Asked and answered.

Yes. Every traveler has to be 22–35 on the departure date — the lead booker states their age at checkout, everyone else is confirmed from their date of birth in the traveler details, and a booking outside the band can't be completed. It's a rule, not a vibe: the itinerary, the pace and the nights out are built for one life stage, so day one feels like a reunion instead of a networking mixer. What is open to everyone is background — you don't need to be Asian, or to speak the language, to book.

You're grandfathered. Happy birthday — we'll get cake.

Yes — same seats, same terms, no questions asked. We design around the second-gen Asian diaspora experience because that's the trip we wished existed, and that's the crowd it tends to draw — but nobody's heritage gets checked at the door. If ten days of night markets, bullet trains and a very active group chat sounds like your trip, it's your trip.

Bring your person. Partners and friends of any background book on the same terms and land in the same group chat — most of the family stuff translates just fine over a boiling pot. One honest flag: this is a crew trip, so expect the two of you to get absorbed into the group, not left as a table for two.

Completely. Second-gen here is an experience, not a bloodline quiz — this trip is built for people who grew up between cultures, whether the other side of that hyphen is Seoul, Saigon, Manila or a second continent entirely. China is the venue; seeing it with people who don't need the backstory explained is the point.

It's so far from just you that researchers gave it a name — the friendship recession. After college, the places where friendship happened by accident (dorms, classes, team practice) quietly disappear, and nothing replaces them: it's work, home, screens, repeat. That's the actual problem this trip is built against. Ten days of shared meals, long train rides, and one group chat stacks up more face-time than months of "we should hang out soon".

Friendship is the design brief, not a lucky side effect. Everything bends toward it: crews capped at 20 so nobody stays a stranger, one age band so you're peers instead of chaperones, a group chat that's weeks old before anyone boards, and free evenings that split the crew into smaller plans and reshuffle it daily. Can we guarantee your new best friend? No — nobody honest can. We can guarantee you won't be short on chances.

No lanyards, no elevator pitches, nobody asking what you do before asking your name. But we won't pretend the opposite either: spend ten days around shared tables with a crew of young Asian professionals who flew in from different cities, and you go home with the kind of network LinkedIn keeps promising — people who actually answer your texts. We just refuse to call it networking while it's happening.

Very unlikely — most people signing up are coming solo. Solo is the default here, not the exception. The group chat starts weeks before the flight, so nobody walks into a room of strangers.

Matched thoughtfully — same-gender by default, preferences respected — or take a private room for US$300 per person for the trip. Nobody gets stuck.

You're the typical guest here, not the exception. Most of the crew grew up mostly in English, with a family dialect that stalls somewhere around food words. English-speaking guides cover every city, a travel eSIM keeps your translate app alive, and half the fun of a night market is ordering by pointing. If you do speak Mandarin or Cantonese, you'll simply become everyone's favorite person by day two.

Depends on the passport, and the news is mostly good. Canadian, British and Australian passports currently enter visa-free for up to 30 days (through Dec 31, 2026) — no application at all. US passports aren't on that list yet, but China's 240-hour (10-day) visa-free transit covers a full trip when you fly out to a third country or region — Hong Kong counts — and a standard tourist visa is the no-routing-games fallback. We walk every crew member through the route that fits their passport before anyone books flights. Policies change, so always verify current rules with the Chinese National Immigration Administration or your nearest consulate.

Read the full 2026 entry-rules guide →

Basically, yes. We get Alipay or WeChat Pay working on your phone before you land — and you'll still carry a little cash, like your mom told you to.

Breakfast and lunch are included every touring day, and dinner on seven of the nine nights — so what you're really budgeting for is drinks, snacks, shopping, optional shows and tips (the operator's guideline is about US$5 per person per day for your guide and driver). Street food is gloriously cheap; cocktails in Shanghai are not. A realistic budget guide comes with your pre-trip pack.

Yes — with a travel eSIM you install before you fly. Maps, messages, the group chat, all of it, working from the moment you land. The pre-trip pack points you to the right one.

Walking-heavy, and almost everything is skippable without judgment. The one honest exception on the flagship: Mount Hua day is a real hike — cableways do the big lifts, but you'll be on stairs and ridgelines for hours. Fitness notes are on every trip page.

Street-level? Remarkably. Violent crime against travelers is rare, big cities are busy and well-lit late into the night, and losing your phone to a pickpocket is less likely there than in most of Europe. The realistic annoyances are crowds, queue chaos and the occasional tourist-price attempt at a market. Standard travel sense applies — but this is not the trip your parents' evening news prepared them for. One honest line, because it matters: travel carries risk nobody can remove, and you take part at your own risk — the booking terms spell out what that means, and it's why travel insurance is required.

Read the full honest safety guide →

You're never solving it alone. There's an English-speaking local guide with the crew in every city, backed by the licensed operating partner's team on the ground — lost passport, pharmacy run, missed connection: they've handled it before. And because you're in a crew with one group chat, nobody quietly disappears into a problem. The honest flip side: the operating partner runs the trip and is responsible for the services in it, you take part at your own risk, and anything medical is paid for by you or your insurer — which is exactly why insurance is required, not suggested.

Yes — it's a condition of travelling with us, not a suggestion, and it isn't included in the trip. Your policy needs emergency medical, evacuation and repatriation cover (we recommend at least US$200,000) plus cancellation cover for your non-refundable payments — buy it the day you pay your deposit so that cover starts immediately. We'll ask for your policy number and your insurer's emergency line before departure, and without adequate insurance you can be refused participation with no refund. It costs a rounding error next to one hospital visit abroad.

Now, for any departure whose trip page shows a 'Book now' button with the deposit — that means seats are genuinely on sale. Departures that aren't open yet run waitlist-first: the list sees dates and pricing before anyone else. The booking terms and the cancellation policy are both published in full, and you'll see the policy on screen before you pay.

A deposit holds your seat — you see the exact amount before you pay a cent — and the balance is due by the date shown on the departure. We email you before it lands, and you pay it from a link in your dashboard. Book after that date has already passed and checkout simply collects the whole trip price at once, which the page tells you before you pay. While you check out, your seat is held for 30 minutes so nobody can take it mid-payment. No booking fee. Every payment — deposit, balance or pay-in-full — is non-refundable from the moment it's paid unless the departure is cancelled; the cancellation policy is on screen before you pay.

US dollars, everywhere on the site — every figure says US$ so a Canadian or Australian reader never mistakes it for their own dollar. Your card is charged in USD through Stripe; if it's issued in CAD, AUD, GBP or anything else, your bank converts at its own rate and may add a foreign-transaction fee, so a no-FX-fee card is worth using.

No. Every payment you make is non-refundable unless the departure is cancelled — whatever the reason: a change of plans, illness, a visa refusal, a missed flight, a no-show, leaving early. That money is committed to hotels, rail, flights and the ground crew long before departure. The one case where everything comes back, deposit included, is if we or the operating partner cancel the departure — including for not reaching the minimum crew size. Travel insurance with cancellation cover is what protects you for everything else, which is why it's required.

A licensed Chinese operating partner, with English-speaking guides in every city. We don't publish which one, and the partner for a departure may change before it runs — that isn't a cancellation. We design, market and sell the trip and take your booking as that partner's booking agent; the partner operates it and is responsible for the hotels, transport, guides and every other service on the ground. We stay your point of contact throughout — that's customer service, not us running the trip. The booking terms set out exactly how that works.