You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Steve and Xinyu.
Coming up soon.
For many urban workers, the fun of a long vacation comes with prize as well.
Annual leave negotiation, hours of planning, and a mini money crisis.
Now, instead of dreaming about disappearing for weeks, people are learning to escape in fragments.
Today, Roundtable offers you another possibility, micro vacation.
Let's find out all about that.
And many say China's digital sophistication came with an unintended side effect.
For foreign travelers, everyday life could feel inaccessible.
Somehow, cashless payments, QR codes and super apps worked seamlessly for locals.
For visitors, they often didn't.
Now, the launch of the Nihao China app attempts to change that first impression.
Planning to visit China soon?
Better stay tuned for this topic.
But before that…
It's Tuesday afternoon, your inbox is half on red, your coffee is cold and your screensaver is doing that cruel thing where it cycles through splendid oceans.
You didn't ask for.
You don't actually want a month off.
You just want out briefly.
And that feeling is exactly where the micro vacation comes in.
Not a grand escape, not a life rest, but a controlled release of pressure.
Two or three days, a short train ride, familiar comforts with unfamiliar scenery.
Enough distance to breathe, not enough to panic your calendar.
Now reimagined cities and city streets, carefully designed countryside, healing routes, drama towns and live malls are all trying to make your mini vacation plan possible.
So we're unpacking, why everyone, from Gen Z explorers to silver-haired travelers, is eager to try out at least these mini escapes.
We talked about mini shifts.
Now, During our mini shift to work days, we are looking at mini vacations.
Micro shift to micro vacation this time.
I can see modern people.
They're making better use of their fragmented time, not just at work, but also leisure.
So a micro vacation is a short distance, quick and convenient mini getaway that people use for a mental reset.
So usually these trips center around a major city like Beijing.
And you can go to places like two to three hours by car or by high speed train.
And these trips can last for one to three days.
So maybe for office workers, it's a perfect weekend getaway.
And also it's characterized by two highs and one short rule.
So it means high frequency, high consumption and short distance.
So I think usually people, you don't need to pack up too many things for this kind of trip.
You just say and go.
And that kind of experience is gaining traction.
Yeah, it's gaining traction in the West as well, these micro-vacations, or they're also called micro-cations.
They are defined in America as one-to-four-day vacations, so between one and four days.
And the idea behind it is the same to give people a mental reset without using significant time off from work or whole lot of money, and it's often focused on experiential travel, doing something that's not too far away from your home that allows you to do something or experience something.
Going skiing would be an example, going hiking for a weekend, going camping for an overnight, for an example, but also just something like maybe an overnight to go see a concert and in a neighboring town or something yes, the concert.
One fits into the category of leisure activities centered micro um vacations.
They do karaoke, musical and dance performances or enjoy these performances, comedy shows, vids to cafes and bars, attending concerts and live music events, and usually When these activities are held, it takes a bit more than just one day.
So might as well stay there for the overall pleasure.
And another type would be sports and outdoor activities.
Like Steve has already mentioned, mountaineering, hiking, trekking, fishing.
Ooh, a lot of people love fishing.
And if you can fish...
For two days with one camping out night, that's also quite nice.
And another one would be still the old-fashioned tourism-oriented activities, minus the possibility or the trouble of planning.
Everything go to faraway places, just for the famous vacation attractions.
So these short trips would allow you to find the hidden treasure or the hidden gem around the city that you live in.
And those are the currently very trendy categories of micro vacations.
And do we have some places that we're recommending for listeners, or in different parts of the country or the world?
Yeah, Beijing in particular, it recently launched its eight new micro vacation destinations or routes, to create a festive consumption atmosphere ahead of the spring festival.
So it offers many options there.
And one of them is the Mo Shikou Street in Western Beijing's Shijingshan District.
I was also there before.
So this street is an ancient thousand-year-old road shaped like a dragon.
So you can check out the famous Fahai Temple where it houses the Ming Dynasty Buddhist murals which I have seen, those with my own eyes and I've shared it at our happy place before.
But you can also visit the China Quaternary Glacial Vestige Exhibition Hall to look at some of the glaciers.
And also you can relax in this.
Actually, there are a lot of handicrafts and cafes along this road.
So you can have your own like pour over coffee yourself.
So this is one of the routes you can experience.
Yes, one destination or one type, one very specific destination. micro vacation i am planning for for years that i would definitely go someday is the drama town kind of micro vacation what's a drama town a drama town is one of the what we used to call a specific or a kind of a theme town here in china that they designed the entire town based on a certain theme, the theme can be a certain industry, the theme can be wrapped around or revealed around a certain historical destination.
And in this case, it is centered around the drama experience.
So one of the hottest trends here is, or one of the hottest spot is, the only red mentioned drama city.
