Who told you that 和 can only be use to connect nouns? I think its wrong. For example, I just want to do two things today, 吃 和 睡（eat and sleep). And 吃and 睡here is both verbs, and 和can still connect them. But most of the time, 和 is used to connect nouns. Do you know what i mean?=)

yes, 和 is always follow with nouns, when it works as "and" """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I wanted to say [go to China to travel and study]. If I used 学 instead, would my sentence have been OK? """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" go to China to travel and study 去中國旅游和學習（留學、念書、讀書、） you can't use 學 alone as study in this case. i hope your Q got cleared now. keep the good work go on...............

I made a notebook entry today with "...去中国旅游，也学习" in it. Most people corrected the 也 with 和. --- so called "most people" made a mistake So my question is, in my sentence are 旅游 and 学习 both acting as nouns [translate: go to China for travelling and studying]? --- no, they are verbs Otherwise, how to connect verbs? --- comma, 一边...一边... etc

I don't see anything wrong in grammar but it does seem unnatural. First, it's not exact that '和' can't be used to connect verbs. '和' can not be used to connect predicates. For example, we don't say 我看书和听歌. But in '我去中国旅游和学习(I will go to China for travel and study)', ‘旅游’ and '学习' are used as object after the invisible 'for', '去' is the predicate in the sentence. So, it's OK to use '和'. There are many ways to connect verbs. I can't explain clearly why '也' is not porper in the sentence because it does sound better if you use ‘学习汉语’ instead of ‘学习’......One reason is that this sub-clause is too short to be the end of the whole sentence.

If you used "学“ instead of "学习“, it would have been grammatically incorrect. "学“ must be followed by a noun while "学习“ needn't. "学“ and ”学习“ are interchangeable when they are used before a noun, though the former is far more common in speech. The reason that "和" can be used to join "旅游"and "学习" might be that "旅游和学习" is not really the predicate of your sentence as it follows "去中国". Here are some other examples: 我喜欢打球和看书. 你去刷锅和洗碗.