Changes

[[File:manzhouli.jpg|thumb|300px|right|User [[User:haggismn|haggismn]] in Manzhouli__TOC__Hitchhiking is not really know for everybody, having successfully used a sign to get there]]The so the famous ''Thumb'' gesture used in most countries to indicate you want a lift is not fully understood in China, and although it will still work, will probably wont be very effective. For Chinese this gesture Is more readily understood as meaning "good" or "OK" so drivers will probably not think of stopping. The most common signal to ask a vehicle to stop is to outstretch your arm and gently wave the hand up and down, but this isn't the most recommended way to hitchhike. Also, taxis are really common in the country. If you hitchhike without a sign, you will probably have a lot of taxi stopping by to take you. What I would recommand is to have a sign with writing 搭便车 (Dabianche - Hitchhiking) on it. The translation litteraly mean "free-ride", so you will not have any problem with money. Also, this will save you from some awkward situations if your chinese accent is bad : When you pronounce it slightly differently, "Hitchhiking" become "eating shit" which can be understood as an insult or the fact that you are looking for the toilet. By writing it, there is no misunderstanding. You can also write the name of the place where you want to go under it.

== Public Transport ==You will most likely need public transport to get to the express ways. Fortunately in every city there There are express ways running close to the city centreService areas on highways, and often toll areas alsoit have gas station, which are excellent for hitching from. If you are lostbig public toilets, try to find a younger Chinese personshops, and ask them which bus number goes to somewhere near the ''gao su gong lu''coffeshops. Make sure not to point at the road itself, they Drivers usually will inform you that drop you cannot take a bus off there. Then you can take a bus and walk to the road.  Referring back to the occasionally overly generous Chinese folk, you may encounter an awkward situation in which your driver will take you to a train station and inflict upon you a train ticket to where you are going. This It is very counter productive in almost all situations. You will waste many hours waiting for the train. You will then arrive at a city you may not have wanted convenient to visit, perhaps at night when sleep there are no buses, sleep deprived, hungry and lost. Above all this Sometimes you even can take shower if it's not a fast train, it is likely much slower than by car, so you will be many hundreds some of kilometres behind where shop sellers offer you would have been on the road. So, if your driver leaves the motorway, you have to insist, sometimes very strongly to leave the car. Some people might not want to let you out because they are totally sure that you will get lost there, but if you really insist they will not force you to stay (sellers live in the car. Another option to avoid this situation, have your polite Chinese letter state very clearly that you do not want to go to the train/bus station or the airport, and that you only want to hitch hike service areas in the country, perhaps as a cultural investigation, to save money for tourists sites, to learn Chinese or as a challenge. == Regions ==There are probably big differences between the different regions in China.:''please add more info if you've hitched in many parts of China'' To find out where a car is from, look on the character on the license plate.A following "A" indicates the provincial capital. Municipalities:* [[Beijing|Beijing]] 京 jīng* [[Shanghai|Shanghai]] 沪 hù * [[Chongqing|Chongqing]] 渝 yú* [[Tianjin|Tianjin]] 津 jīn <br />Special administrative zones:* [[File:Flag of Hong Kong.svg|30px|border]] [[Hong Kong]] Special Adm. Region of China* [[File:Flag of Macau.svg|30px|border]] [[Macao]] Special Adm. Region of China<br />Autonomous regions: * [[:Category:Guangxi|Guangxi]] Autonomous Region of the Zhuang people, 桂 guì* [[:Category:Inner Mongolia|Inner Mongolia:]] Autonomous Region of the Mongo people, 蒙 měng* [[:Category:Ningxia|Ningxia]] Autonomous Region of the Hui people, 宁 níng* [[Tibet]] Autonomous Region of Xizang, 藏 zàng* [[Xinjiang]] Autonomous Region of the Uyghur people, 新 xīn<br />Provinces: * [[:Category:Anhui|Anhui]] 皖 wǎn* [[:Category:Fujian|Fujian]] 闽 mǐn* [[:Category:Gansu|Gansu]] 甘 gān* [[:Category:Guangdong|Guangdong]] 粤 yuè, sometimes plus 港 for Hong Kong or 澳 for Macau* [[:Category:Guizhou|Guizhou]] 贵 guì* [[:Category:Hainan|Hainan]] 琼 qióng* [[:Category:Hebei|Hebei]] 冀 jì* [[:Category:Heilongjiang|Heilongjiang]] 黑 hēi* [[:Category:Henan|Henan]] 豫 yù* [[:Category:Hubei|Hubei]] 鄂 è* [[:Category:Hunan|Hunan]] 湘 xiāng* [[:Category:Jilin|Jilin]] 吉 jí* [[:Category:Jiangsu|Jiangsu]] 苏 sū* [[:Category:Jiangxi|Jiangxi]] 赣 gàn* [[:Category:Liaoning|Liaoning]] 辽 liáo* [[:Category:Qinghai|Qinghai]] 青 qīng* [[:Category:Shaanxi|Shaanxi]] 陕 shǎn* [[:Category:Shandong|Shandong]] 鲁 lǔ* [[:Category:Shanxi|Shanxi]] 晋 jìn* [[:Category:Sichuan|Sichuan]] 川 chuān* [[:Category:Yunnan|Yunnan]] 云 yún* [[:Category:Zhejiang|Zhejiang]] 浙 zhèdormitory)

