Xiaohongshu for inspiration and for how a place actually looks right now — it is a photo-and-video feed, so the language barrier mostly disappears. Meituan for the practical side: tickets, opening hours, ratings, and whether you can still get in today. Use the first to decide and the second to book. And for anything famous, assume you need to reserve in advance — several major sights now sell out days ahead.
Xiaohongshu — what it is good at
It began as a place to review things you bought from abroad and turned into the country's taste-making feed: photographs, short videos, and short notes about anywhere anyone has been. If you want to know what a lake looks like in October, which side of a mountain the light lands on in the morning, or whether a village is worth four hours in the car, this is where Chinese photographers answer that question — usually with pictures rather than prose.
That is why it suits photographers and video people especially well. Search the name of a place, look at the images, and check the dates on the posts: a lot of the value here is that it is recent, in a way that guidebooks are structurally unable to be.
Meituan — what it is good at
The same app that delivers your dinner also sells the tickets. Attractions, shows, boat rides, hot springs: they are listed with prices, opening hours, ratings and photographs, and you buy them in the app. For anything that needs a timed entry slot, this is the practical tool, and it will tell you plainly whether today is sold out.
Its review numbers behave like the restaurant ones — a ratings scale that punishes, and a review count that tells you whether the rating means anything. Use it exactly the way you would use Dianping for food.
The advance-booking reality
This is the single most useful thing on this page. China's famous sights now run on reservations, and the popular ones release tickets on a schedule and sell out fast — the busiest release on a fixed day each week, in a window of minutes. Turning up at the gate and expecting to buy a ticket is no longer a plan for the big names.
So for anything on your list that everyone else also has on their list: check the booking channel well before you go, find out when tickets are released, and set an alarm. Trip.com sells tickets for many of these in English, which is often the easiest route for a foreign visitor; Meituan is the local channel and sometimes has the earlier release. Either way, book early and treat a sold-out day as normal rather than a disaster.
Where the real answer often is
None of the above covers the plateau well, and that is the honest truth about my own region. The best thing to do in a valley in western Sichuan is often not listed anywhere — it is a road somebody told you about, a monastery with a festival on that week, a viewpoint ten minutes past where the map says to stop. That kind of information moves by word of mouth between people who drive it.
Which is what my route pages are for, and what I am for. Use the apps for the famous places and the logistics; ask me for the rest.
Questions I get on this one
Do I need an account for either of these?
Is Xiaohongshu in English?
How do I search if I do not know the Chinese name?
What about Douyin?
From planning routes here for years, and from watching guests research them. Booking rules and release schedules change often — this is the page in this cluster most worth re-checking before a trip. Related: finding a restaurant · when to come · all the apps · all essentials