What a Trip to China Costs: Daily Budgets and Real Prices

The short answer

¥350–550 a day is a comfortable backpacker, ¥800–1,300 a day is a normal mid-range trip, and ¥2,000+ a day is premium. Those figures include your room, three meals, local transport and a ticket or two — not international flights or long-distance rail.

Street food and noodles: ¥15–45 a meal. Sit-down dinner for two: ¥150–400.
Metro across town: ¥3–10. DiDi for the same trip: ¥25–45.
The big costs are hotels and intercity trains, not daily life.

How to read the numbers on this page

China is a low-inflation, high-variance country: a bowl of noodles is ¥12 in Chengdu and ¥38 in a Shanghai mall. Everything below is a band, not a price. Where a number is seasonal or set by an official tariff we say so. If something is off by more than a fifth, the menu is right and this page is wrong — tell us and we will fix it.

Daily budget, three ways

Per person, per day, including accommodation. Two people sharing a room brings the hotel line down by roughly 40%.

Style	Per day	What that buys
Backpacker	¥350–550	Hostel dorm or budget chain, metro and bus, street food and noodle shops, one paid attraction
Comfortable	¥800–1,300	3–4 star hotel, DiDi for longer hops, sit-down meals, two attractions, a coffee habit
Premium	¥2,000+	View rooms, private guides, car and driver, fine dining — the ceiling is genuinely open

These are the same three tiers we use on every city page, so you can budget a whole route without switching definitions halfway.

What individual things cost

Item	Typical	Notes
Bottle of water, 500 ml	¥2–3	Convenience store. Tap water is not drinkable; hotels provide kettles and bottled water.
Milk tea / bubble tea	¥15–28	Chain stores. The ¥30+ ones are a different product, not a different size.
Coffee, chain	¥20–45	Luckin undercuts Starbucks by roughly a third, and is everywhere.
Noodle or dumpling meal	¥15–45	Local shop, one person. This is the single best value meal in the country.
Sit-down dinner, mid-range	¥80–200 per person	Ordering family-style for a table of four lands near the bottom of that band.
Convenience store lunch	¥15–25	Hot boxed meals, soup, a drink. Reliable and fast on train days.
Metro ride	¥3–10	Distance-based in every big city. A stored-value card or QR code is faster than buying singles.
Taxi flagfall	¥13–16	First 3 km, major cities. Night rates add 20–30% and usually start around 23:00.
DiDi, 5–10 km	¥25–45	Cheaper than the meter in most cases, and the price is fixed before you accept.
Airport rail link	¥25–50	Beijing Capital Express ¥25; Shanghai Maglev ¥50. Both beat a ¥150–250 airport taxi.
Beer, supermarket	¥5–10	The restaurant markup on alcohol is steep; buy from a convenience store.
Bottled water, scenic area	¥5–10	Buy before you enter. Inside the gate it triples.

Attraction tickets, and why they set your schedule

Tickets are the one line item where the price and the booking rule matter equally. Several of these sell out days ahead and are sold only through an official channel tied to your passport.

Site	Ticket	Booking reality
Forbidden City, Beijing	¥40 off-season / ¥60 peak	Passport-only booking, released 7 days ahead, closed Mondays. Sells out in minutes on holidays.
Great Wall at Mutianyu	¥40 entry + ¥15 shuttle	Cable car or toboggan is a separate ¥100–140. The shuttle is not optional — the car park is 6 km from the wall.
Terracotta Army, Xi'an	¥90–120	Seasonal. Book the morning slot; the halls are unventilated by early afternoon.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park	¥228	Four-day ticket, fingerprint-linked. Cableways and the Bailong elevator are extra.
Giant Panda Base, Chengdu	¥55	Go at opening — pandas are active before 10:00 and comatose after.
Shanghai Museum / West Lake	Free	Free does not mean walk-in: the museum still requires a timed reservation.
Yu Garden, Shanghai	¥30–40	Seasonal. Skip weekends; the corridors are one-way at capacity.

Every figure above is a planning reference. Official ticketing pages change both price and rules, so confirm on the site of the site itself — links are in the city guides and at the foot of this page.

Trains and flights

Route	Second class	Time
Beijing → Shanghai	≈ ¥550–660	4.5–6 h
Beijing → Xi'an	≈ ¥515	4.5–6 h
Shanghai → Hangzhou	≈ ¥73	45–60 min
Guangzhou → Shenzhen	≈ ¥75–82	30–40 min
Shanghai → Zhangjiajie	≈ ¥500–700	7–9 h, or fly

Second class is fine — 3+2 seating, luggage racks, a trolley every hour. First class buys roughly 30% more width for 60% more money. Domestic flights are often cheaper than a long train on the same route, but add two airport transfers and a baggage rule, which is how travellers end up spending more to save three hours.

