I am meeting a friend in China in February and will by staying in Beijing for one week, then travelling to Xian and ending up in Shanghai and flying home from there. So far, we have booked our hotel for Beijing but nowhere else. Due to it being the Chinese New Year, is it advisable that we prebook everything, or will we be okay finding hotels once there? (I read somewhere that even though it's holiday time for the Chinese, the cities aren't that much more crowded??). We only recently booked our stay in Beijing and didn't seem to have much trouble booking that. The actual trip to Xian and Shanghai will coincide directly with the Chinese New Year.

We are planning on travelling by train from Beijing to Xian and then to Shanghai. Is this advisable or should we be looking at flights?
Should these be booked ahead of time or is it okay to book these once there?

We kind of like the flexibility of not booking everything.

Open to any suggestions.

No worries about hotel, but forget about the train. You cannot even get close to most train stations because of the immense crowds, let alone getting on a train. Fly.

Is it that bad even if we have our tickets booked ahead of time for the train? I was just looking at flight costs and it would be about four times as expensive- not sure if we can stretch our budget this far...
What about buses, would this be an option do you think?

Beijing - Xian and Xian - Shanghai are way too far for bus travel.

If you can get Soft Sleeper or Deluxe Soft Sleeper booked ahead for your travel, then it may be okay. But trains during this time is so crowded that you may have difficulties getting the tickets. You may try.

And then you need to find someone who knows the stations well to get you to the Soft Sleeper/Seat lounges. With the tens of thousands of people crowding the stations, you'll never able to find the lounge or get to them by yourselves.

rkkwan - is New Year worse than National Day? I managed to find the soft-sleeper waiting room for my train from Beijing Central to Hangzhou the evening before National Day despite the crowds and without help. I seem to remember a large departure board with the waiting rooms listed.

Chinese New Year is far worse. The October and May holidays are only about a week long, and many people use that for leisure travel.

CNY is different. Literally all workers use that holiday to get home from work in the cities. Many of them only get to go home once a year, and CNY is the time.

The rush has already started this weekend, and the weather hasn't been helping. Snow and very cold weather across much of China has caused flights to cancel and many roads were unpassable. That's not going to help with train travel for the next few weeks.

This is sounding really bad... We have a hotel booked until Feb.8 in Beijing and had hoped to train to Xian for a few days before again, taking a train to Shanghai. I fly out of Shanghai on the 18th.

Do things kindof quiet down at some point that would make travel easier during this period of time?

Chinese New Year Day is 2/7. Come to think of it, 2/7-9 may actually be not that bad, as most people will be where they need to be by then. Then it will get worse again, until after the 2/16-17 weekend.

"flight costs and it would be about four times as expensive"? That's hard to believe. There are always some kind of discounts, you can also join the membership like ctrip, or elong. My experience is flight may cost even less than soft sleeper.

If you have followed the news from China during the past week, you'll know that the picture is not pretty. Most severe winter storms in the last 50 years hit almost all of China.

Hundreds of thousands of people were stuck at places waiting to get out as roads are covered in snow and ice, and rail service disrupted in many sections because of downed power lines, etc. And this is almost 2 weeks before Chinese New Year.

Yesterday in Guangzhou, an estimated 150,000 passengers were gathered outside the main train station waiting for trains that are severely delayed. And many flights canceled throughout China as airports deal with heavy ice.

Many smaller towns and villages are without power as some main high-voltage lines and towers were downed by ice accumulation, including a main line from the Three Gorges Dam to Shanghai. And many power plants are running low on coal as coal prices kept rising while electricity cost hasn't kept up.

Out west in Xinjiang, temperature fell to -40C at many places last week and thousands of roofs collapsed under heavy snow. Unknown number of people may still not be rescued.

So, if you're traveling to and throughout China in the next few weeks, I can only say two words: <b>Good Luck!</b>

Thanks for the help. I have been watching the weather updates closely daily and realize how much this could impact the trip and travel plans. I am praying that things will settle down soon.

I have also found some quite reasonable internal flights, only hoping that this will not be disrupted too much by all the weather chaos!