Fourteen days across China’s greatest first-time hits — the Bund and the lanes of Shanghai, a Li River cruise off the 20-yuan note, Chongqing’s vertical city, the Terracotta Army in its pit, and the Great Wall above Beijing. Two flights, two bullet trains, a private guide and car in every city — all arranged, nothing rushed.
It opens with the most theatrical city in China. The Bund at dusk is a 1.5-kilometre curve of 1920s banking houses, and across the Huangpu the towers of Pudong switch on like a switchboard — your hotel stands between the two, in the restored 1910 Shanghai Club. Three nights give Shanghai room to breathe: Yu Garden’s Ming-dynasty rockeries, the plane-tree lanes of the old French Concession, a river cruise between colonial stone and glass.
Then the arc bends south and west. Two hours by air and the towers give way to the limestone karst of Guangxi — the landscape printed on every 20-yuan note — where you cruise the Li River’s classic stretch and sleep in a 1960s sugar mill on the water. A bullet train delivers you to Chongqing, the vertiginous city where the Yangtze meets the Jialing and monorails pass through apartment blocks. One more flight, and Xi’an: the walled capital of the Silk Road, where eight thousand terracotta soldiers have stood in formation since China was unified.
The finale is the one you came for. A high-speed rail line crosses the plains to Beijing, where four nights put you steps from the Forbidden City — the central axis walked as the emperors walked it, the Temple of Heaven at tai-chi hour, the hutongs by pedicab — and one ridge-line morning at Mutianyu, where the wall climbs over the hills and a toboggan run brings you down through the trees. Private guides and a private car in every city, five regional kitchens, and every transfer booked: the whole of first-time China, at a pace you set.
Shanghai to the Great Wall in one smooth line — two flights and two rail legs, booked, met and shepherded, so the logistics never fall on you.
Cruise the Li River’s classic stretch — Crown Cave, the Nine Horses Mural, the great bends at Xingping — then ride the Ten-Mile Gallery by bike past Moon Hill.
Mutianyu, not Badaling: beautifully restored, dramatic along its forested ridge and far quieter — reached by cable car, left by toboggan, timed around the coaches.
Soup dumplings in Shanghai, river fish in Guangxi, yin-yang hotpot in Chongqing, biangbiang noodles in Xi’an — and the trip closes, as it should, on lacquered Peking duck.
“Every city is a different China — and the road between them is arranged to the minute, so none of the journey is spent worrying about it.”
Where China opens
Days 1–3China opens with its most theatrical city — the floodlit banking houses of the Bund, the towers of Pudong across the river, and three nights to take both at walking pace.
Land at Pudong, where your guide and driver meet you before the baggage belt has started. The drive into town is the first sight of the trip: the ring of towers switching on as the city comes on shift. Your hotel is on the Bund itself — the restored 1910 Shanghai Club — and the evening is deliberately unplanned: an unhurried first walk along the waterfront, the 1920s facades floodlit on one side and the river on the other, dinner wherever the jet lag allows.
Day two is old Shanghai: the Ming-dynasty Yu Garden and its bazaar lanes early, then the former French Concession on foot — Wukang Mansion’s wedge silhouette, the cafés of Anfu Road, Tianzifang’s craft alleys — ending back on the Bund at golden hour, when the stone glows. Day three crosses the river: a supertall observation deck in Pudong, a Huangpu river cruise that slides between colonial stone and glass towers, then a slow afternoon through Xintiandi’s shikumen lanes and along Nanjing Road. The evening is free for a Jiangnan table — soup dumplings, red-braised pork, river shrimp.
The 20-yuan-note landscape
Days 4–5Trade the towers for a landscape off the 20-yuan note — two nights in karst country, in a 1960s sugar mill on the water.
A relaxed morning, then the two-hour flight south to Guilin. From the airport the road threads into Guangxi’s limestone country — peaks rising straight out of the fields like a scroll painting you can drive into. Yangshuo announces itself slowly: water buffalo at the road edge, the Li River widening, and the first view from your hotel — Alila Yangshuo, a preserved 1960s sugar mill rebuilt on the riverbank, its raw brick and cantilevered pool framed entirely by karst. The afternoon is for doing nothing at all.
