China: Traveling on our own and enjoying it

BEIJING, CHINA — A waitress in a red uniform waved us into the Fu Xen Yuan restaurant off Wangfujing Street, a busy pedestrian promenade known more for Western chains such as McDonald's and KFC than quaint cafes.

It was the last night of our three-week, do-it-yourself trip through China. We settled in at a granite-topped table next to a windowsill lined with large glass bottles. A few were filled with preserved snakes. Who knew what was in the others.

The menu was written in Chinese characters with the usual fractured English translations (fired rice, swet and sore pork). We cobbled together a meal of fresh, stir-fried mushrooms and bok choy, pork with pineapple, rice and beer for about $9.

The Fu Xen Yuan was a find. "Could you write down the name please in English?" I asked our waitress, and the usual flurry of activity began.

It took three other waitresses, a busboy and another diner to come up with the English spelling. I can't imagine a waiter, let alone an entire wait staff, taking the time to do this in Paris or Madrid, but in three weeks of travel around China on our own, we'd become used to this kind of personal attention.

"It's as if they consider you their own, personal responsibility," an Israeli traveler mentioned a few days earlier as we waited for a bus together. "I think they really want you to be happy."

A changing China

There's a myth about traveling in China, and it is that you either have to go on a guided group tour, a customized trip with pre-arranged itineraries, private guides and drivers or be prepared to rough-it, budget backpacker style.

There was a time when this might have been true, but like everything else in China, travel is changing.

By 2020, China is expected to become the world's most popular tourist destination. Already, it's exploding with Chinese tourists, many seeing their own country for the first time. Meanwhile, everyone's scrambling to learn English, and savvy young entrepreneurs, some with foreign partners, are picking up on Westerners' desires for everything from bacon and eggs for breakfast to the ability to buy train or plane tickets without hassle.

I set out to find out what it all means for the traveler who treasures the kinds of personal connections and adventures that come with traveling independently, but isn't into sleeping in youth hostels or surviving on cartons of dried noodles.

China might not be Europe when it comes to ease of traveling, but neither is it Mars.

From eating well to finding clean, affordable accommodations, exploring rural villages, navigating the big cities and biking through the backcountry along the Great Wall, China is becoming more user-friendly.

China Lite

I designed an itinerary some might call China Lite, but that was part of the strategy. These turned out to be both tourist-friendly destinations and places where my husband, Tom, and I were able to experience both Chinas, the one where high-tech workers with cellphones and MP3 players race to work on crowded subways, and the one where farmers still use rakes whittled from tree limbs and hoist pumpkins up from the fields in baskets strapped to their shoulders.

Shanghai was the logical place to start. More people speak English there than in Beijing, the capital, and it's smaller, with a less spread-out, more Western feel.

We moved on to a mix of towns and villages in the Guangxi and Yunnan provinces of Southwestern China, home to some of China's 55 ethnic minority groups known for their cultural traditions and colorful customs. Our final stop was bright and boisterous Beijing, a thoroughly Chinese city and the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Spending a little extra for comfortable accommodations always eases the stress of traveling. We found that it's possible to stay in nice hotels, eat well and take taxis for one-third the cost of traveling in Western Europe.

Often we paid $50 or less a night for spacious rooms in new guesthouses or hotels with private bathrooms, less in villages where the rooms were more basic but clean. If you wonder what kind of a room could cost only $50, remember this is China, where an upper middle class annual income is about $10,000 a year. The new Magnolia Hotel in Yangshuo, near Guilin, was an example. The modern rooms were huge and had Western bathrooms and air conditioning. Best of all was the service. The English-speaking women at the front desk offered to book bus tickets, flights, find local guides or arrange about any other travel service we might need.

Booked locally

To save time, we flew between cities, booking discounted airline tickets a few days ahead through local travel agents.

Not that traveling in China is without hassles.

"There's nothing here that's ever guaranteed to be what you think it really is," an English teacher from Alabama living in Beijing warned me.

Fraud and overcharging are common, and people selling everything from postcards to knock-off North Face jackets can be relentless pests. Without a pre-arranged itinerary, advance hotel reservations and a guide by our side at all times, we made a few mistakes and fell for a pedicab scam (the driver gave us one price, then tried to tack on a couple of zeros at the end of the ride).

One afternoon in Beijing, it took me four tries to find a taxi. Two drivers refused the fare, either because the trip was too short or more likely because they couldn't read the address even though it was written in Chinese. The third was stopped by a policeman for pulling into the bike lane to pick me up.

But these were minor annoyances. The trade-off was the chance to immerse ourselves in a less-than-perfect but ever-changing China.

It's not unusual for people to leave China saying they felt like walking wallets.

Most of the time, we felt like honored guests.

Carol Pucci: 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com .