China For Curious Minds: Shanghai, Xi’an And Beijing – 10 Days

Start at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, where a huge scale model of the city shows how Shanghai has grown and where it is heading. It is a brilliant way for curious minds of every age to understand the place before stepping outside.

After lunch at a local restaurant, walk along Nanjing Road towards the Bund. Your guide points out landmark buildings from the 1920s and 1930s along the way, including the Grand Cinema, Art Deco hotels, the old General Post Office and the Bank of China building, and explains the trading history behind them.

Cross the Huangpu River to Lujiazui, the financial district of Pudong, where farmland has become a forest of skyscrapers within a few decades. Ride the lift up the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, for a view that turns the whole city into a map. Dinner is at a local restaurant.

Visit Yu Garden, a Ming dynasty classical garden with rockeries, ponds, zigzag bridges and pavilions. Your guide explains how Chinese gardens use walls, windows and water to make small spaces feel endless, a good puzzle for young travellers to spot as you go.

Drive by private car to Zhujiajiao, an old water town on the outskirts of Shanghai, and have lunch at a local restaurant.

Walk the canal-side lanes of Zhujiajiao, with its arched stone bridges, old shops and family workshops. A short boat ride on the canals, if you wish, shows how goods and people moved here for centuries. Return to the city for dinner at a local restaurant.

Take the flight to Xi’an, about two and a half hours. Your Xi’an guide meets you on arrival.

Visit the Drum Tower, a Ming dynasty tower in the centre of the old city. Then step into the Gao Family Courtyard, a restored Ming and Qing merchant mansion, for a calligraphy class, where you learn to hold the brush and write your first Chinese characters, and a traditional shadow puppet show.

Explore the Muslim Quarter, where Hui families have lived for centuries, and sample its street food as part of dinner: roujiamo flatbread, lamb skewers and sweet persimmon cakes.

Drive about an hour by private car to the Terracotta Army, the life-size soldiers buried to guard Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, more than two thousand years ago. Walk around the three pits and see the bronze chariots and horses in the museum, astonishingly detailed models made for the emperor’s journey into the afterlife.

Lunch is at a local restaurant near the site.

Join a workshop where a local craftsman shows how the warriors were made, and try modelling your own small terracotta figure to take home. Return to the city for dinner at a local restaurant.

Rent bicycles and ride along the top of the Ancient City Wall, built in the Ming dynasty and one of the best-preserved city walls in China. A full loop is around 14 kilometres, but you can ride as much as you like.

After lunch, visit the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, a Tang dynasty brick pagoda built to hold Buddhist scriptures, part of the Silk Roads UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Xi’an Museum beside it, with treasures from the many dynasties that ruled from this city.

At the Great Tang All Day Mall, a pedestrian street of Tang-style buildings, dress in flowing Tang dynasty costume and have your photos taken under the lanterns. Dinner is at a local restaurant.

Your driver takes you to the station for the high-speed train to Beijing, about four and a half hours. It is a good way to see the countryside change across northern China.

Lunch is at a local restaurant after you arrive.

Your Beijing guide meets you and takes you on a rickshaw tour through the hutongs, the narrow lanes of old courtyard houses where neighbours still chat on doorsteps. You may stop inside a family courtyard to see how people live. Dinner is at a local restaurant.

Walk across Tiananmen Square, one of the largest city squares in the world, and enter the Forbidden City, the palace of Ming and Qing emperors for almost five hundred years and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Your guide brings the court to life with stories of emperors, concubines and eunuchs.

Lunch is at a local restaurant.

Climb the hill in Jingshan Park behind the palace for a view over its golden roofs.

Dinner is Peking roast duck, carved at the table and wrapped in thin pancakes with spring onion and sweet sauce.

Head to the Temple of Heaven, where emperors once prayed for good harvests, and join local people for a tai chi lesson in the park.

Drive by private car to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, about an hour and a half. Ride the cable car up and walk between watchtowers on the ridge.

After lunch, ride the toboggan down a long metal slide from the wall, a favourite with children and adults alike. Return to Beijing for a farewell dinner at a local restaurant.

After breakfast, your guide and driver take you to the airport for your flight home.