How global travelers can unlock China in May 2026

Every May, China enters one of its most beautiful seasons. This is not only the peak travel season for Chinese, but also one of the best windows for inbound tourists to experience China.

Where the world 'votes' with wallets

If you want to follow the consensus, start with the undisputed anchors. Visa's 2025 spending analysis shows the top 10 cities where international travelers are most present: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Zhangjiajie, Suzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing. This is a map of proven appeal. Yet within this list, a single place stands out: Zhangjiajie. It is the only non-first-tier city to break into the top ranks, fueled entirely by a natural landscape that seems to defy gravity. In the first seven months of 2025 alone, it drew 722,300 international tourists and generated $376 million. The message is clear – the world comes to China for its icons, but increasingly stays for its wonders.

Where the trends are heading next

While the classic marquee cities remain strong, a new wave of travelers is rewriting the map. Destination choices are decentralizing at remarkable speed. According to Xiaohongshu's 2026 Foreign Tourist Trend Report, travelers are now building entire itineraries around niche, personal passions. In Zhengzhou, visitors are not just passing through, they're renting Hanfu and participating in ancient-style street photography. In Taiyuan, gamers from across the world are arriving to stand in front of the real-life ancient architecture that appeared in the video game Black Myth: Wukong. In Fuzhou, it's the coastal mountains and quiet heritage; in Yiwu, it's the sheer spectacle of the world's largest wholesale market.

This is crowd-sourced travel, curated in real-time, with the goal no longer being landmark-checking but deep, immersive living – morning tai chi in parks, midnight feasts at night markets, and shipping boxes of discoveries back home. The country is experienced not as a single narrative but as a "mosaic," in Xiaohongshu's definition, where Russian visitors seek the tropical warmth of Sanya, Southeast Asians chase the snow of Harbin, and Europeans trace the Silk Road through Xi'an and Shanxi.

New ways of traveling – 'reverse tourism' 

The days of Chinese travelers simply following the crowds to the biggest cities are fading. This May Day, the most defining trend is "reverse tourism," and it has gone fully mainstream. Ctrip and Tongcheng Travel data reveal that bookings for county-level destinations have surged 128% year-on-year, with fifth-tier cities leading growth among all categories at 9.0%. Families are no longer jostling for space in megacities. Instead, they are escaping to Pingtan Island in Fujian for its seaside stone houses, slowing down in the ancient lanes of Jianshui, Yunnan, or losing themselves under the lantern-lit night of Pingyao, Shanxi. The desire is the same across cultures: to find the real, the slow, the beautiful – and stay a while.