visa, travel roll of toilet paper and a sense of adventure!

I found it very valuable to have a water filter that goes on top of a nalgene. I also had these organic pills that prevent food poisoning. Forget what they are called, but if I ate something I thought wasn’t cooked all the way, I would take two of these bad boys and they would help my stomach digest it. Some sort of Natural super enzymes, I highly recommend it.

I’m bringing some Zycam and inhaler to help fight off the smog and pollution in Beijing

A Mandarin English phrasebook. Not much english spoken in the countryside, and it’s not as hard as you would think to make sense. If nothing else, much fun can be had at bars having locals coach you through your bad pronunciation.

learn their etiquette! i found a cool website with tons of information:

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/china-country-profile.html

your own eating utensils (i.e: fork or chopsticks), umbrella, good shoes, toilet paper ( someone mentioned this already, but it is really important), chinese phrasebook (even a big city like chengdu did not have many english speakers), map of the city you are going to is helpful for taxi rides (just point to an attraction you want to go to), and it is good to bring some chinese money (yuan) with you.

hope you have a great time!! china is a fun country.