How many days do you need in China?
Nine days. That is the length of the itinerary we built for China, across Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai.
Here is what each day holds. Every stop below carries its time, and every gap says how to get to the next stop, with the walk or drive time wherever both stops are mapped.
China · 9 days Beijing → Xi’an → Shanghai
Best time: September to October is the sweet spot: clear, dry, golden.
Beijing: Forbidden CityDay 1
🏛️9:00 AMForbidden City
980 buildings and 24 emperors behind ten-meter walls. Real-name tickets (passport required) are released seven days ahead at 8 PM Beijing time and sell out fast; closed Mondays. Enter at the Meridian Gate and exit north.
🚶 ~22 min · 🚗 ~3 min · 0.8 mi
🖼️1:30 PMNational Museum of China
One of the world’s most visited museums, free on Tiananmen Square’s east flank, ritual bronzes, jade burial suits, and 5,000 years in chronological order. Reserve with your passport.
🚗 ~8 min · 2.2 mi
🌆6:00 PMNanluoguxiang and the Houhai hutongs
The lake-and-lane quarter of old Beijing, best in the evening, when lanterns come on around Houhai and locals ballroom-dance on the banks.
Beijing: Great Wall at MutianyuDay 2
🏛️9:00 AMGreat Wall at Mutianyu
A restored Ming stretch 70 km northeast, its crenellated towers riding forested ridges, cable car up, toboggan down, and far thinner crowds than Badaling. Leave at nine and you are back in the city by early afternoon.
🚗 day trip · 36 mi
🥾1:30 PMJingshan Park
The artificial hill piled from the palace moat’s spoil, five pavilions and the definitive overhead view of the Forbidden City’s golden roofs.
🚶 ~29 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.1 mi
🎟️6:00 PMHutong evening food walk
A guided graze through the lanes: jianbing, zhajiangmian, Peking duck done properly, with the etiquette and history you cannot taste on your own.
Beijing: Temple of HeavenDay 3
🏛️9:00 AMTemple of Heaven
The triple-roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, built without a single nail, where emperors bargained with heaven for the rice crop. Come early for the park’s tai chi and ribbon dancers.
🚗 ~15 min · 4.3 mi
🖼️1:30 PMCapital Museum
Beijing’s own story told well, hutong life, opera, and courtyard rituals in a striking modern building. Free with reservation and rarely crowded.
🚗 ~11 min · 3.2 mi
🌆6:00 PMQianmen and Dashilar
The Ming-era shopping streets south of Tiananmen, restored century-old facades and all: silk, tea, and cloth-shoe shops that have traded for generations.
Beijing: Summer PalaceDay 4
🏛️9:00 AMSummer Palace
The Qing court’s lakeside retreat, the 728-meter painted Long Corridor, Kunming Lake full of dragon boats, and Empress Dowager Cixi’s marble boat folly.
🚗 ~27 min · 7.6 mi
🥾1:30 PMBeihai Park
An imperial lake garden a millennium old, with the white Tibetan-style dagoba on its island, rent a pedal boat like the locals.
🚗 ~8 min · 2.2 mi
🎟️6:00 PMPeking opera or acrobatics evening show
An hour of painted faces and falsetto, or plate-spinning defiance of physics, either is a fine window on performance traditions the city has staged for centuries.
Arrive in Xi’anDay 5
🚄8:30 AMHigh-speed rail to Xi’an
Beijing West to Xi’an North in about 4.5 hours on G-class trains (fastest around 4h10), running many times a day at up to 350 km/h. Book with your passport a few days ahead.
🚄 ~4h30 · 566 mi
🏛️2:00 PMXi’an City Wall
The most complete city wall in China, a 14-kilometer Ming rectangle, 12 meters high and wide enough to cycle. Rent a bicycle on top at the South Gate and ride the full loop in two unhurried hours; late-afternoon light is best.
🚶 ~29 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.1 mi
🌆6:00 PMMuslim Quarter
The Hui community’s lantern-lit warren behind the Drum Tower, lamb skewers, biangbiang noodles, and persimmon cakes from stalls run by the same families for generations. Peak Xi’an after dark.
Xi’an: Terracotta ArmyDay 6
🏛️9:00 AMTerracotta Army
Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s 8,000-strong buried garrison, every face different, guarding his tomb since 210 BC, about an hour east of the city. Book the official timed ticket, go out in the morning, and see Pits 2 and 3 before the crowds pack Pit 1.
🚗 ~76 min · 22 mi
🖼️1:30 PMShaanxi History Museum
One of China’s great museums, Tang gold, Silk Road treasure, and the context for everything at the pits. Free timed tickets vanish days ahead; book the moment your dates fix.
🚶 ~32 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.2 mi
🎟️6:00 PMTang-dynasty dinner show
Xi’an’s signature evening: a dumpling banquet of a dozen-plus shapes followed by a costumed music-and-dance recreation of the Tang court at its height.
Arrive in ShanghaiDay 7
🚄8:30 AMHigh-speed rail to Shanghai
Xi’an North to Shanghai Hongqiao in 5½ to 6 hours direct, or fly in 2 hours if you would rather trade legroom for time. The train lands you straight on the metro; no airport transfers.
🚄 ~6h · 757 mi
🏛️2:00 PMThe Bund
The colonial banking front, 52 stone facades, most raised in the 1920s and 30s, facing Pudong’s towers across the Huangpu. Walk it twice: once by day, once after dark when both skylines switch on.
🚗 ~14 min · 3.9 mi
🌆6:00 PMFormer French Concession
Plane-tree avenues, 1920s villas, and Wukang Road’s café crowd, the best aimless-walking neighborhood in urban China.
Shanghai: Yu Garden and the Old TownDay 8
🏛️9:00 AMYu Garden and the Old Town
A Ming official’s classical garden of rockeries, carp ponds, and zigzag bridges, wrapped in the old town’s temple bazaar. Be at the gate at opening; by mid-morning the lanes are shoulder to shoulder.
🚶 ~27 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.0 mi
🖼️1:30 PMShanghai Museum
China’s finest classical collection: bronzes, ceramics, and literati painting, free with a reservation, split between People’s Square and the new East building in Pudong.
🚶 ~34 min · 🚗 ~4 min · 1.2 mi
🎟️6:00 PMHuangpu River night cruise
The Bund’s stone canyon on one bank, Pudong’s light show on the other, fifty minutes on the water is the definitive Shanghai postcard.
Shanghai: Shanghai Tower observation deckDay 9
🏛️9:00 AMShanghai Tower observation deck
China’s tallest building and the world’s third-tallest at 632 meters, with an observatory on the 118th floor reached by some of the fastest elevators ever built. Go on a clear day, obviously.
🚗 ~18 min · 5.2 mi
🥾1:30 PMWest Bund riverside
Kilometers of post-industrial Huangpu waterfront turned promenade, climbing walls, skate ramps, and art spaces in converted aircraft factories.
🚗 ~12 min · 3.5 mi
🌆6:00 PMXintiandi
Shikumen stone-gate lanehouses rebuilt as an open-air dining quarter: polished, yes, but the place to understand the housing style most of old Shanghai lived in.
This is how Petrel lays out a trip. Upload your own confirmations and it builds this for your dates: flights and hotels included, with live flight status and the travel time between stops.
This is one of 126 free itineraries. Open it, change anything you want, and it becomes your trip.