Directly from the Hong Kong International Wine and Spirits Fair, the most important trade show for producers of wine, beer and spirits that want to enter the Chinese market.
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China has high tariff for alcohol, while Hong Kong has 0% tariff for wine, and low tariff for beer and spirits. Therefore, a lot of Chinese importers would first import the alcohol from abroad to Hong Kong first, and then re-export it to China.

One of the top concerns from our clients before coming to China is food.

There are many rumors on social media about weird food Chinese people consume, but in fact, most of these rumors are untrue and unfounded. As the second biggest business travel destination globally, China offers a wide range of delicacies in terms of variety, taste and cooking method for travelers to explore.

Most of you travelling to China will have your breakfasts at hotel. While 4* international hotels offer western buffet, most 4* local hotels offer both western and Chinese breakfast in buffet style. They offer toasts, fruits, soup, coffee as western breakfast, and steam bread, rice, vegetable, noodles and porridge as Chinese style. 

If you are travelling to China to visit trade fairs, then very likely you will have your lunch inside the fair ground. There will be Chinese food such as rice and noodles; and western fast food, such as pizza and burger, for you to choose from. In some big fairs such as The Canton Fair, there will be Halal and Indian food as well.

If you are visiting factories, then most likely the factory will invite us for Chinese lunches and dinners in  restaurants near the factory area. The kind of food will depend on the region you visit. If you visit the coastal provinces of China, you might have more fish and seafood options on the menu. If you visit inland of China, then you may have more chicken, duck and beef. Chinese people love vegetables and fruits as well, so even if you are vegetarian, there will be plenty of option for you. 

Is all Chinese food spicy? NO! Only for areas in Sichuan and other inland provinces which have severe cold winter, people there are used to eat spicy food to gain more body heat to resist the weather. Otherwise, most meals in China taste mild (great!). 

Chinese prefer steaming food or frying food with sauce in a wok. Deep fried and fried food is not common as they are not healthy way of cooking. Chinese also enjoy sharing different food during meal, so it is very normal to sit around a big circular table, with a turnable disc in the middle, and plates containing different food on the table for everyone to share. 

Most of our clients are positively surprised by the variety and deliciousness of what real Chinese food can offer (Not the Chinese food from the corner shop in your home country.). So worry not, we are ready to introduce you healthy and delicious Chinese cuisine in your next business trip to China!

Directly from Interzum Fair in Canton, China. This fair focuses on all machineries and accessories needed for production of wood furniture, such as door, bedframe, closet...

​Concurrent fair is the Furniture Fair CIFF, which occupies 750,000 m2 exposition area, with almost 4000 Chinese factories exhibiting.

The Yiwu – London Railway Line is a freight railway route from Yiwu, China, to London, United Kingdom, covering a distance of roughly 12,000 km (7,456 miles), making it the longest railway freight route in the world. It is one of several long distance freight railway routes from China to Europe on the “New Eurasian Land Bridge” and part of establishing a modern-day Silk Road. The route was opened on the 1st of January 2017, making London the 15th European city to have a railway route connection with China, the other European cities with China-Europe railway routes include Hamburg, Madrid, Rotterdam and Warsaw.

Inspite of the need to go through bogie exchange, the trip takes only 18 days to complete. In comparison, it takes a large cargo vessel about 30–45 days of sailing to get from East Asia to Northern Europe.

The Yiwu – London railway project is part of China's “One Belt, One Road” Initiative, which attempts to strengthen the country’s trade connections and revive the Silk Road of the past. The goods it carried were mostly the commodities from Yiwu market, including general merchandise, apparel, fabrics, and luggage & bags, with a total weight of about 700 tons. So it makes the import and export from Yiwu to London and London to Yiwu more easier.

From Yiwu, a trading center 300 km south of Shanghai, the track passes through 9 countries: China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France, UK. In order to get to the UK the route passes through the Channel Tunnel between France and the UK. The London end of the line is located at the DB Eurohub in Barking, East London.

By the end of Dec., 2017, there had been more than 100 (Yiwu) Sino-Europe trains arriving at and departing from Yiwu, and Yiwu Customs had ac-cumulatively supervised 9,990 TEUs of international through railway transport containers, with a year-on-year growth of 91%.

To read more about the Yiwu Market and get to know our service there, visit https://www.businesstriptochina.com/china_yiwu.html          

In a few days' time, on 16 February, 2018, Chinese people around the world will celebrate the Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival. It is the most important festival in China, as families gather together, and friends meet again, after working hard for one year.

