Everyone starts at the Great Wall. China is the eight days after it.
Which wall is worth the drive out of Beijing, what the Forbidden City costs once your passport is registered, and whether Xi’an is a day or a stopover.
Five bookings a first trip through China is built around.
01The wall dayMutianyu Great Wall Daily Tour with Ticket & LunchMutianyu, restored battlements, cable car up and a toboggan down. Ticket and lunch included.
02The first morningForbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedInto the Forbidden City on a timed pass, before the courtyards fill.
03The Xi'an dayMini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim BazaarThe Terracotta Army, the city wall and the Muslim Quarter in one small-group run.
04Dinner in ShanghaiAuthentic Local Food Tour in Central ShanghaiBack lanes off the main road, five or six stops, nothing on an English menu.
05The Hong Kong dayDolphin Cruise, Big Buddha & Lantau Island TourOut of the towers to Lantau: the Big Buddha, then the stilt houses at Tai O.
Four ways onto the Great Wall, and they are not the same day out.
Every section is two hours from Beijing and every one of them sells a different afternoon. Restored and easy, crowded and close, or a ridge of broken towers with nobody on it.
Beijing, then a train south, then whichever river you fancy.
The imperial capital, a skyline built in thirty years, an army buried for two thousand, a harbour, a panda base and a stretch of karst river. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Beijing keeps six emperors’ worth of walls, and they all take tickets.
The palace, the altar the emperor prayed at for a good harvest, a lake with a marble boat on it and the square in between. Book them by name and passport, days ahead, or queue for what is left.
- 1T-Square & Forbidden City Group or Private Tourfrom $17
- 2All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wallfrom $128
- 34-Hour Small Group Tour to Forbidden City with Entry Ticketsfrom $15
The days out more travellers book than anything else in China.
Every Chinese tour we have reviewed →Ordered by how many people take them, with what each costs and why it earns the slot.
1
Mutianyu Great Wall Tours with Options
Join Beijing Mubus for an 8 to 10 hour Mutianyu Great Wall trip from central Beijing. Ride a direct coach, spend about four to five hours at the Wall, and choose from free exploration, a buffet lunch, a 30-minute architecture talk, a demanding 5-kilometer hike, an overnight villa, or a Summer Palace add-on. English, Spanish, and Russian guides are available.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
MuBus: Mutianyu Great Wall ENG/ESP/RUS Guided Bus Tour
from $20
3
Ngong Ping 360: Cable Car Return Tickets & Combos
from $30
4
Lantau Island Day Trip – Big Buddha & Tai O
from $48
5
Tianmen Square, Forbidden City & Royal Museum Tours
from $4
6
The Temple of Heaven or Summer Palace Entry Ticket
from $7
7
Beijing Forbidden City Ticket Booking (Optional: guide service)
from $9
8
Beijing Hutong Walking Food and Beer Tour at Hidden Restaurants
from $80
9
Zhujiajiao Water Town and Shanghai City Private Day Tour
from $246
China eats late, loudly, and nowhere near the hotel.
Dumplings folded in front of you in a Beijing courtyard, a Shanghai lane where nothing is written in English, skewers under the Xi’an bell tower at eleven at night. Eat where the queue is local.
Every food tour in China →
What China charges for a day out.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good share of the best Chinese days come in under the price of a taxi to the airport.
Palace and temple tickets, hutong walks, tea houses and the bus runs out to the wall.
The full days: Mutianyu with lunch, the Terracotta Army out of Xi’an, a river cruise and dinner.
Private drivers, multi-city runs by bullet train and the guided days that skip every queue.
Three things China has and nowhere else does.
Old towns and mountain temples exist all over Asia. An army buried by an emperor, a bear that eats nothing but bamboo, and a river running between two hundred limestone towers do not.
The Terracotta Army
A farmer digging a well east of Xi’an hit a clay head in 1974. Under the field stood thousands of soldiers in battle order, each face modelled separately, built to guard the first emperor after death. Three pits are open; the first is the one everybody photographs, the third is the command post and takes ten minutes. Go early, because the coaches from the city all arrive together.
- 1Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim Bazaar★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,320 reviews
- 2Terracotta Army Mini Group or Private Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 926 reviews
- 3Terracotta Army Ticket & Guided Bus Tour with Options★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 579 reviews
The Chengdu Pandas
The breeding base north of Chengdu holds the largest group of giant pandas anyone can walk in and see. They are fed soon after the gates open and they are awake for it; by late morning the enclosures are mostly sleeping bears in trees. Red pandas share the same paths and are active far longer. The base is big, the paths are hilly, and the buggy is worth the fare.
- 1Giant Panda Breeding Research Base Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 580 reviews
- 2The Beijing Zoo Entry Ticket with Pandas★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 368 reviews
- 3Private Half-Day Chengdu Panda Breeding Center Tour with Optional Volunteer★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 353 reviews
The Li River Karst
Between Guilin and Yangshuo the river winds for eighty kilometres past limestone towers that rise straight out of the paddy fields. The stretch at Xingping is the one printed on the twenty-yuan note. Big boats run the full cruise in four hours; bamboo rafts cover the best half in one, and get close enough to the water buffalo to hear them.
- 11 Day Li River Cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo with Private Guide & Driver★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 148 reviews
- 2Li River Cruise with Transfer to Yangshuo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 89 reviews
- 34 Star Luxury Li River Cruise with Buffet Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 80 reviews
Four Chinese bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of a Chinese trip can be arranged the night before from a phone. These four run on passport-name ticketing, daily caps, feeding times and the last cable car down.
- 01Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedTickets are sold by name against your passport, capped each day, and the palace closes on Mondays. There is no gate queue to join if you missed it.
- 02Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim BazaarThe pits are an hour out of Xi’an and the small-group seats go before the entry tickets do. Afternoon arrivals share the first pit with every coach in the city.
- 03Giant Panda Breeding Research Base TicketThe pandas are fed shortly after the base opens and stay awake for it. Arrive at eleven and you are looking at sleeping bears in trees.
- 04Two Rivers Night Cruise- Yangtze & Jialing RiversThe ships sail to a fixed calendar between Chongqing and Yichang, two or three nights at a time, and there is nothing else going downriver that week.
Beijing hits thirty-eight degrees and every queue is outdoors.
July and August do two things to a Chinese itinerary. Open courtyards become unwalkable by mid-morning, and the summer holiday puts the whole country in the same ticket queue as you. Both have one answer: start at dawn, then get under a roof for the middle of the day.
By city — north, coast and the south-west
By kind of day — wall, palace, river or kitchen
Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, Guilin, Shanghai: the order the trains make sense in.
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