Tens of thousands of Americans fly to China every year for exactly two reasons: AWE (the “CES of China”) in Shanghai each March, and the Canton Fair in Guangzhou each April and October. Almost all of them see a convention center, three restaurants, and a hotel gym. That’s like flying to Napa and drinking at the airport bar.
The arithmetic of adding a week is unusually good, because the airfare — the biggest cost — is already sunk. For AWE: our Beijing + Shanghai edition ends in Shanghai the day before the show opens, twenty minutes from SNIEC. You walk the floor having just toured Xiaomi’s EV factory, watched humanoids demo at a robot dealership, and ridden the 350 km/h flagship rail in — the booths read differently when you’ve seen the production side. For the Canton Fair: flip it. Attend Phase 1 — electronics, April 15–19 or October 15–19 — then join us the morning after it closes for ten days inside the delta that builds what you just sourced: XPeng’s lines, BYD’s HQ, Huaqiangbei with a veteran fixer, EHang’s vertiport, robotaxis staged so no Chinese phone number is needed.
Three practical notes. These are mainland-in, mainland-out routings, so the visa is real: $140 for the 10-year L, or an M visa that the fair’s own invitation letter supports — either way, days not weeks. Fair-week hotels in Guangzhou run three to five times normal rates, which is why we sell pre-contracted fair-week blocks as an add-on. And if the show floor itself intimidates: our fair-floor guide/translation days ($165 shared) put a bilingual negotiator at your shoulder. First the fair, then the field trip — or the reverse. Either way, stop flying 7,000 miles to see a convention center. Join the 2027 waitlist →
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