Yes, it’s huge, but we know the places that your kids will love to visit and the right pace to enjoy them. Yes, the language can be tricky, but with your own personal guide helping you to navigate around, it will feel like a breeze. And with our on-the-ground support, you know that you always have someone to call if you have any questions. Or if you just need a person who can translate the name of your hotel for your taxi driver!

See how one family fell in love with China on their trip with Stubborn Mule.

1. Is China safe and easy for a family holiday?

Yes, China is absolutely safe. This is a fascinating and endlessly beautiful country. A carefully planned family holiday in China will be one of the best things you’ve ever done with your children.

Is it easy to navigate?
Yes and no. If you try to visit China completely on your own then honestly, it’s not easy. English is not always widely spoken, Google Maps doesn’t work and it can be bewildering even trying to find your way around the train stations. But if you travel with a reputable travel company, with a network of private guides at your disposal, it will be extremely easy.

What surprises families?
How friendly the people are and how varied it is.

2. What are the best ages for visiting China?

You can enjoy an incredible family holiday in China with children of any age, but you do need to take the kids’ ages into account.

Age: Under 5s

1. Pick 2-3 locations in total
2. Don’t try to do too much; there are some great city parks where the kids will find local children to play with. Language doesn’t matter at this age!
3. Consider bringing your own car seats; these are not easily available.

Suggested route: Beijing and Chengdu are both great for younger children.

Age: 5-11 years

1. Be careful not to cover too much
2. Spend 3-4 nights in each location
3. Include lots of activities; the kids will love calligraphy classes, fan painting, boat and bike rides and tobogganing down the Great Wall

Suggested route: Beijing – Xian – Yangshuo – Chengdu would be an excellent starting point.

Age: 12+

1. Make sure to include a mixture of city and countryside for variety (to give you both ancient and modern)
2. Don’t just tick off the famous highlights; it’s the off-the-beaten track gems that the kids will love – places like Baisha outside Lijiang, or the Dragon’s Backbone terraces in Longsheng
3. Include bullet trains and flights for variety
4. Allow time in Panjiayuan Market in Beijing; teens will spend hours here finding souvenirs!

Suggested route: Chengdu – Lijiang – Tiger Leaping Gorge – Yangshuo – Longsheng – Xi’an – Beijing 

See our China with Kids Top 10 feature for some of the places our customers tell us were their family favourites.

3. Visas, entry requirements & vaccinations

Visas
As of March 2026, UK passport holders no longer require a visa for a visit to China of less than 30 days.

If travelling for more than 30 days (or on a non-UK passport), our team will arrange visa support documentation for you and guide you step-by-step through the application process.

Ensure your passport is valid for at least six months after your arrival in China.

Vaccinations
The current advice is to have a tetanus booster as well as a Hepatitis A and typhoid vaccination, but check with a travel clinic for the latest recommendations. You should do this at least 8 weeks before travel. Travel Health Pro is a useful resource for travel health advice.

Now you’ve got the essentials covered, check out the top 10 things your kids will actually love doing in China!

4. Health and food

Chinese food is lip-smackingly, taste-bud-tinglingly good. It’s not an exaggeration, the food is sensational. And it bears absolutely no relation to the food served up in Chinese takeaways in the UK! This is absolutely one of the top highlights of a visit to China and is unfailingly delicious. You do need to know what to order though; this can seem a bit overwhelming, but our guides are experts at helping you choose the dishes your kids will love.

Navigating the menu

Our local guides will make ordering and enjoying Chinese food very easy, but here are some tips to start you off.

1. Google Translate is your friend and if you don’t have a guide with you, it will translate the menu for you into English
2. Even fussy kids will usually love dumplings (jiaozi). See below for other child-friendly staples.
3. Chopsticks are the norm; consider taking some plastic cutlery with you for the kids
4. Food is cooked fresh in a red-hot wok and consequently any kind of stomach bugs are very uncommon.
5. Not all Chinese food is spicy! Dishes from Sichuan (Szechuan) tend to be spicy, so if you don’t like chilli, avoid these. Other dishes will be more gentle on a child’s palate.
6. Hotel restaurants tend not to be nearly as good as local restaurants; try to be brave!
7. Order fish-flavoured pork. It sounds awful, but is a revelation. Just trust us.
8. When the kids have had enough of Chinese food, our guides will be able to take you to a good western restaurant – pizza, pasta and burgers are all relatively widely available if needed.
   

