Amir&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. 2025: Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shaanxi Provinces’ Red Tour. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and commentary. The REAL Chinese people you don’t know!

https://radiosinoland.com/2025/07/27/amirjeffs-excellent-china-adventure-series-2025-hunan-jiangxi-fujian-and-shaanxi-provinces-red-tour-short-videos-captioned-photos-articles-and-commentary-the-real-chinese-people-you-don/

¥80-159

Introduction

Amir and I, stayed in, single rooms. They’re so inexpensive that you don’t even think about it. The price range for our rooms was something like 80 yuan up to 180 yuan or about €10 to €19 euros.

These are not the Marriott. These are not the Sheraton. These are mom and pop hotels, family run. They often have a small restaurant so that they can make extra money cooking food for you, including breakfast. The same goes for Evelyne and me when we travel in China, well, anywhere in Asia. We’re bottom feeders. We try to find the best value we can.

I think Amir is the same as us. The criteria are: 1) if it’s summertime, we want air conditioning, 2) if it’s wintertime, we want heat, 3) we want a clean room, clean linens and covers, clean towels, 4) hot water, 5) Internet, 6) a good firm bed, and 7) a window. You never almost never have a bad bed in Asia, because they tend to be pretty hard.

That’s exactly what Amir and I got throughout our nearly one-month journey.

The other five months Evelyne and I traveled all over China in the last 1.5 years, we got a few that were very small and maybe one or two beds that were not super-duper, but other than that, it’s the same story as Amir’s and my rooms.

Besides a couple of shoe boxes, we’ve stayed in full efficiency apartments with washing machine, refrigerator, stove, cooking utensils, serving ware, and living room with sofa for €12/night! In general, most of the rooms are very spacious. It is rare that a mom and pop hotel does not offer a washing machine for free and most give you the laundry soap, with racks and hangars to dry them. The laundry room is often on the roof, under cover, or on the ground floor. Evelyne and I have had a few nice owners who did our laundry for us with no charge.

Amir, Evelyne and I only have 4G phones, and with all the 5G installed across China, we often struggled to upload video and audio in our rooms. However, for basic web search, social apps, messaging and like, it usually works great. At our hotel in Jinggangshan, Amir and I complained, they called people-owned China Telecom and a technician came right out and got it going.

Sometimes, you get a shower stall, but more and more local hotels are installing Italian showers, that being the bathroom floor is the shower and it is slightly inclined for the water to flow into a drain. Just make sure the toilet paper and anything else is out of the way.

Sometimes you get a hotel room which has a Turkish toilet, that’s flat on the floor and not a sit-down stool. But, I think for tourism, more and more Chinese hotels have sit-down toilets, and a lot of them offer both, because many Chinese prefer squat toilets, as they’re really good for your health.

When you travel to China, you can do the same. You can get the same exact rooms, in English (and I assume in whatever language your mobile phone system is set), by going to www.ctrip.com. By the end of the trip, Amir was making most of our room reservations in English. I use CTrip in Chinese and it is true that the prices are often lower. However, a number of them flash on the screen “no foreigners”, so it takes more time to find on who takes in Big Noses. In Hengyang, Hunan Province, I booked a room and the landlord forgot to post the “no foreigners” alert in CTrip. We got there, they said no, Amir gave it a whirl and it worked great. Thus, unless you are fluent in Chinese, stick with English CTrip.

BON VOYAGE1

Photos by Amir

#1: This is a fairly typical local hotel, with eight spacious rooms. Nothing fancy, but for €10 a night, no complaints. My room is on the corner, European first floor/US second floor and Amir’s is under the hotel sign. My window did not have a mosquito screen, I complained and they didn’t have one. So, for sleeping, I ran the air conditioning, since skeeters love to suck my blood.

#2: This Jinggangshan hotel has six rooms above the ground-floor restaurant. Notice the cover over the roof. That’s where the laundry room is. Air conditioning and great food are a great start. In fact, the three yellow circles above the main door say, “Good tasting (food)”.

#3: Many local hotel owners live on the ground floor, therefore often, the reception area is their living room. The picture frame with all the reflection is their business license. Above, the two hanging red mandalas are all about prosperity, wealth and happiness. The character inside the big black dream catcher in the middle is “Family” (家 = jia). The whole display is for New Year’s. 

Images of Mao Zedong are ubiquitous in the countryside. Not only the big poster, but the little gold statue on the counter is a bust of Chairman Mao. 

There is also the ubiquitous Wealth Cat figurine, the one that has batteries in it and one of its arms waves to you. You see them on the dashboards of cars and trucks and on the counter of many local businesses.

To tempt us to eat there, they have a food menu taped to the front of the counter. 

#4: This is Amir’s room, which I did not see. But, you have air conditioning, an alcove to the bathroom and to hang clothes, a nice double bed and it’s big, with a sofa and coffee table. All very clean.

#5: Views can be all over the place, from a wall right outside the window to nice ones like here. For less money, there are rooms with no windows. Below is where we saw the summer camp group of kids have its fire dance (https://radiosinoland.com/2025/09/13/amirjeff-s-excellent-china-adventure-28-jiangxi-province-jinggangshan-vignettes-of-daily-life-in-china-s-remote-hinterlands-three-transcripted-short-videos-plus-many-explained-food-photos/). Look carefully and you can see power line pylons in the forest. The whole country is laced with them.

#6: Here is Amir’s bathroom via the alcove in photo #4 above. Clean and bright. Usually, they offer too many amenities, like toothbrushes with toothpaste, combs and disposable razors with shaving cream, shampoo and conditioners. Not sure where the toilet and shower are, probably behind him, which is where the amenities probably are.

Not bad for 10 euros a night!

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https://radiosinoland.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/

AND

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00TX0TDDI/allbooks

Connect with China Writer Amir Khan! He is your Dr. Shakespeare, who lives and works in Sinoland…

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https://fsc.hunnu.edu.cn/info/1103/10302.htm

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https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003464334/death-hamlet-amir-khan

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-59894-9

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