Going to
China – What to Pack
I did not use a packing list.
I saw several posted online and none of them really seemed to be a fit
for our family. We’re pretty comfortable
traveling and the mountain of clothes/accessories for all occasions and the
mini kitchen including food supplies and a bottle of dish detergent didn’t
really seem to be “us”. We were in China
for 18 days and I was very, very satisfied with my packing/level of
preparedness. We used most everything we
took and there was not a whole lot of “gee I wish I had brought” going on.
Our food supplies were limited to a few emergency snacks for
the backpacks (cereal bars, nuts) and a few snacks for Zack – we packed some
goldfish crackers, some Gerber cereal snacks and Gerber yogurt melts (he liked
all of this stuff, by the way). We did
not pack oatmeal, macaroni and cheese or peanut butter. We like Chinese food well enough and we ended
up eating out or at the hotel restaurant most of the time we were there. In Zack’s province, we went to the grocery
store and bought some noodle bowls, which we made lunches out of. There is absolutely no reason to take food to
China unless you or someone in your family is ridiculously picky or not willing
to try/experience something that is a little different/outside your comfort
zone. For replacement snacks, we bought
cookies and crackers at a small convenience store outside of our hotel in GZ. They were not exactly the same as what you’d
get in a convenience store in the U.S.A. but close enough – some sugar wafers,
Ritz crackers with cheese and rice crackers that my son really liked. For the most part, he snacked on Cheerios we
pilfered from the breakfast buffet and fruit/cookies from the executive lounge
at the HI Shifu.
Here is a list of miscellaneous stuff that I took that I was
really glad I had:
Coffee
Singles – I have to have coffee immediately upon waking, or I am
evil. Truly. We stayed in 3 different hotels and while
there was a hot water pot and tea provided in each location, instant coffee
packets were hit or miss. I took a few
Folgers Coffee Singles with me and I used each one of them. There was decent coffee on all of the
breakfast buffets, but I need something sooner than that to get me going and to
keep the evil Jill at bay. Also to note
– if you are a Diet Coke fan and are traveling to China – get over it. There was no diet anything to be found in
Zack’s province (Shanxi) and while GZ had plenty of Coke Zero, Diet Coke was
nowhere to be found.
Downy
Fabric Refresher/Wrinkle Release – I got a small bottle in the
trial/travel section as an afterthought and I was glad I got this. Our first 2 hotels did not have irons/ironing
boards (although I probably could have got one…don’t know, didn’t ask) and our
clothes were wrinkled from being in the suitcase. This stuff works fairly well.
Tide Pen – self
explanatory
Laundry
Bags - we brought enough clothes to get us through
the first day in GZ. The laundry bags
were nice, because we had to take our dirty clothes down to the lobby and drop
them off. They were cheap and they took
up no space in the luggage, and I used them as hampers. To note, most of the shops on Shamian Island
seemed to offer laundry service. We
asked our guide to arrange this for us and we had all of our dirty clothes
washed/folded (3 people) for about 35 dollars, delivered to our hotel.
Easy.
Plastic
bags of all sizes. You
cannot have enough of these. I used them
to pack liquid toiletries/wet clothes, to keep track of small items (hair
accessories, to store extra snacks in, and to dispose of messy diapers while
out and about. These take up zero space
and weigh next to nothing. Pack your
suitcases and stuff as many as you can in…then stuff some more in. Seriously. I had enough, but I was rationing myself at
the end. I used sandwich size, quart and
gallon, as well as the plastic bags from the supermarket that you get when you
forget your earth friendly green bags.
Purse
sized notebook – I used this to jot down questions for our
guides, to make lists, and to write down thoughts/phone numbers and contact
info for people I met. It seemed like
things happened so fast (because they did) and you’re tired and you’ve got so
much going on…my little notepad helped me to stay semi-organized…or at least
give me the illusion of it and make me feel better.
Individual
Kleenex packets/purse sized hand sanitizer – Toilet paper and soap
in a Chinese washroom…even nicer ones…is a rarity.
Individually
wrapped “Wet Ones” – these were great for wiping dirty faces and
hands while out and about. If you have
kids under 5, get these! I am a huge
fan…as the new mom of a 2 year old boy, I will continue to use these
liberally.
Small
travel sized packets of wipes – I brought a few wipes with me
and went through them quickly. The small
packets were easy to find in China, but if I had a do-over, I would have just
packed a bunch of them. I went back and
forth between carrying a backpack and a small pouch-like purse, and it was nice
to have many of these little packets to stash.
U.S.
Diapers – Chinese diapers suck.
Even if they say Pampers or Huggies, they are not the same. I took about a dozen diapers and bought the
rest there…I saved my “good” diapers for appointments where I knew we’d be out
all day and for the trip home.
Really…unless you are super limited on space, diapers don’t take up much
room. I lined the perimeter of one of
our suitcases with diapers and could have taken more and just not have bothered
with trying to grab them in China…diapers and all sorts of baby stuff are easy
to find in China, though.
