australia (and a handful of other countries) will not work.

As usual, you will need to sign up and so on for Didi CN/HK, but there appears to be a SSO option for Alipay and WeChat (probably very useful if you have already verified your identity in one or both of those).

 

[Flashback]

Just to be clear, for those not in the know, there is a separate Didi app for China/HK; the existing Didi app for Australia (and a handful of other countries) will not work.

As usual, you will need to sign up and so on for Didi CN/HK, but there appears to be a SSO option for Alipay and WeChat (probably very useful if you have already verified your identity in one or both of those).

When I was playing around yesterday I just opened it via the mini app in Alipay and seemed to work OK.

 

[Flashback]

The metro is $0.65 a trip.

Yes, exactly, that was my plan is most instances; other than in Suzhou where it was showing a 25 minute walk to the closest Metro station from one of the landmarks to visit..... in which case in 35+ degree heat, I think a DiDi ride will win out there, either all the way or at least back to the metro.

 

[drcam]

I was in Suzhou this Easter. I went to Tongli and Zhouzhuang, the two most famous "water country" towns in China. They were nice, but somewhat too commercialised, there was a bit too much of a "Sovereign Hill" feel about them. It was 30 degrees already. Vive la global warming!

The Yangtse Delta in July and August is pure masochism. Better to go to more bearable Beijing, Xi'an or even Chengdu. If the weather holds up Yellow Mountain (a short train ride from Hangzhou) or Mt Taishan (halfway between SHA and PEK on the main train line) are good options.