CHINA
The Wall, the warriors, the skylines.
The Great Wall and the Forbidden City, Shanghai’s waterfront and Hong Kong’s harbour, the Terracotta Army, the Chengdu pandas and the karst rivers of Guilin. The tours worth your time, city by city.
Only in China
Three sights you’ll find nowhere else.
Tours, temples and night markets exist the world over. These three don’t. A sealed imperial city, a buried army of eight thousand, the last wild pandas on earth. Each one belongs to China alone, so build the rest of the trip around them.
In Beijing
The Forbidden City
Nine thousand rooms behind a moat in the middle of Beijing, sealed off from ordinary people for five centuries. Twenty-four emperors ruled from inside these walls. It is the largest palace complex ever built, and you walk straight through the heart of it.
- 1 Beijing: Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Included
- 2 All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
- 3 Beijing: Tian’anmen Square & Forbidden City W Optional Tours
Outside Xi'an
The Terracotta Army
Eight thousand clay soldiers, every face different, buried to guard the first emperor and lost for two thousand years until a farmer digging a well broke through in 1974. They are still being lifted out of the ground you stand over.
- 1 Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim Bazaar
- 2 Customized Private Day Tour of Terracotta Warriors and Xi’an
- 3 Xi’an: Exclusive Terracotta Army Tour & Local Family Lunch
In Sichuan
The Giant Pandas
Chengdu is the city built around them. At the breeding base on its northern edge, cubs tumble out of the trees at the morning feed. Pandas live wild in only a few Chinese mountain ranges, and nowhere else on earth.
- 1 Chengdu: Giant Panda Breeding Research Base Ticket
- 2 Half-Day Chengdu Cooking Class with a Local Market Visit
- 3 Tuktuk Food Tour Through Chengdu’s Local Eats
The first day
Begin where every China trip begins.
Beijing is where most first trips land, and this is the day the rest of the itinerary gets built around.
The classics
China’s Most Popular Tours
The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Victoria Harbour, the Terracotta Army. The days that book out first.
Pick your China
Which China are you here for?
It is less one country than several, stitched together by the world’s biggest train network. Most first trips follow a single thread. Here are the three that pull hardest.
The Great Wall
Six hundred years of wall, one morning to walk it.
The wall most people picture is the Ming-era stretch north of Beijing, rebuilt and walkable at Mutianyu and Badaling. Watchtowers ride the ridgelines as far as the haze. Take the cable car up, walk the battlements, ride a toboggan back down. Go at opening and you get the quiet hour before the buses arrive.
- 1 Mubus: Mutianyu Great Wall Bus Tour with Summer Palace Options
- 2 Beijing:Mutianyu Great Wall Private Trip with English Driver
- 3 Beijing: Mutianyu Great Wall Daily Tour with Ticket & Lunch
By city
China is too big for one trip.
Beijing for the Wall and the emperors. Shanghai for the skyline and the water towns. Xi’an for the buried army. Chengdu for the pandas. Hong Kong for the harbour. Guilin for the karst rivers.
By tour type
Or pick how you want to see it.
A private driver if you want the country to come to you. A city walk if you would rather get lost on foot. Harbour cruises, hutong food crawls, night markets, dawn on the Wall, and the rest.
Guilin & the Li River
The view on the back of the twenty.
Drift the Li River south of Guilin and the karst peaks line up the way they do on the twenty-yuan note. Bamboo rafts, cormorant fishermen working the shallows at dusk, rice terraces climbing the hills above Yangshuo. The oldest postcard in China, and it still looks exactly like this.
Explore Guilin & the Li River →Plan it
The classic first trip.
First time in China? The route almost everyone takes, linked by a few hours on the high-speed train. The Wall, the army and the skyline in about a week.
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