A lot can change in a decade and a half, particularly when you’re talking about China. Our first trip to mainland China in 16 years was a great opportunity to experience some of those changes and learn how to travel through the new China.
The recent change that impacts you most as a foreign tourist is that pretty much all payments, even at little kiosks selling street food, require you to use on online payment app. If you have not travelled in China recently there is some useful information at the bottom of this post about payment apps and some other travel tips.
Over New Year 2025 Lillian and I spent two nights in the city of Xiamen, which was long enough to see some of the city, figure out how to get around and sample some of the local delicacies.
Xiamen (厦门) is a coastal city at the same latitude as Taiwan. It was formerly known as Amoy and was a British-run treaty port from 1842 to 1912. I didn’t realise it until we started planning our trip, but two of the islands just offshore from Xiamen, Kinmen (金门) and the smaller Yangyu (烈屿), are part of Taiwan. It’s only about 5km from Xiamen to the closest one. To put it in context for anyone that knows England, geographically it’s like the Isle of Wight being part of France.
Hong Kong to Xiamen
We travelled to Xiamen on the high-speed train from Hong Kong, West Kowloon Station. Since the mainland train station in Hong Kong opened in 2018 we’ve wanted to take a trip and ride on China’s new high-speed rail network. Hong Kong to Shanghai now only takes about 8 hours by train!
However, whilst the track may be modern, trying to buy tickets from overseas through the ‘Railway12306’ train-booking app and website was a struggle – you can’t book more than 2 weeks in advance and we could not successfully verify our IDs online – so we ended up going in person to the station in Hong Kong. Once there in person, buying the tickets was easy and we were told to arrive at least 90 minutes before our departure time on the morning of our journey.
This we did, only to get through customs and immigration quickly and to find ourselves in a large concourse with lots of marble but not much else… other than seats and a water dispenser. No shops, cafes or even vending machines.
The complimentary food box on the train was also disappointing.
In addition to our goody box there was a carriage with a food kiosk, but the selection of food was quite limited and not very appetising.
We travelled first class (only about NZ$110 each for the c.600km journey to Xiamen) which was comfortable. Second class also looked fine, with the main difference being the seats were a bit less padded and more closely packed. When the train picked up speed it floated almost silently through the countryside at 246kph. There was a live speed display! It was a smooth and efficient, and aside from the minor disappointment with the food we were impressed.
Once in Xiamen we ordered a Didi taxi to our hotel. Didi is a ride hailing service that you can access through WeChat. It was simple to use, though we found out that regular taxis were cheaper and could also be paid for with a mobile payment app. All of the taxis were EVs as were at least half the cars on the road. This made for a much less polluted atmosphere than we experienced in China on previous trips. EVs all have green number plates so are easy to spot.
Xiamen
The main part of Xiamen is an island and our hotel, the Swiss Grand (厦门瑞颐大酒店), was on the southwest side of it. We were treated to a nice view from our room of Gulangyu (鼓浪屿), a smaller island which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the main tourist destinations.
Our hotel was well located to walk to the main shopping street, Zhongshan Lu (中山路), had a good breakfast buffet selection and a well equipped, if somewhat over warm, fitness centre. The thermostat was set at 24 degrees! Lillian was particularly excited to find that the gym contained a Pilates reformer machine. Neither of us had seen one of those in a hotel before. We’d stay there again.
Railway Cultural Park
This is 4km section of old railway track that has been pedestrianised. You pass apartment blocks, a few old railway carriages that have been left as mementos and people, young and old, walking home or taking a constitutional stroll.
On the evening when I first came across the Railway Park it was a relief to be able to run freely after being on the regular pavements where there are long waits at traffic lights and pedestrians are menaced by weaving electric bikes and scooters.
There was even a long tunnel that had been converted into an exhibition of sorts, containing a lot of information on the history of the old Yingtan-Xiamen Railway.
On New Year’s Day I took Lillian to the Railway Park for our morning run.
It was a nice way to see some of the residential neighbourhoods.
We finished our run on the seafront that stretches from in front of our hotel to beyond Zhongshan Lu.
The pavement / park continues to the local ferry terminal which was a couple of hundred metres further on. Contrary to what one might expect, this is not where you go to catch a ferry to Gulangyu even though it is only a few hundred metres away across the water. More on that in a section below.
Zhongshan Lu and nearby streets
This broad street is fully pedestrianised and there is a lot to look at… and eat. I generally don’t like shopping but when every few stores you are offered samples of the local cakes and nougat it is much more enjoyable. There are plenty of places to eat cheaply just off Zhongshan Lu and in the surrounding narrower streets and, given that all the meals we had were in outdoor restaurants, I think it qualifies for inclusion in an ‘Outdoor China’ post.
Once the shops open Zhongshan Lu is bright and bustling but in the morning it looks completely different.
This was one of our evening dinners, trying to eat lots of vegetables.
And in this one we tried some of the local fish balls, which unusually had a meat filling.
There are plenty of local delicacies in addition to fish balls. Shachamian (沙茶面), which are noodles with ‘satay sauce’ (spicy rather than peanutty), and special xiaolongbao (小籠包) were ones that we tried and enjoyed. Other treats were less appealing. For example, we saw these seafood snacks in a nearby street food market as well as sandworm jelly. This is an infamous dish and is exactly as it sounds. Jelly with whole sandworms set into it.
