Everyone books the Wall first. Then the country opens up.
Which Mutianyu bus leaves early enough to beat the cable car queue. What a Forbidden City ticket costs once a guide is added to solve the booking. Whether the Terracotta Army earns a bullet train out of Beijing. Reviews of every tour you can book in China.
Mutianyu, the Forbidden City, an army under a field, a Shanghai back lane.
The four bookings a first trip to China is built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first day outMutianyu Great Wall Tours with OptionsThe bus leaves Beijing early and the cable car puts you on the parapet before the coaches arrive. Toboggan down if the queue allows.
02The morning in the palaceForbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedTickets are capped, sold days ahead and tied to your passport, which is why the guided version mostly exists to solve the booking.
03The day in XianTerracotta Army Ticket & Guided Bus Tour with OptionsThree excavated pits, thousands of soldiers, every face different. Take the entry with a guide or it reads as a field of broken clay.
04The evening in ShanghaiAuthentic Local Food Tour in Central ShanghaiDumpling windows and noodle counters in the lanes behind the Bund, with someone who knows which queue is the right one.
Mutianyu, Badaling, Jinshanling, Simatai: four completely different days on the Wall.
Nearly every visitor gets exactly one Wall day. The section you pick decides whether you spend it on a restored parapet with a cable car and a snack stand, or on a broken ridge with nobody else on it.
Beijing for the Wall, then wherever the fast train goes next.
The capital and its imperial sights, a river city that rebuilt itself in glass, the old Tang capital with an army buried outside it, a harbour that runs on ferries, the panda base at dawn, and the karst country on the Li. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
China from the water: canal towns, karst rivers, the Huangpu after dark.
An hour outside Shanghai the water towns still move by punt. In Guangxi the Li River runs between the limestone towers printed on the twenty-yuan note. And the Bund reads as a completely different city from mid-river at nine at night.
Beijing: the Wall on the first day, the palace on the second.
Everything in Beijing →
Two enormous sights that each want a whole day, and a city of grey lanes in between. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the capital.
Mutianyu, or one of the other sections
Mutianyu is the restored stretch with the chairlift and the toboggan, and it absorbs the crowd. Badaling is closer to Beijing and busier again. Jinshanling is broken, steep and nearly empty.
Getting into the Forbidden City
Entry is capped daily, sold online in advance and tied to the passport you booked with, which is why most people buy a guide simply to solve the booking. It shuts on Mondays.
Hutongs, once the coaches have gone
The grey lanes north of the lakes fill back up in the evening. Rickshaw, bicycle or on foot, ending at a courtyard kitchen with the beer already open on the table.
The days out most travellers to China actually book.
Every tour in China →These carry more travellers than anything else in the country. What each one costs, and why it keeps filling.
1
Mutianyu Great Wall Tours with Options
Travel from central Beijing to Mutianyu by air-conditioned coach with an English, Spanish, or Russian guide. Choose free exploration, a village buffet, a 30-minute architecture walk, a demanding 5-kilometer hike, an overnight villa, or a combined Summer Palace and Olympic Park tour.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Included
from $4
3
Mutianyu Great Wall Daily Tour with Ticket & Lunch
from $18
4
All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
from $128
5
4-Hour Small Group Tour to Forbidden City with Entry Tickets
from $15
6
Tiananmen Square Registration Service(Ticket)
from $3
7
Dolphin Cruise, Big Buddha & Lantau Island Tour
from $35
8
Ngong Ping 360: Cable Car Return Tickets & Combos
from $30
Shanghai is two cities, and the older one is an hour away by road.
The Bund and the Pudong towers take an evening. What people come home talking about is the canal town at Zhujiajiao, a night market in a lane behind Nanjing Road, and soup dumplings eaten standing up.
Every Shanghai day out →
Xi’an keeps an army buried in a field and a city wall you can cycle round.
Four and a half hours west of Beijing on the fast train. The pits are the reason to come. The Muslim Quarter after dark, lamb skewers and hand-pulled noodles under strip lights, is the reason people stay a second night.
- 1Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim Bazaarfrom $49
- 2Terracotta Army Mini Group or Private Tourfrom $36
- 3Xi’an Evening Food Tour by TukTukfrom $73
What a day out in China actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A surprising number of the best days in China come in under the price of the taxi to the airport.
Palace and temple entries, hutong walks, the Mutianyu bus and panda-base tickets.
The full-day standards: the Wall with lunch, the Terracotta Army, canal towns, harbour cruises.
A private car with a driver and a guide, multi-city bullet-train days, the Yangtze and the Tibet runs.
Three things that happen nowhere but China.
Old walls and mountain views turn up all over Asia. An eight-thousand-strong clay army, a research base full of giant pandas, and a glass walkway bolted across a sandstone canyon do not.
The Terracotta Warriors
A farmer digging a well in 1974 hit a head made of clay. Under the sheds outside Xian there are now three excavated pits holding thousands of soldiers, every face different and every one of them once painted. Pit One is the shot on the posters. Pit Three is the command post, takes ten minutes, and explains the other two.
- 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 Panda Base
The breeding centre on the northern edge of Chengdu keeps around a hundred and fifty giant pandas, and they are properly awake for about two hours after opening. Be at the gate for half past seven, go straight to the nursery, then work back through the enclosures as the coaches start arriving.
- 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 Glass Bridge
Three hundred metres of glass strung across the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, high enough that a good share of people cross it holding the handrail with both hands. The sandstone pillars in the park next door are the ones the floating mountains in Avatar were drawn from, which is why the queue exists at all.
- 12-Day Avatar Mountain, Glass Bridge, and Mt. Tianmen Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 216 reviews
- 22-Day Mini Group to Avatar Mountain, Glass Bridge and Mt. Tianmen★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 210 reviews
- 3Gulong Gorge Skywalk Glass Bridge and Waterfall View Private Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 103 reviews
Four Chinese bookings that will not wait.
Most of a China trip can be arranged the night before over a beer. These four run on passport-linked ticket caps, train timetables and a permit office, none of which take any interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedEntry is capped every day, sold online in advance and tied to the passport you booked with. In summer it goes days ahead, and the whole palace closes on Mondays.
- 02All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great WallThe square now runs on a registration slot booked ahead with a passport check at the gate. Turning up and joining a queue stopped being an option.
- 03Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim BazaarThe pits sit an hour outside Xian, and the fast trains into the city sell out around every public holiday. Fix the train first and the tour second.
- 04Tibet Tour 8 Days Lhasa to Everest Base Camp Small Group TourForeign visitors need a Tibet permit arranged through an operator before they travel. It takes weeks and there is no way to sort it on arrival.
Golden Week, and the fortnight when every sight in China is full.
The first week of October and the weeks around Chinese New Year move several hundred million people at once. Ticketed sights sell out, the trains go first, and the Wall gets genuinely difficult underfoot. The answer is indoors and after dark: a theatre, a museum, a market lane and a long table.
Four imperial sights in Beijing, and the order to take them in.
The Forbidden City wants a whole morning and a ticket bought days ahead. Tiananmen needs its own registration. The Summer Palace is a lake day with a boat on it. The Temple of Heaven takes an hour, best at dawn, when the park around it is full of people dancing.
By place — the cities the trains connect
By kind of day — wall, palace, river or table
Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai: the run almost everybody does first.
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