China Cities — Travel Budget Guide
100 cities, sorted A to Z.
Start with the classics
First trip to China? Beijing, Shanghai and Xi'an anchor most first itineraries — imperial palaces, the Bund skyline and the Terracotta Army, all linked by high-speed rail. Chengdu adds pandas and Sichuan food, Hangzhou brings West Lake calm, and Guangzhou opens the door to Cantonese cooking. Each city page lists what a night, a meal and a ticket actually cost, so you can compare before you commit.
How city tiers shape your travel budget
Cities are grouped into price tiers. Tier-1 cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen — run the highest hotel and restaurant prices, often 30–50% above smaller cities. New-tier-1 cities like Chengdu, Hangzhou and Xi'an offer big-city comfort at noticeably lower rates, while tier-2 and tier-3 cities can halve your daily spend. The same $1,000 stretches very differently depending on where you point it.
Best-value cities
For maximum China per dollar, look past the megacities. Kunming pairs spring-like weather with some of the country's cheapest comfortable hotels; Luoyang puts the Longmen Grottoes on a tier-3 budget; Qingdao delivers coastline and beer for far less than Shanghai; Guilin's karst scenery costs a fraction of what its postcards suggest. Prices on every city page are real averages, not marketing rates.
Plan a multi-city route
Most trips combine two to four cities. High-speed rail makes Beijing–Xi'an–Shanghai or Guangzhou–Guilin–Kunming painless, and the trip planner prices the whole route — hotels, meals, trains and tickets — in one pass. Start from a ready-made itinerary or build your own from any city on this page.