Health, safety, and accessibility in China

Tap water is not drinkable anywhere in China. This is not a sign of poor infrastructure; it is the standard caution and bottled water is universally available. Trips we run include bottled water in vehicles and at hotels.

Food safety in the cities we send travellers to (Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guilin, Hangzhou) is comparable to Sydney. The restaurants we use are subject to municipal hygiene inspections similar to NSW Food Authority standards. Street food in busy night markets is excellent and safe when it is cooked in front of you and the queue is local.

The one habit we ask travellers to adopt: rinse fresh fruit with bottled water, not tap. This is the same rule Sichuanese grandmothers use. It removes the only meaningful food-safety risk from a normal week.

The international hospitals in Beijing (United Family, International SOS), Shanghai (Parkway, United Family), and Chengdu (Global Doctor) meet Western standards in every meaningful way. English-speaking doctors, modern equipment, accepted by Australian travel insurance. We carry the contact details for the relevant hospital in each city we visit.

Pharmacies are widely available and most carry Australian-equivalent medications. The exception is some Australian prescription brands. Bring a fortnight's supply of any prescription medication, along with a copy of the prescription itself (carrying loose pills without documentation can occasionally raise a question at the border).

For minor ailments (a cold, an upset stomach, mosquito bites), Chinese pharmacy products work well. The pharmacist will usually speak some English in tier-1 cities. We help translate when not.

Accessibility has improved dramatically at the headline sites over the last decade. The Forbidden City, the Bund, the Terracotta Army museum hall, the Shaanxi History Museum, the Bell Tower in Xi'an, and most major hotel chains now have lift access, accessible toilets, and step-free entry from the main car park.

The friction points are the older quarters. The Muslim Quarter in Xi'an, the hutongs of Beijing, and the lane neighbourhoods of Shanghai all involve narrow streets with occasional steps, uneven paving, and no consistent wheelchair access. We design trips for travellers with reduced mobility around the friction points rather than into them.

For travellers using a wheelchair, mention this in the design conversation. We coordinate with hotels and sites in advance, and where access is genuinely poor we substitute equally rewarding alternatives (a private after-hours museum visit, a teahouse with vehicle access, etc.).

The most common Australian dietary patterns translate without much friction:

• Vegetarian: well-understood. Most restaurants we use have substantive vegetarian options, often Buddhist-tradition rather than Western-tradition.
• Vegan: less common but workable. We brief restaurants in advance.
• Coeliac / gluten-free: the harder case. Soy sauce is in almost everything, and most soy sauces contain wheat. We carry tamari for travellers who need it, and we pre-brief restaurants the day before each meal.
• Nut allergies: less common in Chinese cuisine than in Thai or Vietnamese, but we still pre-brief.
• Religious dietary requirements (halal, kosher): the Muslim Quarter in Xi'an is genuinely halal-led. Kosher requires planning we will design for explicitly.

We carry printed allergy cards in Mandarin and dialect-appropriate language for each region. The cards are more reliable than a guide translating on the spot, and they survive busy kitchen environments where shouted English does not.