We’ll give you a list of our favourite family dishes (written in Chinese) before you leave to help you know what to order. Here are a few examples:

1. Dàn chǎofàn (pronounced dan chow fan) – Egg fried rice
2. Jiaozi (pronounced jow tse) – Dumplings
3. Fan qié chǎo dàn (pronounced fan chey chow dan) – Scrambled eggs with tomato
4. Gong bao ji ding (pronounced gung bow gee ding) – Chicken with peanuts. This is a Sichuanese dish that often has large red chillies in it, but you can ask for it without the chilli (boo yow lar). The dish works well as it has small pieces of tender chicken without bones.
5. Níngméng jī (pronounced ning men gee) – Lemon chicken – the closest you’ll get to a chicken nugget, with a lemony sauce.

5. Best times and school holidays to visit China

The best time to visit China is in the spring and autumn. If you are constrained by school holidays, Easter and the May / October half terms offer pleasant temperatures and often blue skies.

In the summer holidays (July and August), it will be hot (although still perfectly possible to visit), but with some rain, which helps cut through the humidity. See our handy When to Visit China guide for more on regional weather.

6. Getting around China as a family

China is huge! With our carefully designed family itineraries, we’ll make sure you don’t try to cram too much into your holiday. But to see the highlights, a certain amount of travel is needed.

Bullet trains
These are your best friend in China. Incredibly fast (regular speeds of 300km/h), clean, comfortable and connecting many key destinations.

We can arrange first or second-class tickets; second-class is fine for many travellers, with ample space and comfortable seats. However, first class isn’t that much more expensive, so if you want a quieter experience, with even more legroom, we’ll book you seats in these carriages.

7. Navigating the language barrier (and why travel with a private guide!)

English is not widely spoken in China, and although there is some signage in English, this is limited. In my view, you really do need a guide with you to help overcome these difficulties. Even something as potentially simple as visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing can be tricky on your own; there are lots of queues, and you need to know which to join, which guards will want to check your bags and which entrance you should go through.

A guide will also help you get more under the skin of the country. They will tell their own personal stories, perhaps their experience of the one-child policy, or how Chinese people find a romantic partner. If you are in Chengdu, they can take you to the gendered pink and blue advertising boards where parents post messages looking for a suitable boyfriend or girlfriend for their children.

They will also translate menus, direct you to your seats on the trains, help you bargain in the markets, and teach your kids to write their names in Chinese characters. They will pre-book tickets at sights to avoid the queues, take you to their favourite restaurants and find you a table in a bustling traditional teahouse. They are worth their weight in gold and, honestly, a ‘must’ in order for you to get the most out of your time.

Check out our China customer reviews for first-hand reports of how our guides have helped bring the country to life for families with children of all ages.

8. Payments, phones & internet in China

How to pay for things in China (2026)

Everyone in China uses Alipay, a comprehensive payment app. They will use this to pay for absolutely everything, including person-to-person payments. As a foreigner, you are not able to use the complete app (so you can’t do person-to-person payments, for example), but you can load a debit or credit card to pay for things in shops and restaurants.

We recommend that you load as many cards as you can onto the app before travel, as you may find that some work and others don’t.

Take some cash just in case – you probably won’t use it and China is largely cashless, but you can’t test Alipay before arriving in China so you want some as a backup.

Staying connected
China has many restrictions on which apps can be used inside the country – WhatsApp is banned, for example.

Many visitors think they then need to set up a VPN to work around this, but it’s not necessary. There is a very easy solution. Simply download and install an eSIM before you arrive in China and all of your apps from home will work fine, including WhatsApp.

There are lots of eSIM providers; we have tried Holafly and Airalo, which work well, but there are many other options.

Remember, Google Maps does not work in China.

WeChat
This is the local Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp and is used by pretty much everyone in China. Your guides and our local office will not have WhatsApp (as it is banned) and will be keen to use WeChat to communicate with you. Download this before you go and we’ll help you get it all set up; you’ll need an invitation from a local, which we can arrange for you.

