China, December 2026

01Why this order

Everyone flies into Hong Kong on November 28 and bases at the Shenzhen family apartment. The first two and a half weeks belong to the Chans: Shenzhen, Macau, then a long stretch in Guangzhou where Anders takes his Lingnan brush-painting course and the wedding dress gets ordered, then Chongqing. Tamilyn lands in Chengdu on December 17 and the four of them travel together from there. Chengdu for the pandas, Shanghai for Christmas and the week that holds most of her list, then back south to Guangzhou for New Year's Eve and the finished dress, and Hong Kong on January 1 so she meets the whole family before everyone flies home January 2.

Two honest notes. This is not a straight south-to-north run any more: the tail doubles back about 1,400 km from Shanghai to Guangzhou. That is the price of putting the dress pickup and the Hong Kong family at the end, inside Tamilyn's dates, and it costs one extra flight rather than a whole day. And with the dates fixed, the pre-wedding photoshoot lands in Shanghai during the Christmas week. Yunnan is off the route, and reaching it would mean taking three nights out of Chengdu, which the dates do not allow.

02Itinerary

03Flights

This timeline simplifies the long-haul booking. The Chans now fly a plain round trip into and out of Hong Kong (HKG), November 28 out and January 2 back, which is usually cheaper and easier to award-book than an open jaw. Tamilyn is the only open jaw: into Chengdu on December 17, home from Hong Kong on January 2. Nobody flies Boston to China nonstop, so everything from BOS is one stop. Book around 15 weeks out, mid-August for the November 28 departure.

04Sleeping on ¥150–200 a night ($21–28)

Doable, with one catch. Budget chains (Hanting, 7 Days, Home Inn, Vienna) and hostel private rooms hit ¥150–200 ($21–28) easily in Chengdu, Chongqing and Guangzhou; Macau runs higher, especially over the holidays. Central Shanghai wants ¥250–350 ($35–50) for the same bed. Two ways to handle it:

• Stay on a metro line 20–30 min out in Shanghai and keep the budget intact, or
• Let the pricier nights run ¥250–300 ($35–42) and claw it back in the cheap southwest. The free Shenzhen base helps a lot.

The actual hotels, city by city

Checked July 2026: every one below takes foreigners (flagged where that could not be double-checked) and has private double rooms. First pick listed first. Prices are current low-season doubles; exact December 2026 rates show up in the fall. Party of 4 = two doubles.

05Visas: start here, it is the long pole

All four of you need a tourist (L) visa. Good news: it is the easy version now. No flight bookings, no hotel proof, no invitation letters since 2024, and the fee is a flat $140 through December 31, 2026, which almost always comes back as a 10-year multi-entry visa.

One myth to kill early: the viral "Americans can do China visa-free for 10 days" videos mean the 240-hour visa-free transit rule. It requires arriving from one country and leaving to a different one, all within 10 days. Every stay on this trip is longer than that, so it helps nobody here. Get the visas.

Macau and Hong Kong are separate: both are SARs, and US passports are visa-free 30 days for each, no China visa needed to enter them. But every time you come back to the mainland (after Macau, after the Hong Kong family days) you use one more mainland entry, which is exactly why the 10-year multi-entry visa matters on this route.

Why NY works for everyone: the NYC consulate's district covers both New York and Massachusetts, so Boston applicants use the same office as the parents. Walk-in, no appointment. And a relative can drop off and pick up for you, so whoever is in NY can run all four applications in one trip.

• Fill out the COVA form online for each person (the new system, live since late 2025), print and sign
• Passports valid 6+ months past the trip with 2 blank pages, check all four now
• One photo each, 48 x 33 mm, white background (any passport-photo shop knows the China spec)
• Proof of US residence (license or utility bill copy)
• Drop off at the NYC consulate, standard processing is about 4 business days, budget 1–3 weeks door to door
• Target: submit by mid-October, so any hiccup still clears before booking gets stressful

06The two bunnies stay in Boston

Tamilyn is home covering the two bunnies until she flies out, and a Dec 17 landing in Chengdu means leaving Boston around Dec 15 or 16. So the South End apartment needs a sitter from about Dec 16 through Jan 2, roughly 17 days. Two rabbits is still a real job: they hide illness, GI stasis moves fast, and the sitter needs to read rabbit body language. Rabbit-savvy beats generic, no contest. South End is an easy sell for sitters (central, walkable), which helps at the holidays.

