Getting From the Airport Into the City

Arrival transfers get more planning attention than they deserve, mostly because they are the first thing you do and the part you cannot picture in advance. In practice the choice is often made for you: the city either has airport rail or it does not, and where it does, the decision is close to automatic.

Where the train is the obvious answer

Airport rail beats a car on time and on cost in the cities that have it, and it does not care about traffic. The trade-off is the walk at both ends and your luggage on escalators — which is the real reason people take a taxi despite the train being faster.

Shanghai is the clearest case. Shanghai airport to city is a choice between the maglev-and-metro combination and a straight metro line, and the difference between them is minutes against a transfer — worth knowing before you land, not worth agonising over at the barrier.

Where the train is not the answer

Some airports sit far enough out that rail is not competitive on door-to-door time, particularly if you are staying outside the centre. In those cities a booked car removes a decision at the exact moment you least want to make one, and the extra cost buys you not having to negotiate anything in a language you are still waking up into.

The arrival also interacts with the rest of the plan. If you are landing and continuing by rail the same day, the airport and the station are frequently not close to each other, and that connection is the part that actually goes wrong. Train from Beijing to Xian departs from a different station than visitors expect, and the same trap applies in the other direction with xian to shanghai train services.

Short hops and what they cost

Once you are in the country, the airport question mostly disappears and gets replaced by the inter-city one. On the eastern corridors the distances are short enough that flying stops making sense at all, and shanghai to hangzhou is the standard example: under an hour on the train, and the airport at the far end costs you more than the journey.

What to have sorted before you land

• Where you are sleeping, written in Chinese, on paper as well as on your phone.
• Enough cash for a taxi, in case the payment app does not work on the first try.
• Whether your arrival airport and your departure station are the same place. They often are not.

The rest — payment setup, plug types, ordering food — is covered in the CathayBound China travel guides, and none of it needs to be solved in the arrivals hall.