Yankee
Candle “Car Jars” or something like that.
A BTDT friend gave me a stash of these before we left and told me to
take them to China…I didn’t really question her and just took them. Our hotels in Beijing and in Shanxi had funny
smells and it was nice to have some air freshener. I also think I would put Febreeze on my list
of stuff I would have liked to have had but didn’t take.
Medicines
–
We were not able to get prescription medicine, but we did take a pretty good
variety of OTC medicine and first aid supplies.
Zack came to us healthy and the only thing we needed was cold
medicine/cough drops/eye drops for me…the pollution in Shanxi was
horrible. My eyes and throat burned the
entire time we were there. I thought I
was getting a cold, but felt almost instantly better when we got to GZ.
Baby
blanket/pillow – I’ve previously posted pictures of Zack’s
“crib” that was given to us in Taiyuan.
Total piece of crap. It was a
board with a small bit of padding on it and the safety netting had two giant
holes in it. They did provide a clean
pillow and blanket but I was glad I had brought our own for some extra
cushiness…these were nice for the long plane ride home, too.
Cups/bowls - We
adopted a 2 year old, and we weren’t sure what he was drinking out of. We packed a bottle and a cup with a straw,
and we ended up buying a sippy cup in Taiyuan.
We also packed 3 Tupperware containers – 2 “flat out” collapsible bowls
and one small snack cup. These were
great for storing snacks and Zack liked to play with them, too. He liked playing with them so well that one
of the lids did not come home with us.
Hello, Tupperware Lady…we need a replacement lid.
Panda
Phone – Loved it. Was delivered
to our hotel in Beijing and we dropped it off at our hotel in GZ. We actually did have a need for it and it
saved our bacon a couple of times. Our guide
in GZ was not at the gate we were at and we got lost out on our own in GZ and
called our guide to have her translate to the cab driver.
Clothes
for Baby – We are summer travelers, traveling from a cool, rainy
climate (England). We packed 5 pairs of
shorts, 7 short sleeved t-shirts, two pairs of long pants, two pairs of sweat
pants, one hoodie, six pairs of socks, one bathing suit, two pairs of jammies,
and two long sleeved shirts. This was
just enough. We did not pack shoes. He came to us in a pair of new shoes, which
he wore until we got to GZ. The shoes he
came to us in were fine – like Vans…but I wanted to save the outfit he came to
us in, so I put the shoes away after I’d bought him some new shoes.
Clothes
for Mom & Dad – I am a pretty seasoned traveler and I have to
really fight off the urge to overpack.
Here is what I took for me:
T-shirts that wicked – 4
Shorts – 2
Skort – 1
Reverseable skirt – 1
Light summer (casual) dresses – 6
Tank Tops – 3
Swimsuit/coverup – 1
Cargo pants – 1
Sweater/hoodie – 2
This includes the stuff I wore on the plane. I kept one hoodie in my backpack that I used
as a changing pad…never wore it. I
took/wore 3 pairs of shoes – 1 pair of “nicer” flip flops, one paid of Ecco
walking sandals (get these!) and one pair of Sketchers walking shoes. I took 4 bras and 4 pairs of undies…go online
and look at exofficio.com and look at their travel/wash-n-go undies. I thought they were great….Lee, not so
much. We road tested these on our June
vacation…I liked them…he didn’t.
This was it. It was all
pretty easy to pack and I tend to wear the same colors/patterns, so everything
went together and I could mix/match. We
did take a detergent packet and wash out a few things in the room.
Here is what Lee took
–
Shorts – 5
Collared shirts (S/S button down) – 2
T shirts – 2
Polo shirts that wicked – 5
Jeans – 1
One pair of “oxfords” and 2 pair of slip on canvas shoes
Miscellaneous
Stuff/Stuff For baby – We packed too many toys. We took a set of stacking cups, a few large
sized legos, a couple of toy cars, two books, a coloring/sticker books with
crayons, a stuffed animal, bubbles, a toy cell phone. If I had a do-over, I would have taken the
stacking cups and the cell phone. There
was so much going on that Zack wasn’t particularly interested in toys…and there
are toys readily available anywhere in China.
Save the space. Take the very
minimum that you think you will need and get the rest there. Zack most enjoyed playing with a wet wipe and
the comb from the hotel toiletry kit.
Again…we’re perpetually outside of our comfort zone, so this
may not work for everyone. We really
loved experiencing China. We took 2
backpacks and one carry on (small case) and two large suitcases. One of the suitcases had Zack’s carryon
(filled with toys), the gifts for officials, and his ergo carrier. This freed up quite a bit of room on the flip
side. We bought a stroller in
province.
This is what worked for us…may not work for everyone, but we
really, really loved our trip. Hope this
is helpful to some of you out there…please feel free to email – jillhudkins@hotmail.com – if you have
any questions.
Jill
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