China preparations and reflections

This page is about my preparations for a cycling trip to China in August 2016

4 months before I am slated to arrive, I started working on:

• Looking up the visa requirements, downloaded the application
• Looking for ways to get an invitation letter, required for the visa
• Booking the flights- carefully looking at the baggage allowances for bikes
• Studying Mandarin Chinese: not sure this will be helpful. Most people tell me I should be able to say hello, thank you, please and excuse me.  I would add "where is the bathroom".
• Bought used copies of China and Beijing Lonely Planet guides at Powell's in Portland while on a visit there.

2 months before:

• I booked a hostel in Beijing and requested a letter of invitation from them.  They sent it immediately.  The hostel staff often speak the best English, better than many upscale hotels. I know you can cancel the hostel booking, but I think it is so cheap, I will leave it as an emergency shelter, in case something goes wrong and I end up never leaving Beijing. It is about $240 for 28 days. I will definitely be staying there for the first and last nights. The reservation is for a single bed in a 14 person dorm (it looks like these days, if you simply have a receipt for accommodations for the extent of the stay, the invite is moot).
• I contacted Travisa to apply for a visa for me- otherwise I need to go to the Chinese consulate in NYC.
• Got visa photos 2"x2" (though that size requirement is different depending on where you look- this is what Travisa told me I needed)
• Inquired into whether my bank can get me Chinese currency (yuan)
• Applied for a Citibank debit account, which I will give access to to someone at home to add money if an emergency arrises.
• Started on inoculations: Hepatitis A&B, typhoid, rabies (not yellow fever or a polio booster for this area of China); the last 2 were quite difficult to get.  My doctor did not have them and the typhoid is not widely available.  My health insurer suggested the next county over (a much smaller county) and that worked.
• Asked doctor for a got perscriptions for UTI, giardia, inhaler, and a sedative for the plane (though I have never used a sedative, I will NEED to sleep on such a long flight- I may not use it).
• Filled out visa application- leave no blanks
• Tracked down my hostel receipt and struggled to get Travelocity to print a receipt with a basic itinerary (inc outbound and return flights), along with the required "Paid in Full" note- even with contacting customer service and having them tell me they were sending a receipt like that, it never arrived in my email.  Travisa, who I'm paying to push my visa app through, eventually told me an itinerary and the receipt would fullfill the visa requirements.
• Photocopied by passport ID page
• Added all pertinent info to my google calendar, including flight confirmations, hostel address phone number, etc
• Ordered China maps with both english and chinese lablels from Omni maps
• Registered my trip with the STEP US State department- they hold your info, in case you need quick extraction from the country due to typhoons, earthquakes, political strife or epidemics. This way the US government knows you are there.

Costs- posted as accrued:

flight $1400 from Buffalo, NY, USA to Beijing on Jet Blue and Air China through Travelocity.  I was concerned I would not be able to control my seating, but in the end, it appears I was.  Aisle seat for the short leg to JFK airport, window for the flight to Beijing (sleep against the window).

Visa- about $350, which includes the consulate fee to process the actual visa, $60 or so for Travisa to check my documents and other fees from Travisa to process and take my passport to the consulate. I applied and got a 10 yr multiple entry visa. It took Travisa about 9 days from when it arrived at their NYC office to it arriving back to my home.

Daily costs- I am meeting someone in China who is American, but has lived, toured and worked in China for several years.  She notes that for about $20 a day, you can get 3 meals, snacks, accommodations in a home and a massage.

Language Learning

Things I have tried: the things in yellow were marginally helpful, the green were very helpful.

• Quizlet- many vocab lists already made.  It would be moderately easy to compile a list of words from multiple lists into one; export each list you want, copy and paste them all into one spreadsheet, purge the words you don't need and then import them back into Quizlet. The flashcard feature is pretty nice and if you have the Chinese characters on one side by themselves, Quizlet reads them to you. You can shuffle the cards, but I see no way to mark one as "known", so it stops coming up, though you can mark difficult cards to study in a smaller set, which is almost the same thing.  You can look up my basic list.
• Semanda Flashcards- these are printable flashcards by category; you need to print them front and back (so either need a printer that can do that or glue the two pages together). There is no way to purge words you don't want, but it would not really be too difficult to make your own. I tried writing the few characters from one set I wanted on the blank spaces of another set with poor results. Beginners will probably not be able to recreate Chinese characters they can read later. 

iPhone apps:

• Flashcards+ by Chegg- After many trials and tribulations and looking at paid, fancy apps, this was very good.  Fully customizable lists, audio; not especially schnazy, but highly functional.
• Memrise- really nice interface, very good, research based recall strategies, no ability to customize the lists to get to the stuff that is important to you, like how to say "yes" and "no".  Paying for it was not really an improvement, in fact the new improved version left out some of the shadier hints that were actually helpful (the character for the word "sign" was a combination of the character for floor and something else and the sound of the character was akin to shi* the way a US southerner would say it without the T at the end- the hint was that if there was shi* on your floor, it would be a sure sign your standards were slipping). Just saying... Pretty.
• ChineseSkill- fun and pretty, but again, you can't choose the content you want to study.

Equipment list:

Moo cards
lights
rain pants
rain coat
maps
crank bros multi tool
patch kit
crescent wrench
extra link
extra bolts in film canister
extra cables- one each
leatherman
lock tite
folding tire
pump
chain tool
chain oil
2 spare tube
lock/chain
Bike, fr and rear racks, 1 cage, fenders
helmet
2 cargo straps
2 bike shirts
2 bike shorts
3 socks
polar fleece
reg shorts
t-shirt
undies
rag
keys
phone
cable ties- esp for tie downs in bike box
nailclippers
comb
toothpaste
toothbrush
floss
sunscreen
insect repellent
shampoo soap
soap
quick dry towel
camping spoon
bowl
cup
ace bandage
chapstick
cranberry pills
steristrips
Lantiseptic Skin Protectant/ bag balm
sewing kit
safety pins
sleeping bag liner
antihistimine
vitamins
ibuprofen
iodine
bandaids
tape
gauze roll and pads
decongestant
inhaler
anti-biotic cream/wipes (neosporin)
presciption meds with prescription
aspirin
mole skin
deodorant
diva cup
hand santitizer/rubbing alcohol
toilet paper
dry bag
clothesline and 6 plastic pins
chargers
sunglasses
gloves
headlamp
compass/gps
4 water bottles
wallet
Money pocket
money
passport
earplugs
credit card
driver's license
health ins card
book- Kobo ereader
glasses