9. China’s ‘don’t miss’ sights

I have spent years living and breathing China travel and have exhaustively explored the north, south, east and west of the country. I’ve taken overnight buses through the steamy lowlands of Southern Yunnan and joined pilgrims in the lofty high-altitude plateau of Tibet. I’ve walked along the Great Wall (admittedly not the whole way!), ridden across parts of Inner Mongolia on a camel and have a strong opinion on the best noodles in the country (hand-pulled in a backstreet in Datong). Together with my team of fellow China aficionados, we like nothing better than helping your family plan the perfect trip. 

Check out our China with Kids feature for the inside track on some of our favourite activities (and those our customers have loved) and get in touch when you are ready to start planning.

Must sees

1. Great Wall of China (we love Mutianyu and Jinshanling sections)
   
2. The pandas in Chengdu (head to Dujiaguan for a quieter experience)
   
3. The Terracotta Warriors (go early to avoid the crowds and check out the Hanyang Tombs too)
   
4. Yangshuo in the south (not as famous as the three highlights above, but still a ‘must’. Google it and you’ll see why!)

Lesser-known family highlights

1. Tiger Leaping Gorge – One of the most breathtaking treks we’ve ever done. It’s a two-day trip and quite hard work, but the views are worth it. Suitable for 12+
2. Lijiang and Baisha – Picture-perfect traditional Chinese towns, with curved eave roofs and buckets of charm.
3. Longsheng – Incredible mountains carved into endless rice terraces.
4. Zhangjiajie – Extraordinary landscape of limestone spires, made famous in Avatar. Wow.
5. Silk Road – For returning visitors, the west of China is stunning. Journey around the Taklamakan Desert to the fabled city of Kashgar.

11. Sample family China itinerary

All of our holidays are completely bespoke. This means that our team of China experts will help you plan an itinerary that is completely tailored for your family. We’ll take into account the interests of your children, so if you have a gymnast, for example, we’ll add in the Beijing acrobats. If one of the kids is studying Mandarin, we’ll arrange a calligraphy lesson. 

To whet the appetite, our sample 11-day China itinerary and two-week China itinerary will give you an idea of the kind of thing you could do, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a big country, and the options are endless, so let our team help you with your plans!

Suggested 10–12 Day China Itinerary with Kids (suitable for 6+)

Days 1–3: Beijing (Great Wall of China, Forbidden City and Beijing acrobats)

Days 4–5: Xian (Terracotta Warriors + cycle the city walls)

Days 6–8:  Yangshuo (cycling + countryside)

Days 9–12:  Chengdu (pandas + cooking class)

Suggested 3-week China Itinerary with Kids (suitable for 12+)

Days 1-4:  Chengdu (pandas + cooking class)

Days 5-7: Lijiang (traditional town, Jade Dragon Mountain)

Days 8-9: Tiger Leaping Gorge trek

Days 10-12: Yangshuo (bamboo rafts, cycling, gorgeous countryside)

Days 13-14: Longsheng (rice terraces and traditional villages)

Days 15-17: Xian (Terracotta Warriors + cycle the city walls)

Days 18-22:  Beijing (Great Wall of China, Forbidden City and Beijing acrobats)

12. Tips: The insider’s guide to things other tour operators miss

1. Go early to the popular sights to avoid the crowds
2. Explain to your children what a squat toilet is and how to use one
3. Take your own loo paper, as many toilets don’t provide it
4. Breakfast can be challenging in some hotels. Consider taking a pot of peanut butter, marmite or similar if your kids are not adventurous eaters.
5. Be prepared for people wanting to take pictures of / with your kids. Particularly if they are blonde or red-heads. It’s always friendly!
6. Bring some basic medicines with you; paracetamol, plasters and antiseptic wipes. Pharmacies are common but English may not be spoken and medical labels are usually only in Chinese.
   

For younger children

1. Pushchairs are not helpful outside the major cities. A child carrier tends to be much more helpful.
2. Child car seats are seldom available
3. Travel cots can usually be arranged at larger hotels but check before travel
4. If you have younger kids, we can arrange the itinerary so that nap time can take place either in a car en route from A to B or back at the hotel.
5. We’ll arrange family suites so you can put younger kids to bed and have a separate room or area to relax in the evening.