The Li River at its quietest beats every boat. The cruise covers the classic stretch — Crown Cave, the Nine Horses Mural Hill, the great bends at Xingping — with lunch on board as the peaks march past. Ashore at Xingping you walk the old flagstone street, then trade water for wheels: the Ten-Mile Gallery by bicycle, past Moon Hill’s arch and the rice fields that back every postcard. For the calmest water of the whole trip: a bamboo raft on the quiet Yulong River in the morning, mist lifting off the water, nothing but cormorants and karst.
The strangest city in China
Days 6–7A bullet train swaps karst rivers for a city stacked on cliffs — two nights high above the two-rivers confluence.
The high-speed rail line runs about four and a half hours from Guilin, first-class, arriving in a city that seems built by a fault line. Chongqing stacks itself in vertical layers where the Yangtze meets the Jialing — roads on the twenty-second floor, elevators inside hills. Tonight is its best face: the illuminated stilt-house facades of Hongya Dong stacked above the river, and the neon canyons of Jiefangbei around the corner from your hotel — the Niccolo, a sky-lobby crown on top of the IFS tower.
Early at Ciqikou, the cobbled porcelain-port quarter, before the buses arrive and while the teahouses are pouring their first pots. Then the city’s party trick: the Liziba monorail, which threads through the middle of a residential tower — watched, like everything here, from a viewing platform the locals use. The veteran Yangtze cableway carries you across the river in a swinging gondola, the whole vertical city underneath. The evening closes as Chongqing must: a yin-yang hotpot, one side numbing-spicy, one side clear for the cautious, with the lights for company.
The buried army
Days 8–9One of China’s four great ancient capitals and the eastern anchor of the Silk Road — your base is a quiet garden hotel inside the Ming walls.
A short morning flight west, and the scenery turns to loess plains and city walls. Xi’an reveals itself best after dark: a lantern-lit food walk through the Muslim Quarter — roujiamo from a griddle that has been hot for decades, hand-pulled biangbiang noodles, lamb skewers eaten standing up — then up onto the floodlit Ming walls, intact for thirteen kilometres, walkable or rideable by rental bike in the evening cool.
Out to Lintong with the day ordered around the crowds: Pit 1 is at its best when the light comes low through the hangar roof and the ranks are still quiet. A licensed site guide walks you through Pits 1, 2 and 3 and the exquisite bronze chariots — every soldier’s face modelled on a real one, no two alike. Back inside the walls for a late lunch, then the Bell and Drum Towers and the Great Mosque, where Chinese eaves and courtyards do the work of minarets and domes, and the old quarter closes around you like a held breath.
The wall you came for
Days 10–11A bullet train north across the plains delivers you to the centre of the empire — four nights a short walk from the Forbidden City, and one ridge-line morning on the wall at Mutianyu. Day 10 is deliberately light: the four-and-a-half-hour first-class ride north with lunch on board, then an easy evening on the Wangfujing snack street or a first Peking duck near the hotel.
Mutianyu is the wall you came for: beautifully restored, dramatic along its forested ridge, and far quieter than Badaling ever is. A cable car lifts you to the ramparts; from there the wall is yours — watchtower to watchtower at your own pace, the ridge-line doing what walls do best, going on forever. The descent is the fun part: a toboggan run threading down through the trees, one car each, brakes optional. Lunch in the village below, and the drive back reaches the hotel by mid-afternoon — in time for a slow hour by the Forbidden City.
The centre of the empire
Day 12Start on Tiananmen Square and pass through the Meridian Gate into the Forbidden City’s central axis — the great halls of the outer court, the quieter inner palaces, the imperial garden at the north end: the sequence the emperors themselves moved along, across 72 hectares of it. Climb Jingshan’s artificial hill behind for the classic photograph — the sea of golden roofs below, the Drum Tower beyond — then ease off along Qianmen Street, its Republican-era shopfronts restored for a slow browse, and dinner wherever the day has taken you.
The gentler Beijing, then home
Days 13–14A softer, greener day after the imperial heavyweights — then one last easy morning before the airport run.
The round blue-roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the end of long cypress avenues, with locals at tai chi in the colonnades — Beijing at its most graceful hour. Then the grey-brick lanes around Houhai by pedicab, the Drum Tower at the end of the lake, courtyards and ping-pong tables in the alley shade. The evening closes the trip where every China trip should: a farewell Peking duck, lacquered and carved at the table. Optional for early birds: the lakeside Summer Palace in the morning.
