Two schemes let foreign travelers in without a visa. The unilateral scheme gives 50 countries 30 days and asks nothing else. The transit scheme gives 55 nationalities ten days, but only against a ticket out to a third country. Both rulebooks sit on our visa-free entry to China page; this one builds the China visa free itinerary twice.
Both versions end on the same mountain. Moganshan is a bamboo mountain in Deqing County, Huzhou prefecture, Zhejiang Province, roughly 60 km north of Hangzhou and 63 to 80 minutes by direct train from Shanghai. Shanghai and Hangzhou both lie inside the visa-free zones, and so does the mountain.
Check the name first. The M50 art district on Moganshan Road, in Shanghai’s Putuo District, is a different place 200 km away that crowds the search results.
Which of the two trips is yours
| Trip A | Trip B | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it covers | The 50 unilateral countries (February 2026) | The 55 transit nationalities, including the US |
| How long you get | China visa free 30 days | Ten days, counted as 240 hours |
| Ticket condition | None | A confirmed flight to a third country |
| Your map | The whole mainland | 24 covered provinces and municipalities |
If both are open, take Trip A: 30 days beats ten, with no condition on your ticket.
The United States has never appeared on that list, so a Shanghai visa free trip on a US passport runs on the transit rule. Canada and the UK joined on 17 February 2026. We do not hold the other 54 transit nationalities, and will not guess.
They are not one trip at two lengths. Trip A is planned forward from your arrival. A 240 hour visa free China itinerary is planned backwards from the departure flight, which is a condition of your entry.
The numbers both trips are built on
Four measured facts time both plans.
| The leg | Time | How often | Second class fare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hongqiao (Shanghai) to Deqing | 63 to 80 minutes, direct | 13 a day | RMB 61 to 110 |
| Deqing to Hangzhou East, 35 km | 13 to 17 minutes | 16 a day | RMB 16 to 67 |
| Deqing station to the mountain | 30 to 40 minutes by road | Y1 shuttle, seven a day | RMB 10, or RMB 100 by taxi |
| Transfer centers: Yucun, Fatou, Houwu | Open 08:00 to 18:00 | All three | n/a |
Rail times, frequencies, fares and the transfer-center window, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
The bottom row surprises people. No private car drives inside the scenic area. You swap to authorized transport at a transfer center, and those close at six. English-language guides rarely print it, and it decides your train.
An 08:11 out of Hongqiao reaches Deqing at 09:19 and puts you on the hill by mid-morning. A 17:39 gets in at 18:42, after the centers have shut, and that is a night in the town. The Y1 also has nothing between 10:40 and 13:00. Timetables move, so check yours on getting here from Shanghai.
Trip A: the 30-day version
Trip A buys you slack. Thirty days is more than this corner of China needs, so the freedom matters more than the number. Even with a month, the mountain is worth two or three nights.
Twelve days:
| Day | Base | The day |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shanghai | Land. Pudong to Hongqiao is 50 to 70 minutes by car |
| 2 | Shanghai | City day. Book the day-5 train |
| 3 | Shanghai | City day |
| 4 | Shanghai | City day. Check your guesthouse registers foreign passports |
| 5 | Moganshan | Hongqiao to Deqing, then 30 to 40 minutes by road. Clear a transfer center by 18:00 |
| 6 | Moganshan | Sword Pond and the villa streets |
| 7 | Moganshan | A second village: Xiantan, Laoling or Houwu |
| 8 | Hangzhou | Deqing to Hangzhou East, 13 to 17 minutes |
| 9 | Hangzhou | City day |
| 10 | Hangzhou | City day. Xiaoshan is the airport here |
| 11 | Your choice | Anywhere in mainland China. No 24-province limit binds you |
| 12 | Out | Fly out on any routing, home included |
Shanghai comes first because Hongqiao is both a landing airport and the rail head for Deqing. Land at Xiaoshan and reverse it.
Day 11 is the row a transit traveler cannot copy. Where you spend it is your call, and the visa-free scheme puts no province off limits.
