Practical Information for visiting Jiangsu

Coverage for mobile networks is excellent throughout — this is one of China’s most developed provinces — with 5G across the cities and on the trains.

The internet is filtered: most non-Chinese search, social media, messaging and mapping is blocked. Install a VPN before arriving and expect it to work intermittently.

Payment by phone is the practical necessity. Alipay and WeChat Pay are used for everything from high-speed rail tickets to street snacks; both now accept foreign cards, and setting one up in advance is the single most useful preparation you can make.

Wi-Fi is everywhere and usually requires a Chinese phone number for registration.

Fixed broadband and coverage are as good as anywhere in the world.

Jiangsu is very safe, with low crime and excellent infrastructure. The concerns are practical.

• Summer heat and humidity are the most likely thing to affect you, particularly walking gardens in July with no shade between pavilions.
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• Crowds at the gardens and water towns during national holidays reach levels that are genuinely unpleasant and occasionally unsafe. The first week of October and Chinese New Year are the ones to avoid.
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• Tea ceremony and art gallery scams targeting foreign visitors exist in the tourist areas: a friendly English-speaking stranger suggests a teahouse and an enormous bill follows. Politely decline invitations from strangers.
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• Traffic: electric scooters are silent, numerous and use pavements and cycle lanes freely. Look carefully.
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• Winter cold indoors in older buildings without heating.
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• Air quality in winter is moderate to poor.

Healthcare is good. Nanjing and Suzhou have major hospitals, several with international departments and English-speaking staff, and Suzhou’s expatriate population supports private clinics. Payment is upfront with insurance claimed afterwards.

Vaccinations: routine cover plus hepatitis A and typhoid; Japanese encephalitis for extended rural stays in summer.

Heat and humidity in summer are the main issue; heat exhaustion is common among visitors walking all day in July.

Air quality in winter is worth checking if you have a respiratory condition, though it is better than in northern China.

Water: drink bottled or boiled. Hot water is provided everywhere and is what locals drink.

Hairy crab should be eaten cooked; raw or drunken preparations of freshwater crustaceans carry a lung fluke risk.

At the Nanjing Massacre Memorial: this is the most important point of etiquette in the province. It is a memorial at a mass grave site. Dress appropriately, keep silent, follow the photography restrictions, and do not treat it as a sightseeing stop between other things.

In the gardens: do not climb on the rockwork, which is both fragile and, in some cases, individually named and centuries old. Drones are prohibited.

Politics — and in this province, Japanese wartime history specifically — is a subject to approach with care and without glibness.

At the table: the host orders, chopsticks never upright in rice, and the fish is turned by the host rather than the guest.

Tipping is not customary.

Queueing at ticket offices and metro gates is enforced by staff.

Emergency numbers: 110 for police, 120 for ambulance, 119 for fire. English is unlikely on the line; carry your accommodation’s address in Chinese characters and ask staff to call where possible.

Medical. Nanjing and Suzhou have hospitals with international departments used to foreign patients; Suzhou Industrial Park in particular is well provided because of its expatriate workforce.

Heat: the summer is the most likely cause of trouble. Gardens offer shade but also humidity; carry water and pace the day.

Have a VPN and a payment app working before you arrive. The inability to pay, book a train or call a car is the most common practical difficulty foreign visitors face in China, and it is entirely avoidable.

Trains: your passport is your ticket and identity document; keep it with you.

Consulates for several countries are in Shanghai, an hour away by train.