There’s plenty of beer of available in the street restaurants but on our final evening Lillian fancied a glass of wine, so we stopped in a western style restaurant on the waterfront, ‘Commune’, on our way to dinner.
Gulangyu
This is well worth a visit. Many of the wealthy merchants of old Amoy built villas on the island so it contains a blend of different architectural styles and with no cars, bicycles or electric scooters it’s very pleasant to walk around.
Although there was a ferry pier close to our hotel, as foreign tourists we had to catch a taxi to the International Cruise Centre (国际邮轮中心) about 4km up the coast to buy tickets and for a ferry ride the following morning. After our visit we were however able to catch a ferry back directly to the Ferry Pier (轮渡码头) near our hotel.
The Cruise Centre did have some nice cafes and restaurants on the first floor and we were able to get a decent coffee and some cute photos.
The only available ferry tickets on our day of travel were for the luxury ferry, which had the advantage to having an open top deck. The International Cruise Centre is in the background.
We were also treated to a song and dance session from the crew. I wasn’t sure if this happened on every journey or if was due to it being New Year’s Day.
Once on the island we wandered through the twisting streets aiming for a stall selling mochi that Lillian had read about. The mochi was delicious and not long afterwards we found a coffee shop where had the most nicely made coffee of the trip.
There were lots of restaurants, shops selling snacks and gifts, and fair amount of Chinese Communist Party slogans like these ones outside this local activity centre.
We also came across a cute little electric police car. The only wheeled vehicles were similarly golf-cart like.
Paths wound up the hills on the island where there were plenty of old villas, many of which still seems lived in.
This particular path climbed to large boulder at the top of the hill (笔架山) from where we had a great 360 view of the island. There is a higher peak, Sunlight Rock (日光岩), which we didn’t go up as we were running out of time and it seemed more busy.
Lunch was in one of the many restaurants on the island. This is where we ate the shachamian (沙茶面) and xiaolongbao (小籠包) mentioned above.
The photo below is from the Xiamen side of the island. Our hotel, the Swiss Grand, is just above Lillian’s head.
Another place that intrigued us was the Cat’s Milk Tea shop.
We particularly like the description of the cat, ‘Tri-Lunatic Zhang’. The tea was nice too although it did contain some barley grains and other bits and pieces in it. Like bubble tea without the bubbles.
Our meandering stroll around the island ended up being over 10km and there were still some sections that we didn’t go to.
Botanical Gardens
On our final morning in Xiamen we planned to walk to the Gardens from the Nanputao Temple (南普陀寺). However it did not start well. The Temple is a very popular tourist site but was a bit too crowded to entice us to go inside. Not being able to access the Gardens from the temple grounds – which was probably not possible anyway – we then tried a route I’d seen on on AllTrails via Xiamen University. However, we couldn’t gain entrance to the University. We were told that we needed an invitation… at least that what I think the security guard was saying!
In the end we ended up just catching a taxi to the gardens and only had 45 minutes to walk around them. They cover the side of a hill and are an idyllic and tranquil spot. We’d have liked to have had more time to explore.
I was also tickled when I realised the meaning of this sign in the men’s toilets in the gardens. I’d seen it before and thinking it was just another slogan had not thought about it until then.
We wanted something quick and close to the hotel for our final lunch in Xiamen so we went back to Commune. Lillian really enjoyed this salad and the margherita pizza I ordered wasn’t bad either.
Our final treat before boarding the train back to Hong Kong were a couple of cups of Luckin Coffee. We were pleased to see that in Xiamen Station, after passing through the security check to enter the departure area, there was a decent selection of cafes and food stalls. I’d read about Luckin Coffee in the excellent Real Time Mandarin newsletter (highly recommended) and was keen to try it. Sadly the coffees we ordered, lattes, were too milky for our taste.
We really enjoyed our short stay in Xiamen, in particular that it was a city that was easy to experience on foot. In December/January the climate was perfect for walking. Warm in the sun but not too hot.
We didn’t record our meanderings around Zhongshan Lu, but in the heatmap below you can see the routes of our runs along the Railway Park, our short walk in the Botanical Gardens and our exploration of Gulangyu.
Chinese Payment Apps
We used Weixin (微信) but the other big payment app is Alipay. To register for Weixin (which is WeChat outside of China) download the app, set up an account and enter your credit card details. It’s worth noting that we couldn’t get WeChat to work in Hong Kong. When I tried to purchase a coffee just to test the app I received a message saying that I could not use Weixin outside of China as I did not have a Chinese ID card.
There are two ways to pay with the WeChat app. One is by generating a QR code that merchants can scan. The other is by activating the scan function yourself and scanning the QR code that that a merchant (or taxi driver) presents to you. One thing to note it that some restaurants and cafes had QR codes on the tables so that you could place orders online. We figured out that for these to work you need to scan the QR code with WeChat not with your regular phone camera.
When ordering food or coffee sometimes a special offer (like a free drink) would appear in the WeChat app. Or the app would ask us to rate the establishment. As these messages were in Chinese if you don’t read any Chinese they could be quite confusing. But that aside, paying with WeChat become pretty straightforward once we had done it a couple of times. The main thing is to always have your phone with you, have sufficient mobile data and carry a battery pack!
Passports
Another notable point are that you need your ID for any travel. On the trains and even the ferries that we took, although we were issued with paper tickets, all the ticket checks were made by scanning our passports. So that is something that you don’t want to leave in the hotel safe!
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