Book the Wall first. Then plan the rest.
Which Great Wall section is worth the drive. Why the Forbidden City wants your passport a week early. What a panda morning actually costs. Every tour in China, reviewed.
Four Great Walls. They are not the same day out.
All 480 Great Wall tours →
Mutianyu is restored, ninety minutes from Beijing, with a cable car up and a toboggan back down. Badaling is closest to the city and busiest with it. Jinshanling is a hike over unrestored towers. Pick the section, then pick the tour.
Mutianyu, cable car up, toboggan down
Restored battlements, twenty-two watchtowers and a chairlift that saves your knees for the walking. Most coaches leave central Beijing before eight and are back for dinner.
Badaling, with the Ming Tombs on the way
The section every state visit gets photographed on, an hour out of town and paired on most itineraries with the Ming Tombs or the Sacred Way. Go early or go on a weekday.
Jinshanling, unrestored and nearly empty
Two and a half hours from the city, then five or six kilometres of broken tower and ridge line with almost nobody on it. Proper shoes, not trainers.
Wall, palace, warriors, pandas.
The Great Wall out of Beijing, the Forbidden City on a timed ticket, the Terracotta Army an hour east of Xi’an and a panda morning in Chengdu. Then the hutongs and the canal towns that fill the days between.
Beijing’s Wall runs lead the whole country.
Every review →Great Wall coaches, Forbidden City entries and the Xi’an warrior runs take the top of the list by a distance. Here is what each one includes and what it costs.
1
Mutianyu Great Wall Tours with Options
Review of Beijing Mubus Mutianyu Great Wall tours, with direct transport, long Wall time, guides, lunch, hiking, and Summer Palace options.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Included
from $4
3
T-Square & Forbidden City Group or Private Tour
from $17
4
Mutianyu Great Wall Daily Tour with Ticket & Lunch
from $18
5
All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
from $128
6
MuBus: Mutianyu Great Wall ENG/ESP/RUS Guided Bus Tour
from $20
7
4-Hour Small Group Tour to Forbidden City with Entry Tickets
from $15
8
Tiananmen Square Registration Service(Ticket)
from $3
Beijing hands you the Wall, two palaces and the hutongs in one week.
Two imperial complexes inside the ring roads, a Wall an hour north, and a lane grid you can eat your way through after dark. The tickets that sell out are the ones inside the city, not the ones on the mountain.
Shanghai keeps its old town and its skyline thirty minutes apart.
Yu Garden’s rockeries and teahouse in the morning, the Bund at dusk with Pudong lit across the water, canal towns a bus ride west. The bullet train puts Suzhou and Hangzhou inside a single day.
Book these before you fly to China.
Most of the country can wait until you have landed and found the wifi. These cannot. They run on named-ticket releases, passport checks at the turnstile and a calendar that ignores your flight.
- 01Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedEntry is a dated, name-matched ticket and the daily quota goes early in summer. Bring the passport you booked with, and never plan it for a Monday.
- 02Mini Group Xian Day Tour to Terracotta Army, City Wall, Pagoda and Muslim BazaarTickets are sold against your passport number for a fixed date. In peak season the morning slots clear days ahead.
- 03Hong Kong Disneyland Park TicketsTickets are tied to one calendar date and priced by demand, so the cheap days disappear first.
- 04Full Day Private Tour to Harbin Ice and Snow FestivalThe ice city is built new each winter and melts in the spring. Roughly late December to late February, and that is the whole window.
Temple tickets to chartered days: what China costs.
Three price bands, and every tour on the site sits in one of them. A palace entry costs less than lunch. A car with an English-speaking driver holds the whole day.
Entry tickets, hutong walks, acrobatic seats and the airport runs. Most of a Beijing week sits in this band.
The classic day out: a Great Wall coach with lunch, a warriors run from Xi’an, a panda morning in Chengdu.
Private guides, a driver for the day, and the multi-day routes that cross a province between breakfasts.
Xi’an: the warriors before lunch, the city wall on a bike after it.
Eight thousand clay soldiers stand an hour east of town. Back inside the ramparts there are fourteen kilometres of Ming wall you can cycle as a loop, and the Muslim Quarter fires up its lamb skewers and flatbread once the light goes. Two days covers it comfortably, one long one covers it.
- 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
A panda before breakfast. A face that changes mid-turn.
Night markets and old temples run right across Asia. Bamboo-fed bears at feeding time, a Qing courtyard behind a grey lane wall and a Sichuan opera mask that switches colour in a single beat do not.
The Panda Morning
Chengdu’s breeding centres feed at dawn and the bears are properly awake for about two hours before the bamboo puts them back to sleep. Arriving at opening is the entire trick. The tours that leave the city before seven show you climbing pandas; the ones that leave at nine show you sleeping ones.
- 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 Hutong Courtyard
Beijing’s lane grid is older than the Forbidden City and most of it is still lived in. The doorways give the old ranks away: plain stone drums for a merchant, carved beams for an official. A guide gets you past the gate, and the food crawls are how most people end up inside one.
- 1Beijing Hutong Walking Food and Beer Tour at Hidden Restaurants★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,132 reviews
- 2Temple Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple, Hutong Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 319 reviews
- 3Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple, Hutong Tours★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
Face-Changing
Bian lian belongs to Sichuan opera. A performer turns, the silk mask is a different colour, and it happens again eight or nine times before the scene ends. The method is passed master to student and protected as a state secret, and the front row still cannot see how it is done.
- 1Sichuan Opera Shu Feng Yan Yun Evening Show Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 185 reviews
- 2Chengdu Sichuan Opera Show Ticket – Shu Feng Ya Yun★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 73 reviews
- 3Sichuan Opera Show Ticket – Shu Feng Ya Yun★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 30 reviews
The Bund lights up at seven and the acrobats start at eight.
Every evening out in China →
Aqua Luna: Evening Cruise at Victoria Harbour Hong Kong
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Beijing’s grey days are for hotpot, tea and the acrobats.
The north gets dust in spring and hard cold from November. Shanghai gets the plum rains through June. Every good answer is indoors: a copper hotpot, a courtyard tea house, a cooking class built around a market basket, and theatres that run the acrobatics every night of the year.
Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai: the route almost everyone takes first.
The Great WallBy city, starting where you land
Beijing1,077 tours
Shanghai194 tours
Xi’an77 tours
Hong Kong67 tours
Chengdu177 tours
Guilin & Yangshuo89 tours
Zhangjiajie29 tours- All of it, in one list →
By day out, when the city is already decided
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