English in rural or even urban areas are rarely used. Get yourself 1. a phrasebook, easier to acquire when you're outside of China, were not easy to find in bookstores in China, and 2. a pocket dictionary, which generally available in China for 10 RMB in 2007. Baidoo, the chinese google, has a free translator, also for pictures. Here are some helpful phrases:  Chinese language use lots of tons. So if you don't speak chinese at all, it's probably better to write it (in character) because chinese people will not understand you. Also, the differents province have different accent (and sometimes differents dialect), which make it more difficult. If you go to big city, most people know pinyin. But if you go to rural area, people only know character and can't read any pinyin.

搭便车 ''da bian-che'': Hitchhikeliterally "free-ride". That's probably what you want to write on a big card board, although it's a rare word in Chinese and many people do not know what it means. <br />

謝謝 谢谢 ''Xie xie'' : Thank you<br />这裡 这里 ''zhe-li'': Here<br />那里/哪里 ''Na-li'' : There / Where?(only different in tone)<br />

你要去那里？ 你要去哪里？ "ni yao qu nali?" (you/ go to / where) means "Where are you going?"<br />

Chinese, like many Asian languages, is a tonal language which means a change in a pitch will drive to different meanings. Without basic training, most westerners will find it hard to pronounce Chinese well at an decipherable understandable level. If you plan to learn a bit, Pleco is a must-have dictionary app. But if you just print the Chinese characters out and show them to the driver, things will work pretty smooth. Hong Kong and Macao use traditional, more complicated characters, but they can read either way for the most part.

It also happens when a police officer will treat you like a privileged person, will take photos with you and will stop cars for you or even get you on the bus for free.You may also get free food and assistance with signwriting. nobody will say anything but this is an awkward experience when everybody around you pay lot's of money for the drive and you sit there after the police officer stopped the bus for you.

