Best time to visit China
 

Four of us are planning a trip to China Fall 2003. We have a choice of going early in September or late in the month and we plan to stay 22 days.<BR><BR>Our tour takes us to Beijing, Yangtze River cruise, Xian and Tibet. Can anyone out there suggest which would be the best time for these locations in terms of weather.<BR><BR>Thandks!<BR><BR>

Topping because I am interested in same question.

Well, I'll bite, since it's been topped. I didn't answer earlier because you're only asking for early vs. late September (not likely to be much variation in the weather for such a wide range of places), China is a big place and it's a bit like asking the best time to visit Florida, New York, Texas, and Winnepeg, and it's generally better to get weather information from a weather site like weatherbase.com or weather.com. The former has average temps, number of hottest days, number of coldest days, precipitation, etc. Weather.com has similar info in chart format (go to travel, then vacation planner, then type the name of the city and country).<BR><BR>But in general, I think early September is the best time to visit China. Temperatures will be similar to in the spring (the second-best time, IMHO), but there's generally less risk of rain.<BR><BR>If you can, you should avoid the last week in September. There is a week-long national holiday the week surrounding October 1st, so the hotels, sights, and transportation will be more fully booked and at peak rates.<BR><BR>Good luck!<BR>

(Just re-read my reply and didn't mean for the tone to sound rude, if it did! Sorry!)

It gets cold in Tibet after October.

And to expand on the above, if someone were to arrive in China in mid August -- for Shanghai, Beiging, and Xi'an for example, before reaching the more southern places in September, how should that be? Really hot and humid in those areas in the latter part of August?