And this place is in Longfeng is also really close to Beijing.
It's.
Visitors from Beijing can take a dedicated bus just to put on traditional Hanfu clothing and spend the weekend walking through the stage sets.
Eat from one to another and enjoy the show and you can be part of the entire setting and an entire kind of like a little world.
The food, the souvenir, the performance, they're all in this one theme, around this one theme.
So I find it quite interesting.
There's another area of Beijing.
I think it's on the far eastern side near Universal Studios.
It's called Wanli Tingyun, if I'm saying that correctly.
And it's this open air shopping mall that's directly accessible by subway.
So it's easy to get to.
It's about an hour away from downtown, give or take a bit.
And you can kind of leave behind that downtown vibe to get out there.
And when you do get there, you've got the energy of the retail spaces, you've got the amusement park nearby.
You've got some very nice hotels as well.
And it's kind of a move away from the shopping mall, even though there is shopping to be done in that area.
It's moving away from your traditional shopping mall design.
It's really, really big.
It's spacious.
There's a rooftop with a sky garden there that's been created.
They have over 200 different types of landscape plants up there to look at.
So it's a really lovely place to be.
What's interesting about this whole concept is that if you have any idea about the previous examples we've mentioned, or if those examples remind you of certain places you've visited, you would know that part of the destinations are not that novel.
They have been there for quite a while.
But, to be honest Beijing, as well as other cities here in China, I think, as well as around the world, city planners are very carefully and also intentionally design places for these mini vacation.
And that is why we reached out to Rika Huan, an architectural and interior designer who was involved in the design of this micro vacation town.
And we invited her to share, from a designer's perspective, why they chose to create a micro vacation destination like this and what kind of message does she hope to convey to consumers through the design of this place?
Through the design I hope to commend that a quality break is closer and more accessible than one might think.
It's not about escaping your life, but enriching it.
By creating a space with engaging architecture, thoughtful programming and curated experiences nearby.
We want people to realize that recharging doesn't require long trips or big budgets.
It's about integrating moments of discovery, relaxation and inspiration into ordinary life, retaining the pursuit of beauty and love for living into a regular practice.
She sounds very convincing.
I want to go to these many vacations even more.
She's one of the designers.
She should sound convincing.
Very convincing, but I still want to ask because, for me Yes, if I do this kind of weekend getaway, it could be nice, but I still need to relatively more carefully design this, because you have family to think about, kids to think about.
You're getting away from the entire concept of the micro vacation.
It's not supposed to require a tremendous amount of planning.
Is that why people are choosing for this?
Part of it is the spontaneity of it.
You're exactly right.
There was a survey done by Alliance, which is a U.S. insurance company.
It was a 2025 survey.
And what they found was 75% of travelers now opt for trips that are four days or less.
I said that one to four day window is that micro vacation, right?
People are really all about this.
They also found I found this to be very interesting that a one-week vacation would cost about 300 to 400 a night.
This is American.
The one night for a micro vacation would cost.
Will you expect higher or lower than 300 to 400 a night?
Lower.
Higher.
Higher.
Yeah.
Higher because they are micro vacations.
People are still looking for luxury, but they do it in shorter bursts.
So that, instead of going, you know.
If you go away to another country for 10 days and you want to stay in a five-star hotel, that's going to cost you 400 a night.
That makes sense.
You're going to spend $4,000 on a hotel.
It's intense and concentrated.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's more concentrated.
So you can have that luxury.
You're going to spend less than you would spend on a full vacation, but you're still going to have that same memorable quality experience, high quality experience.
So partly it's because it's also benefiting those who are designing these micro vacation destinations, because they are gaining more.
Yeah.
And back to the point about what I said, don't plan too much.
That's the concept behind it is that you can wake up on Friday morning and think, You know what?
It's only a couple of hours away.
Let's go over.
There's a concert over there this weekend.
Let's book a hotel, a really nice hotel.
I'll search a good restaurant we can eat at.
We'll have a luxurious 24-hour experience and then come back home.
You get that fun and excitement of the spontaneity.
You get the luxury aspect of a full vacation, but you don't have to go very far away to do it.
And there's that means there's a lot less planning, a lot less booking involved.
And you also, and this is one of the other reasons that people are doing this is that when you go on a full vacation, like a week long or 10 days or whatever
Oftentimes you feel tired when you come back, right?
Or when you're away, you're constantly thinking about your work.
You feel pressured to check your email, something like that.
One of the reasons people love these micro vacations is they don't have that pressure.
They're only gone for three days, maybe four or maybe two or maybe one.
So they don't have that mental workload with them.
So they come back feeling refreshed as opposed to coming back feeling tired.
And we're only giving examples adjacent to Beijing because we live here.
