China Itineraries
For a first trip of 8–12 days, the classic route is Beijing → Xi'an → Shanghai by high-speed rail: the imperial capital, the Terracotta Army, and modern China, with both train legs comfortable day rides. Build any longer route around three constraints: the holiday crowd calendar, the 15-day train booking window, and one region per week of travel time.
China is the size of Europe, and the most common itinerary mistake is treating it like one country-sized city break: six regions in ten days, most of them spent in transit. The routes below are sketches, not scripts — day-by-day versions are being written and will appear here as they're finished. The sketches are still enough to build a real trip around, because the hard part of China planning is structure, not detail.
The first-trip classic: Beijing → Xi'an → Shanghai
Eight to twelve days. Beijing for the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven (3–4 days); a high-speed train of about 4.5 hours to Xi'an for the Terracotta Army and the Ming city walls (2 days); then about 6 hours by rail to Shanghai for the Bund, the museums, and a day trip to the classical gardens of Suzhou (3–4 days). It works because every leg is a comfortable daytime train and every stop answers a different question about China — imperial, ancient, modern.
Route sketches by interest
- Karst and rice terraces (7–9 days): Guilin and the Li River, then the South China Karst landscapes — see the Landscapes hub for the full circuit.
- Pandas and mountains (6–8 days): Chengdu for the panda sanctuaries, the Leshan Giant Buddha and Mount Emei, and Jiuzhaigou's lakes in season.
- Cantonese food south (5–7 days): Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau — the Food hub maps the eating.
- High Tibet (7–10 days): Lhasa and the Potala Palace — requires a Tibet Travel Permit and a booked guide, so this is the one route to arrange through an agency.
The three constraints every route must respect
- The crowd calendar. Golden Week (October 1–7) and Chinese New Year reshape the whole country — check the crowd calendar before fixing dates.
- The booking window. Train sales open roughly 15 days out and holiday trains sell out in minutes — see how train booking works.
- One region per week. Two cities in a region beat four cities across the map; the high-speed rail network is fast, but airports, transfers, and hotel changes still consume half-days.
Before locking anything in, run through the travel tips — entry rules, payments, and connectivity are all things to solve before, not during, the trip.