In China, hundreds of millions of young people found job opportunities by working in factories or offices in bigger cities. Therefore, every Chinese New Year, they need to travel back to their home provinces, to meet their families and friends. This has created the largest seasonal human migration in the world. 

In 2017, the Transport Department has recorded 3 billion passengers taking different kinds of public transport (Train, flights, bus, ferries...) in the whole country, for the whole month of Chinese New Year (2 weeks before and 2 weeks after), for people travelling back home before the festival, during the festival, and going back to the cities where they work. 

Out of which, 4 hundred million passengers took the high speed train system. With the train stations in Canton, Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai the busiest, as these are the most developed cities in China, which provide most working opportunities for Chinese people in other provinces. 

It is expected the the figure will be similar in 2018, with more people travelling on one hand, but change of transport habit on the other, such as people choose to drive back home or use carpool service by Didi Chuxing (The Chinese version of UBER).

Even if you are driving, expect to spend at least 3 times on the road, as there are congestion in all major inter-city highways. 

As a foreigner, it is extremely difficult to travel in China during the Chinese New Year period, as tickets are difficult to get, everywhere is crowed, security is tight at stations ..... So if you planning your next business trip to China, do not come during the Chinese New Year period. 

If you travel to big cities in China, it is easy to find bicycles of different colors on the sidewalks and the streets. These are share bicycles from different Chinese companies. Inspired by the car-sharing economy pioneer UBER, the bike-sharing revolution has since transformed the way Chinese people move around the cities, as well as the transport industry as a whole. 

Everyday, tens of millions of Chinese people use these share-bikes, which are equipped with GPS and connection to internet. Users just have to download the APP on their mobile phones, and they can find available bikes nearby, open the bike lock through scanning the 2D barcode on the bike body, and pay with their account, all done online, within seconds. 

Despite the increase popularity and potential of this sharing economy, share bikes have nevertheless caused several problems in the city, such as bikes being dropped off everywhere, increase hazard on road traffic, and stealing of bike parts. Local governments in China and share-bike companies are now working together to reduce the disorder in the cities. For example, users dropping the bikes in designated parking areas will get discounts for their next ride. 

Now the 2 biggest Chinese companies of share bike, MOBIKE and OFO, have extended their operations to other foreign cities, such as Manchester, Washington D.C., Milan, Florence ... Do you think this share bike idea will succeed like its car-sharing counterparts?

In your business trip to China, it is very common that the host will invite you for lunch or dinner with them. It is a gesture of friendship. Here are some of the dinning table etiquette in China. 

1. Beer is drunk in room temperature, not chilled: To a lot of foreigners, this is the first cultural shock. Chinese people believe that our body and internal organs work best in room temperature. Cold food or drink will contract the muscles of our internal organs and not desirable to our health. If you want to drink cold beer, tell the waiter "Bing de" (Cold ones please)

2. Table tapping when someone is filling your cup of tea: Why drink beer when are in the country of tea? During the meals, when someone is filling up your cup of tea, you should tap the table with 2 fingers as courtesy. 

According to legend, the Chinese Emperor liked to disguise himself as normal citizen and went to different provinces of the country to observe life of ordinary people. Once the Emperor was in a tea-house with his subordinate. The Emperor served him tea. This would normally never happened in real life, and if it did, the subordinate should be kneeling down to receive this gratitude from the Emperor. But he could not do it as it would have uncovered the real identity of the Emperor. Did not know what to do, the subordinate tapped the table with 2 fingers to signify 2 knees. 

3. Do not put the chopsticks vertically in the rice: It looks like putting incense sticks in the rice, which Chinese people offer to the dead. 

4. Do not turn the fish unless the host does it: It is very common in Chinese restaurant to serve the complete fish. After finishing the upper side of the fish, it seems logical to turn the fish to have the bottom side up. Unfortunately, doing this will have an unpredictable consequence: You have sunk the boat.

This is a major worry for regions along the coast of the country, which depend largely on fishing. The fish symbolize the boat. To turn it over is bad luck to fishermen working in the sea. 

So what do we do? Using your chopsticks, pick up the end of the spine of the fish near the tail fin, lift the spine slowly until the fish head, the spine should be gradually separating from the fresh. And then you can enjoy the bottom part of the fishing without flipping over it. 

5. Do not order 7 plates of dishes: Because eating 7 plates of dishes is a ritual in funerals. it is better to order 6 or 8 plates.