But for people around the country, they have different types of experience.
For those who are living, for example, close to Shanghai, but not really in Shanghai, they can go to the mall, lifestyle centered kind of many vacations and enjoy the metropolis kind of fast speed, yet fast, in a, Like Steve said, luxurious experience kind of vacation in only one or two days.
Those who live next to Shenzhen or Hainan.
They can enjoy the beach holiday, a two-day beach holiday.
That sounds really cool.
Doesn't it?
Yeah.
So now we are already observing this trend and it's happening here in China.
And to be honest, it's no longer a niche hobby.
It is becoming a economic driver.
Yeah, it's really defining.
What leisure consumption is all about in China today.
Back in 2024, 84 almost 85 of urban residents, 88 of rural residents, 82 of retirees chose to engage in these leisure activities within a three kilometer radius of their home.
Now that's not very far away.
More like a community-based.
You could walk.
Delivery-based.
But yeah, so you can see people are into it.
They don't have to go very far away.
And what it's turned into is a trillion yuan consumption market, which is obviously a good reason for businesses to get involved as well.
Here's some more stats to back that up.
This is from the 2024 Weekend Leisure Travel Index report.
In 2023, weekend leisure trips around the country reached 15 times higher the number of weekday trips, with weekend travelers accounting for more than 41 of the total annual tourist flows.
And then among weekend leisure travelers, nearly 80 of families took two or more trips per month on average.
And the repeat visit rate, which is important, for weekend travelers, it continued to rise as well.
This is big business and this is how people are choosing to travel these days.
I have to say, if I'm five years younger, when I'm five years younger, I was much more spontaneous than today.
I tend not to think a lot about the family because there was no family to think about.
And yet I found that actually about 40 percent of micro vacationers are families.
They are taking this one-stop destinations where kids can play and learn a little bit and do a what they call a housekeeping travel in your home so that they can take, And maybe, when it comes to the choosing of locations, you have to consider the need of the kid, based on the age group the kid fits in.
But once you're there it is definitely a pleasure experience for both the parents and the young kids.
Absolutely.
And they're not the only group who are enjoying this.
A lot of people from different age groups are enjoying micro-vacations.
Yeah.
So not just families with children.
Gen Z and also young adults.
And also we've talked about the young professionals.
They're looking for these kind of healing trips to maybe detox.
Spa day.
Spa day.
Healing.
Yeah, to get away, escape from your working and living environment.
And also the silver-haired crowd.
So these seniors, they also are taking these high-speed rail trips to nearby, maybe cities to, to get some comfortable lifestyle.
Yes, high speed reels.
Another reason that this one is possible.
Not only can you travel to the places that's only three kilometers away from your home, you can also go to really far away ones.
Or really close.
Have you ever done a staycation before?
I love staycation.
That's one of my favorite kinds.
You stay in the city, but maybe a part of the city that you don't normally go to.
And you book a hotel there and you go and be a tourist.
Even though that's the city where you're from or the city where you live, you play the role of a tourist in that part of the city.
And if you've never done that before, I would totally recommend it.
I've done it so many times and it is so much fun.
And if we're giving you ideas to enjoy these mini vacations, make sure, after you are back home, leave us a comment.
Let us know where you went.
Did you enjoy it?
Or any suggestions for the location to improve their service?
Or invite us and we'll meet you there.
Yes, that'll do.
That'll do.
Let us know.
You're listening to Roundtable.
Coming up next, let's welcome the Nihao China app, newly released for foreign travelers.
Stay tuned.
Looking for passion?
How about fiery debate?
Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives?
Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West, and understanding is the goal.
This is Roundtable with me, Steve Hatherly, and Xinyu.
So an app that can solve the problems of foreigners when they first come to a new country.
They do not know the language they have.
Not a million, but several different apps that they can choose to use, but they don't know which one to choose.
Steve, did you ever encounter these problems when you first came to China?
Well, before I came, I was told WeChat, WeChat, WeChat, WeChat, WeChat, WeChat, WeChat.
It's life here.
You have to have that.
So I used that when I arrived.
Now, it was a different story for me because I knew I was going to be living here.
This app, Ni Hao China, is designed from a different perspective, if you will.
This is for people who are coming on vacation, and it's all about making things as convenient as possible for them.
Yeah, so it's more for these international visitors or tourists.
So basically, it's a newly launched one-stop service platform designed to streamline the entire travel experience for these inbound tourists.
I guess for many inbound tourists they have this headache of like payment or transportation or making reservations.
So this is an all-in-one travel companion that can solve all of these problems.
I remember before I came here, I brought cash with me.
And I remember asking, as a matter of fact, can I give cash to a taxi driver?
And he said, well, yes, they legally they are required to take that.
