China Month by Month: When to Go Where

The best time to visit China is April to May or September to November. That is the true answer and it is also close to useless on its own, because China runs from the Siberian border to the tropics and holds at least five distinct climates. February is miserable in Beijing and perfect in Yunnan. Aug

So this article does it twice: month by month for the country as a whole, then region by region, which is how we actually plan.

The country month by month

Month	What it is like	Where we would send you
January	Cold and dry in the north, mild in the far south, lowest hotel rates of the year	Yunnan, Harbin for the ice festival, the Great Wall in snow
February	Similar, plus Chinese New Year, when the whole country moves	Yunnan, Guangxi, or nowhere at all in the travel fortnight
March	The turn. Southern rapeseed in flower, the north still bare	Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan
April	One of the two best months nationally	Everywhere, and the terraces of the southwest
May	The other one, with the first week removed	Everywhere except the holiday week
June	Hot and wet in the east, good in the high country	Sichuan’s west, Gansu, Qinghai
July	Genuinely hot in the east, domestic school holidays	The grasslands, Inner Mongolia, the far northwest
August	The same, plus the heaviest domestic travel of the summer	High and north, and nowhere in the Yangtze valley
September	The best single month in the country	Everywhere
October	Excellent, with the first week removed	Everywhere except the holiday week
November	Clear, cool, quiet, and cheaper	Beijing, Xi’an, Jiangnan, Yunnan
December	Cold, dry, cheap, short days	Yunnan, Hong Kong and the south, the north if you like empty sites

Spring, April and May

Our first choice alongside autumn. The north warms and clears, the south is not yet uncomfortable, and the countryside in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi is green and working. The rice terraces of Guangxi and southern Yunnan are flooded and mirror-flat in April and May, which is when they are at their most photogenic. Rapeseed in the southwest peaks earlier, late February into March.

Beijing in April sits around 68F (20C) by day, with the odd dust day when the wind comes off the northwest. Shanghai is pleasant and damp. Chengdu is grey and mild, as Chengdu almost always is.

The first week of May is the Labour Day holiday. Domestic travel volumes are extraordinary, the famous sites run at capacity and rates rise everywhere. We plan around that week rather than through it.

Summer, June to August

Hot and humid across the east and the south. Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan and Chongqing sit in the mid nineties Fahrenheit (mid thirties Celsius) with high humidity through July and August, and Beijing is not far behind at around 88F (31C) with the Forbidden City offering almost no shade. It is also the domestic school holiday, so the headline sites are at their fullest.

Summer is nonetheless the right season for a whole other China. The Sichuan and Gansu grasslands, the Yunnan mountains, Qinghai’s lakes, Inner Mongolia and the far northwest are all at their best in July and August, and the high country is the one part of the country that is comfortable. If your dates are fixed to summer we move the trip up in altitude and north in latitude, start every city day at opening time, and put the middle of the day indoors.

One caution for walkers. Summer is the wet season in Yunnan. The Tiger Leaping Gorge trail is still walkable and the high peaks at Meili are usually in cloud, which is worth knowing before you commit. There is more on that in Yunnan on foot.

Autumn, September to November

The best window in the country and the one we recommend when someone is free to choose. Clear air in Beijing, comfortable temperatures, autumn colour through the mountains in October, and the harvest in the terraced regions of the southwest. Foreign visitor numbers are lower than in spring and hotel rates in November are the best of the good months.

The first week of October is the National Day holiday and is the single busiest travel week in the world. We do not build itineraries through it. If your dates are locked to it we tell you what it costs you and route you toward places that absorb crowds rather than to the headline sites.

Winter, December to March

Cold and dry in the north, mild in the far south, and the cheapest hotel rates of the year. Beijing in January averages a daytime high around 35F (2C) and Harbin can sit at 13F (minus 25C), which is exactly why its ice festival works.

This is also the season when air quality in Beijing, Xi’an and across the north China plain is at its least reliable, driven by heating demand and still winter weather. It is much better than it was a decade ago and it remains a genuine planning factor: expect a run of hard clear cold days and some grey ones. If your dates are in winter we weight the trip south, keep the northern days flexible and build indoor alternatives into the days most likely to be affected.

Winter has real arguments in its favour. A quiet section of the Great Wall under snow with nobody on it. Harbin in January. Yunnan, which sits high enough to be dry and sunny all winter and is one of the better January destinations in Asia. Empty museums in Shanghai.

The one date to avoid is the Chinese New Year travel fortnight, which falls in late January or February depending on the lunar calendar. Rail and flights are effectively full, many small restaurants and family businesses close, and prices spike. The festival itself is worth seeing if you are already somewhere with a good local partner. Getting between cities in it is not.

Region by region

Beijing and the north. April, May, September and October. November is cold, clear and quiet, which many people prefer. Avoid the July and August heat and the winter air runs if you can.

Xi’an and the Yellow River loop. Same calendar as Beijing, one notch warmer.

Shanghai and Jiangnan. March to May and September to November. Summer is hot and sticky, winter is damp and grey rather than freezing.

Sichuan and Chengdu. Chengdu is mild and overcast most of the year, which is fine for a food city. The western Sichuan grasslands and Tibetan towns are a summer destination, best from June to September, and closed in feel and often in fact by deep winter.

Yunnan. The most forgiving climate in China. Kunming is comfortable year round, the winter is dry and sunny, and the walking season runs April to June and September to November. July and August are wet.

Guizhou and Guangxi. March to May and September to November. The terraces are flooded in spring and gold at harvest in the autumn.

Gansu and the Silk Road corridor. May, June, September and October. High summer in the Turpan depression is the hottest place in the country and winter is bitter.

Xinjiang. May, June, September and October. Access here is a separate question from weather. Checkpoints are part of travel in the region, journeys take longer than the map suggests and permitted routes can change at short notice. We confirm the current position before we build anything and we say plainly if it has moved.

The far south and Hong Kong. October to March is the pleasant half of the year. Summer is typhoon season.

How the month changes the budget

The month you choose moves your total cost more than the hotel tier you choose. The two holiday weeks and the New Year fortnight are the expensive ones, November and the winter months the cheapest, and the difference on a two-week trip is easily several hundred dollars a person. The arithmetic is in what two weeks in China costs.

Plan this trip

Tell us the month you can travel and we will tell you honestly which China it suits, then build you a first outline around it. Free, and with no obligation.

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Frequently asked questions

When is the single best month?

September, followed by October with the holiday week removed, then May, then April. If you are travelling for the countryside rather than the cities, late April and early May is our first choice.

How bad is the air in Beijing in winter?

Variable rather than uniformly bad. Between November and March you should expect some clear cold days and some grey ones. It is much improved on a decade ago. We plan flexible northern days in winter rather than pretending the issue does not exist.

Can we travel during Chinese New Year?

You can be somewhere for it. We would not move you around the country during it. Rail and flights are full, prices rise and many small businesses close for a week or more.

Is the rainy season a reason not to come?

Not in the cities, where summer rain is short and heavy. It is a reason to change the region if you plan to walk, because the southwest mountains are in cloud for much of July and August.

How far ahead should we book?

Four to six months for April, May, October and November. The bottleneck is good hotels in Beijing and the small properties in Yunnan, not flights. —

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China month by month, and why the region matters more than the month