Where China is surprisingly cheap

Eating well. Two people can eat extremely well for ¥100 in any city outside the top restaurant tier.
Getting around cities. A metro system that would be a premium product anywhere else costs ¥3–10 a ride.
Long-distance rail. 1,300 km at 350 km/h for ¥550 has no equivalent in Europe or North America.
Everyday services. Laundry, hair, repairs, a bottle of water — the domestic price level is low and visible.
Museums. Most provincial museums are free with reservation.

Where it is not

Hotels in the centre. The biggest and most variable line in your budget. A room near the Bund costs three to five times one four metro stops out.
Western food. Imported cheese, good coffee, a proper pizza — you pay import prices plus a restaurant margin.
Airport everything. Taxis, SIM cards, water, sandwiches: 2–4× the city price. Buy your data plan before you fly.
Tickets inside scenic areas. The gate ticket rarely includes the cable car, the elevator, the shuttle or the boat. Budget another ¥100–250 a day at mountain sites.
Alcohol in restaurants. Often 3× retail. Buy from a shop and drink at the hotel.
Last-minute holiday travel. During Spring Festival, hotel rates in resort towns double and trains sell out three weeks ahead.

Tipping, tax refunds and card fees

Question	Answer
Do I tip?	No. Restaurants, taxis and hotels do not expect it. High-end restaurants may add a service charge, which is on the bill. Leaving coins is not rude, just unnecessary.
Is there a tourist tax refund?	Yes, on goods bought at participating stores, above a per-store minimum, exported within the allowed window. It is a departure-lounge process with paperwork — only worth it for a large purchase such as electronics.
Does Alipay or WeChat charge me?	Both add a fee on foreign-card transactions above a threshold per transaction, and small transactions often escape it entirely. Details and the current threshold are in the payment guide.
Can I use a credit card directly?	In hotels, malls and international chains, yes. In a noodle shop, a taxi or a ticket machine, assume no. This is the whole reason for the payment guide.
Do ATMs charge?	The Chinese bank usually adds a fixed fee, and your own bank adds another. Withdraw a larger amount less often rather than small amounts repeatedly.

Eleven ways to cut the bill without cutting the trip

Book the hotel four metro stops out. Same city, half the price, ten extra minutes.
Eat the set lunch. Restaurants that charge ¥200 at dinner serve a ¥60–90 set at midday, same kitchen.
Use the metro for anything under 5 km. DiDi is for rain, luggage and 23:00.
Take second class on trains and spend the difference on a better hotel night.
Buy water and snacks before entering any scenic area.
Buy the eSIM before you fly, never at the airport counter.
Stay in one city longer. Every move costs half a day and a transfer; three cities in seven days is the most expensive shape a trip can take.
Do the free stuff properly. West Lake, the Bund, city parks, temples in residential districts and most provincial museums cost nothing.
Book timed tickets the day they release, not through a reseller charging a service fee.
Drink supermarket beer and take the hotel kettle seriously.
Avoid the first week of October and Spring Festival unless the crowds are the point. Prices double and everything needs a reservation.

A worked example: ten days, two people

Beijing (3 nights) → Xi'an (2 nights) → Shanghai (4 nights), comfortable tier, no internal flights.

Line	Cost
Hotels, 9 nights, ¥700 average	¥6,300
Food, 10 days, ¥350/day for two	¥3,500
Local transport and DiDi	¥900
Attractions and cable cars	¥1,600
Intercity rail, two people	¥2,200
Total, excluding flights to China	≈ ¥14,500 (≈ US$2,000)

That is the mid-range shape of a first trip. The same route on the backpacker tier is roughly ¥7,000–8,000; on the premium tier it passes ¥30,000 without trying. The variation is almost entirely hotels and how often you take a car.

Three numbers that catch people out

Deposits. Hotels take a card pre-authorisation at check-in, released days later — it is not a charge, but it is a hold on your limit. Cable cars. At mountain sites they are frequently ¥100–250 each way and not included in any ticket. Baggage. Domestic low-cost fares may exclude a checked bag entirely; the fee at the airport is far higher than adding it at booking.

Next: set up payments · book trains and metro · pick a city

Last reviewed 2026-11-06 — rules and prices in China change often. Confirm critical details in the app or on the official site before you rely on them.

Official sources used for this guide

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