A slow breakfast, a final wander around Wangfujing for gifts — the department stores are better than they look — and your driver runs you to the airport with room to spare. Fourteen days, five cities, two flights and two bullet trains: the Bund and the Huangpu, the karst rivers of Yangshuo, Chongqing’s cliffs, Xi’an’s buried army, and the Great Wall above Beijing — the full arc of first-time China behind you.
Flight and rail times are approximate and re-checked at booking. The order of sights flexes with weather, timed-entry slots and closing days, and each day is calibrated to your group — nothing repeats and nothing is retraced.
Fourteen days, one great line across China: Shanghai 3 nights → Yangshuo 2 → Chongqing 2 → Xi’an 2 → Beijing 4. Every transfer handled — met at every door with a private car and driver, in every city.
Both flights (Shanghai–Guilin, Chongqing–Xi’an) and both first-class rail legs (Guilin–Chongqing, Xi’an–Beijing) are booked on your behalf, with a private car and driver meeting you at every door. Economy flights and first-class rail as standard — upgrades on request.
A private journey — your party only, your dates, your pace. Best April to June and September to early November; runnable year-round with the days re-arranged.
Private guides and a car in every city, both flights and both rail legs, thirteen nights with breakfast and all entrance fees are part of the price — the full list is below.
A grande dame in the restored 1910 Shanghai Club; a sugar mill on the Li River; a sky-lobby crown above the two rivers; a garden hotel inside Xi’an’s walls; and Wangfujing’s quietest luxury, steps from the Forbidden City.
Walk out of the Waldorf onto the Bund, out of the MO into Wangfujing — and at Alila, the karst is the view from the pool. Position over polish-for-its-own-sake, every time.
Breakfast daily, taxes and service, twin or double as you prefer, and the bags handled while you are out. River-, wall- or roof-facing rooms are requested by name before you arrive.
Points or a favourite address in any city? Point us at it, we plan the days around your door, and that city’s nights come out of your quote — nothing else about the journey changes.
China’s major sites run on real-name, timed entry booked against your passport, and the Forbidden City and the Terracotta Army both cap their slots. Once your dates are fixed we book the whole sequence, hold the confirmations, and re-check every one of them the week you travel — you bring the passport and walk past the queue.
Museums close one day a week (usually Monday); if your dates land on it, we re-order the days and tell you before you book, never after.
For spring and autumn dates, 60–90 days ahead is comfortable — the wall-side rooms and the timed slots both go early. Shorter notice? Ask anyway: we hold a small allotment in all five cities and can usually move quickly.
Only eight days? Our Golden Ring is this route’s concentrated sibling — Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai. And our three days in Shanghai deepens the opening city on its own. Ask us and we will send the alternatives side by side, with the days that would come out or go in, and what each one costs.
April to June and September to early November are ideal: mild weather across all five cities and good light on the wall. The first week of October (Golden Week) is avoided wherever the calendar allows.
Gentle overall: city walking, one wall morning (cable car up, toboggan or cable car down) and stair-heavy palace and temple visits. Each day is calibrated to your group — no forced marches, ever.
Water and wipes ride in the car; a flask in cold months, shade and a long lunch in hot ones. Tell us about knees, hips and small legs in advance — the days bend around the answer, not the other way round.
The Bund, the wall’s watchtower stairs and long old-town lanes — broken-in walking shoes are the single best thing in the bag.
Five cities run from a southern river valley to a northern mountain ridge — fifteen degrees apart in the same week. A layer you can stash beats a coat you must carry.
The wall has no shade and the karst has its own weather — a hat, sunglasses and a compact umbrella cover almost every day of the year.
Every timed entry is matched to it by name — carry it, and leave the queueing to us.
A private car meets you at every stop in every city — pack for the morning, not for the day.
Refills ride on board, and hot water is what the country drinks — a thermos makes you local by day two.
Alipay or WeChat Pay set up before you land; we send a two-page guide with the booking. Cards work in hotels, cash almost nowhere.
Nothing starts before nine — no dawn calls, no rushed breakfast. We book each site's quietest slot instead, and let the day run at a civilised pace.
Shanghai to the Great Wall — all the icons, one arc, nothing rushed.
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