But don't expect changes because they won't probably won't have any.
And that's exactly what happened.
I gave him the money and he said, like, oh, I don't have any change.
So I just said, I'll keep the change.
But that was one example of you know, if I had been able to set up everything before I came, or shortly after I came, or after I arrived, I would have been able to avoid that.
Yes.
So, for the payment problem, the app would allow users to top up using Unipay foreign cards as well as major international bank cards like Visa and Mastered, and also they allow or they support multi-currency.
And of course, there is a standardizing transactions.
You do not have to worry about transitioning your money to Chinese Yuan with too high a fee.
But payment is not the only thing the app is trying and also managing to solve.
Yeah, and also transportation.
The app integrates the ride-hailing services, which is similar to Didi and Uber, and also public transit maps.
So the app also supports metro systems in 43 major cities and bus services in more than 1700 cities and countless counties nationwide.
So with just one code, you can move smoothly through public transport.
So there's no need to purchase like transit cars, just tap and go.
That's very convenient.
Also a map.
So I have the app open on my phone in front of me right now.
So on the top of the screen when you open the app.
First you select your city in the upper left-hand corner.
Then you've got your pay buttons.
You've got your metro, bus buttons.
And then you scroll.
You have your buttons to connect your wallet like you explained before.
You can connect your bank cards from home, your home country.
But then you scroll down and there's a map and it's a map of Beijing.
And if you just click on that, click on the map, it opens up.
It asks if you want to share your location, you allow it.
And then you can search in English.
It shows you where you are in Beijing at the moment.
And then you can put in popular destinations or wherever you want to go for that matter.
But you put in something like Sanlitun, which is a popular tourist destination.
Yeah, shopping space.
And then it comes out in English.
You click on it.
There's an arrow at the bottom, and it tells you on the GPS how to get there.
It's so convenient.
And as a traveler, you definitely want to shop.
And if you're lucky in, for example Hainan, it is being tried to the or the app is tied to the island's duty-free shopping and visa-free entry policy to create a frictionless vacation bubble.
So when you're there, when you're making the purchase, you do not have to study the policy of duty-free product, how to do it, how to get your money refund.
You just order in the app and use the functions on the app so that you enjoy the preferential policies in these places.
Another one of my favorite buttons on this app is the scrolls.
Uh speech translation, of course, language.
Yeah, you open it up and it's got.
So when you open up your typical uh messenger app, there'll be that little microphone button at the bottom.
They have it facing you.
But at the top of your screen there's another microphone button for the person that you're speaking to, so you can sit there, hold the phone, you.
You tap the talk button, it translates it into chinese.
They tap it and it translates it back to your language for you.
How convenient, wow.
To be honest, we have these kind of functions on many other apps as well.
But it's all in the same place.
Exactly.
That's the thing.
For foreign visitors, you can get everything that you need.
Well, hopefully everything you need for this one app.
But anything, especially from if we can stand in the shoes of a foreign visitor, anything you want the app to further improve, further improve.
Well, for me, as you scroll down, you'll see a top picks section and it has one is merchant offers, which is great, so you can get little coupons to different shops.
I guess the difficulty would be you have to locate those shops, but still the coupons are there for your.
No worries, because you've got your map option.
Scroll down.
Nihao China app user guide.
Very good information.
Thank you.
Simple guide to entering China.
Okay, if I get the app before I come, that is very, very useful.
That gives you airport information.
Communications guide in China.
That's great.
Then we scroll down to the bottom.
There's an article on Beijing roast duck okay cool, sounds delicious.
And then there's another one on the art of porcelain making okay great, i don't need a porcelain making article in my when i'm here for my 10-day vacation, but i understand the sentiment behind it.
But here's my recommendation for the app those types of culture articles.
You'll find those in the airplane when you're coming into china.
You know the thing?
In the, in the, The pamphlets.
Yeah.
No, the magazines.
They usually have magazines and they have those types of things.
So I don't necessarily need that in my app.
I need stuff that I can use while I'm here.
Tell me where to go.
Give me top tourist destinations in the city that I'm registered to.
That would be more useful.
You know.
Not badmouth the porcelain.
That's a very good suggestion, though.
But I've also noticed that there is an AI chatbot installed in this app.
So you can ask whatever questions you want to ask about traveling in China.
You can ask the smart assistant.
And that is very convenient, though.
I guess in the future, we can have a smarter chatbot, too. like, fix all of your problems.
And as a really good app, you need really good entertainment choices and materials as well.
You should have a button allows travelers to listen to Roundtable Livestream as well as the program.
No micro-shifting here.
And make sure that they can enjoy the show even after they're away or they finish their trip here in China.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you so much for being with us.
I'm Niu Henlin with Steve and Xinyu.
We'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.
