Motion, will you be alone or with your wife? I ask because, if you're alone in Beijing, you will be a HUGE target for hookers and scammers. They are always women, usually around college age, and approach western men who are alone. They are rampant around the tourist areas - Tiananmen Sq., Forbidden City, Wanfujing shopping district, etc. They start off saying they want to practice their English and will eventually try to lead you to a teahouse. You would think that tea, in a place like China, is dirt cheap. But these places they take you will end up costing the equivalent of hundreds of dollars. A friend there told me about this and I didn't believe it, but then it happened to me on my next trip to Beijing. And these women are super smart. I would speak some Mandarin with them, hoping they'd get the picture that I wasn't a know-nothing tourist. Then they'd reply in just a little more Mandarin than I could handle and I'd have to revert back to English. Last time there I answered one of them in German and damn if she didn't come right back at me in German.
No joke - if you go alone, consider hiring a local woman to be your guide. She'll repel the hookers and scammers and steer you right. And you really need a local to help you order food. You don't want to end up in restaurants where they speak English or have picture menus. You will have the best food of your life and it will cost next to nothing. Eat from street vendors all you can.
Remember to always stop at one of those tiny kiosks each night for bottled water and green tea before heading back to your room. Get a foot massage every day. A local will take you to the best places and it will be less than $10 for 90 min. of heaven.
In Beijing they have the blind masseuses too, which is pretty cool. They wear pagers that call out the time every 15 min. I thought it was fake until I saw one of them bump into a door that opened as she was feeling her way toward it.
This is a friend in Chengdu who took us to a full body massage place where they really work you over.
In you're in Shanghai, consider seeing some of the surrounding towns - Wuxi, Xi Tang and even Nanjing, which is the size of NYC. The train from Shanghai goes 300 km/hr, so Nanjing is a very short ride.
The museum there on the Rape of Nanking and the City Wall are just jaw dropping.