=== Personal experiences ===* ''August 2017: Hitchhiked from Kashgar to HongKong. through: Urumqi, Kumul, Xining, Chengdu, Kunming, Nanning, Guangzhou. Spent most of the time in Xinjiang and Tibetian Areas. No mayor problems. I figured out that having a drawn map with me, with the main roads and cities on it (written in chinese) and a small letter explaining in chinese would help the most. However, in the tibetian areas I figured out that many people cannot read chinese, hence it makes sense to write the map in tibetian and chinese. Sometimes people would ask for money in advance, in tibetian areas seem to be some shared taxis also.Further I was once picked by the police in Amdo Tibet, they told me, I am not allowed to be there... Hence, in the next city I had to register, make a lot of selfies, they brought me to a hotel where I had to stay and they told me I have to take a bus the next day. the next day I hitchhiked further without problems ;)Tip: having an offline translator is the most useful thing for china! I travelled many parts of the world without speaking common languages with the people living there and always found a way of communication. But in China, it was even hard for me to explain the map where I want to go and where they want to go... sign/body language works so different to mine there... Still - awesome peopel and experience!''  ''In the South the police was unaware, or friendly but very confused, to [[User:Guaka|Guaka]] and [[User:Amylin|amylin]]. Most of the time the police didn't do anything while walking along the highway or trying to hitch. Once, at the highway entry of [[Kaili]] in [[Guizhou]], they started talking, found someone who spoke English, and brought the hitchers to a bus station, where the police paid for a bus ticket! Another time the highway police was very confused again, and it took 2 1/2 hours to find a translator and be left alone at a highway entrance again.''*  ''[[User:Fijau|Fijau]] hitchhiked through Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Henan without being bothered by police. In Xinjiang police even helped him to get a ride. Problems started to occur in Zhejiang (Eastern China, near Shanghai). Several times police didn't let him onto the expressway through the toll gate and took him off the expressway while passing by.''*  ''[[User:peraht|peraht]] somehow always gets helped by police. Especially when it's getting dark or at night it's sometimes very useful to rely on them. Not only next to pay tolls but also on service areas (there are almost always some police officers). Sometimes they will give you something to eat, take pictures with you, the usual stuff. In Jiangxi or Anhui they caught her a ride, took pictures of her and the driver's passports, which was for safety reasons and actually OK, but also of other visas she had in her passport. Probably only out of curiousity and to test their apparently new camera.''  ''[[User:lukeyboy95|lukeyboy95]] had a fantastic time hitchhiking in March 2013. Not without its dramas, but no adventure is. I kept to the Western fringe, avoiding most cities. I had a sign that read de-bien-che, in characters, and this was mildly understood by some. Roads are excellent, fast and new, and distances can be very large. I beat my record, at 1200km in one day in the North West region. Big cities are a total horror, try and get trains out where possible. Have your little list of phrases ready to point at, it isnt rude. The Chinese are spirited people, and connecting with them wasnt a problem. If they look like taxi drivers, or a little hard up, reiterate that you cant pay money for the ride. One thing of note was that at the border with Krygyzstan, the immigration police wouldn't let me past unless I was in a taxi. A little overnight protest outside their spanking new offices brough results, and the next day they put me in a pick-up. An interesting border, and be careful with this. In general I found the police enormously helpful, kind and well meaning. On two times, they put paid for a train for me, drove me out to the highway, even gave me money and invited me into their homes. China holds many adventures for the the hitchhiker! '' Hitchhikernick - was there in October 2016 for 2 weeks and Jan 2017 for 10 days. Hitched all of the eastern half of China with ease. At many highway tolls the staff would help me get a ride, only one had an issue, but luckily a driver pulled up when the staff were warning me they were going to call police. Police did help me on a few occasions as well. Waiting time was about 10 minutes in most cases, though there were odd occasions where I had to wait a while. Visited most of impressive National Parks in this time frame and Huashan 3 times to get a good photo of the famous plank walk. Camped out discreetly and publicly very easily as everything is orderly and compacted into the cities with open spaces inbetween, totally opposite to india. Border crossings were straight forward but crossed both from Vietnam and into Mongolia by transport. Hardly ever got asked for money and managed to communicate with apple maps and sign language/images/gestures. Even managed to hitch out of Beijing twice without difficulty.

Note: Be aware of Chinese maps - sometimes they are developed for the (often quickly changing) future! They show highways which are not yet existing, or they having wrong distances between cities. Its always good to have two or three maps (the province maps as well) and then search for the truth in the middle. == Border Crossing ===== To [[Kazakhstan]] ===* [http://therichmikehitchhike.com/toilet-toll-troll-kazakhstan-border/ The Rich-Mike Hitchhike] Border crossing on the G312 at Ili/Zharkent] === To [[Kyrgyzstan]] ===* [[Irkeshtam Pass]]* [[Torugart Pass]] === To [[Laos]] ===* [[Mohan]] on the Chinese side, [[Boten]] on the Laotian side === To [[Mongolia]] ===* [[Erenhot]] / [[Erlianhaote]]

=== To [[South Korea]] ===* You can hitchhike the ferryMaps. It me may have wrong distances( for e.g. chengdu/kunming). There is very difficult especially when not speaking the language a free map programm from chinese google(baidoo), its only in chinese, but possible. It has been donehelpful.