07Saved spots tracker

Everything you have sent, already slotted into the plan above. Of the 31 Instagram links, 17 were Japan or Taipei content, so those are parked at the bottom, not in the plan. The Yunnan link sits in the parked block for now, since Yunnan came off the route in the newest timeline. Five new Instagram saves were folded in on August 7: four landed in the plan (Shanghai twice, Hong Kong, and Jingdezhen as an open call) and Harbin parked. The TikTok China collection was re-read the same day: 26 saves, 15 already here, 11 new. Nine of those eleven landed in Shenzhen and Shanghai, and the two Beijing ones are parked.

08Before wheels up

09The full bill

Group totals, all five weeks, recomputed for the new dates. Three travelers until Dec 17, four after. Daily = beds + food + tickets; travel fares sit in the transport table. Estimates marked (est.). The dress and the photoshoot are both in at a mid tier; shopping hauls and souvenirs are not. Only the first three nights sleep free at the Shenzhen apartment now, because Hong Kong moved to the very end.

10Open questions

• BOOK THIS FIRST: the photoshoot, now settled on Shanghai.
  With the dates locked, Yunnan is out. Getting there would have cost two extra flights and three nights out of the Chengdu week, and the dates do not have that room. Shanghai does the job without any extra travel: seven nights means picking the best morning instead of gambling on one, and there are three distinct looks in one city (the Bund at dawn, the plane trees and art deco around Wukang Road, and Zhujiajiao water town an hour out). Nothing else on this trip has a longer lead time. Studios want 1 to 3 months, so this is the earliest real deadline and the thing to book before flights.
• Settled: the dates, and therefore the shape of the route.
  Shenzhen, Macau, Guangzhou, Chongqing with the parents. Then Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou again, Hong Kong with all four. It is no longer a clean south-to-north run; the tail doubles back so the dress pickup and the Hong Kong family land inside Tamilyn's dates. These dates are what the family can do, so everything below works inside them rather than proposing to move them.
• Settled: Tamilyn lands in Chengdu Dec 17 and everyone flies home from Hong Kong Jan 2.
  She joins mid-trip in the southwest instead of in Hong Kong, and she still meets the whole family, just on Jan 1 at the end instead of on day one.
• Settled: the wedding work is photos and dress only.
  No ceremony to plan. The dress gets ordered in Guangzhou in early December and picked up in Guangzhou on Dec 31. The photos are the open question above.
• Open: the dress is ordered before Tamilyn is in the country.
  The upside of the new dates is a clean four-week build: order Dec 3–5, pick up Dec 31. The catch is that it gets cut from measurements she sends from Boston, and Dec 31 is the only fitting day. Ask the shop what same-day alterations they can do, have her measured properly by a tailor in Boston rather than at home, and pick a backup shop with off-rack stock on the same street.
• Open: Tamilyn asked for Chongqing and it now sits before she lands.
  Her four asks were Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu and Yunnan. This timeline gives her Shanghai and Chengdu outright. Chongqing is a 1 hr 15 rail hop from Chengdu, so one overnight out of her Chengdu week fixes it for about $22 each way, and the doc already holds the theatre and both teahouses for that trip. Yunnan depends on the photoshoot answer.
• Open: where to sleep for the single Hong Kong night.
  Jan 1 to 2 has to carry the family day, the Chao Shao-an Gallery and the chop, and all three do fit in the order set out in section 02. The gallery is open (it closes Tuesdays; Jan 1, 2027 is a Friday). The one call left is the bed: one Hong Kong hotel night at $150–250 a room, or crossing back to the Shenzhen apartment for free. With a Jan 2 flight out of HKG and a packed Jan 1, the hotel is probably worth it.
• Open: what fills Nov 29 to Dec 2.
  The only days not spoken for. The painting course starts Dec 3, so these four are free. What is written above puts them in Shenzhen and Macau. Guilin is parked and would also fit, about 3 hrs by rail from Shenzhen, without moving a single fixed date.
• Open: the AI Chinese Medicine save still needs a city.
  The @chrischou reel doesn't name the location; these exist in Shanghai and Beijing, so it likely lands in the Shanghai finish once pinned down.