Trip B: the 240-hour version
Trip B runs the same trains on a shorter leash. Ten days reads as generous until you count it in hours, from the moment you are admitted. Day one goes mostly to the flight, day ten to reaching an airport.
Build it backwards from the departure, with the mountain in the middle, where a delay cannot reach your flight.
| Day | Clock, hours gone | Base | The move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 24 | Shanghai | Land. The count starts at the border |
| 2 | 48 | Shanghai | City day |
| 3 | 72 | Shanghai | City day |
| 4 | 96 | Moganshan | Hongqiao to Deqing, then 30 to 40 minutes by road |
| 5 | 120 | Moganshan | The one full day on the hill |
| 6 | 144 | Hangzhou | Deqing to Hangzhou East, 13 to 17 minutes |
| 7 | 168 | Hangzhou | City day |
| 8 | 192 | Hangzhou | City day |
| 9 | 216 | Airport city | Get to your departure airport |
| 10 | 240 | Out | Fly to a third country |
That clock column is our arithmetic on whole days, and assumes a daytime landing. Land at 22:00 and your first day is worth two hours, not 24.
Two nights on the mountain, three in each city, one day of slack. A third night up there costs you a city.
Day nine looks wasted. It is insurance. Do not spend it on Moganshan, which needs the road transfer and the 18:00 cutoff to behave on your worst day for a delay.
Your arrival airport matters more here than on Trip A. Our estimates:
| You land at | Door to door to the mountain | What it costs on the clock |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai Hongqiao | 2h45 to 3h30 | The baseline |
| Shanghai Pudong | 4h00 to 4h45 | Most of a working day each way |
The onward ticket is what breaks Trip B
All of that assumes one condition. The scheme wants a confirmed ticket to a third country. More trips fail there than anywhere else, and they fail at booking rather than the border.
| Routing | Does it qualify |
|---|---|
| Chicago to Shanghai and home to Chicago | No. The trip ends where it began |
| Chicago to Shanghai, then on to Seoul | Yes. Korea counts as the third country |
You also stay inside 24 provinces and municipalities. Shanghai is one, Zhejiang another, and both the mountain and Hangzhou are in Zhejiang. The trip crosses a single provincial line, and the scheme allows that crossing. It is what puts Moganshan inside a transit trip.
240-hour transit conditions and its effective date of 17 December 2024, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
What happens on 31 December 2026
One date sits under all of Trip A. The unilateral regime is legislated only to 31 December 2026. That was the whole legal position on 6 August 2026: no extension, nothing published to replace it. Trip A works up to that date, and not a day past it without a fresh check.
The list has only grown since 2023, so a lapse looks unlikely to us. Unlikely is not something you show at a border, so for 2027 dates ask a Chinese embassy first.
Country counts and the 31 December 2026 sunset on the unilateral scheme, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
What neither trip solves
Three things still go wrong.
| Still a problem | What to do about it |
|---|---|
| Paying for anything | Load a foreign card into Alipay or WeChat Pay before you fly, never in an airport queue. See money and payments |
| Rooms on holiday dates | High-end occupancy reached 94 percent across the May 2024 holiday. Book early |
| The scenic-area ticket | Prices conflict across sources, and winter is half price. Check at booking |
Beds here are mostly minsu (民宿), small owner-run guesthouses, about 1,000 of them in September 2025. No village has an evening economy, so dinner is wherever you sleep. Where to stay compares them.
Holiday occupancy, ticket prices and the evening economy, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
Other trip shapes sit on the itineraries hub, and the Moganshan overview covers the stop itself.
Rail times, transfer-center hours and both schemes checked 6 August 2026. Entry rules move without warning, and the 30-day scheme stops on 31 December 2026.
Last checked 8 August 2026 by Echo Peng. Prices, timetables and entry rules on this mountain move without notice, so confirm anything you are booking around.
Photographs on this site are representative illustrations, not documentary images of the specific building, property or service described.
