After reading so much advice on packing in various guidebooks and magazines (my absolute favourite was the advice to take a nice party outfit and have your local butcher vacuum seal it so that you are always party ready) and trying to follow oh, about a tenth of it on my trip, I have realised that there is little more useless than other people’s packing advice - but still... I’ll have a go.

I’m going to add some tips for each destination within China, but overall here are my few words of wisdom. 

Accept that you are going to pack badly.  Whatever and however you pack, you will be surprised by just what you actually need.  You are not psychic so don’t stress too much about your packing, and luckily in China you can pick up most things along the way very cheaply.  (Remember your tickets, money, passport, contact lenses, medicine - pretty much everything else you can replace!)

My other piece of advice is to pack things that you like but you are ready to ditch; I left a trail of old shorts, shoes and T-shirts across China, it gave me room for all my shopping, and on my return trip I even filled my carry on bag with a few things I’d have been happy to bin, just in case I found more bargains at the airport.

Also, if you want to fit in more clothes - roll them around each other.  It makes them squish up and reduces wrinkles.

In terms of toiletries I actually packed a lot of these as I had heard they were often not great in China.  Aside from all the great toiletries in the hotels themselves, most supermarkets seemed to have all the same brands as the UK for a fraction of the price, so don’t feel that you have to overpack toiletries (luckily these were a great thing to use up and ditch, leaving me more room in my case.)   My advice is to pack three toiletry bags - one for the daily stuff you may well want to use during your travels - toothbrush, moisturiser etc. another with just your shower products, and a third (or a third compartment) with just your “medicine cabinet” - Diareze, pain killers, plasters, Dioralyte - because this is the stuff you may well be looking for in the middle of the night and you want to be able to find it easily.  Also if you are moving around from hotel to hotel put your stuff in the same place in each - glasses, passport, knickers, so you can find things when you are half asleep.