The hardest thing about planning a first trip to China is not choosing between good destinations. It is accepting how few of them fit.
China is roughly the size of Europe or the continental United States. The high-speed rail network — the largest in the world — makes that far more tractable than it used to be, but a two-week trip still realistically holds three or four bases, not eight.
So this page is ordered by which trip you are on rather than by some abstract ranking.
A first trip: the classic three
These are the standard route for a reason, and on a first visit of ten to fourteen days there is not a strong argument against them.
Beijing — 3 to 4 days
The Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the hutongs, and the Great Wall an hour or two out of town. Beijing is where Chinese imperial history is legible at scale, and it is the one city that would be a mistake to skip on a first trip.
Xi’an — 2 days
The Terracotta Army, an intact Ming city wall you can cycle around, and the Muslim Quarter. Two days is right: one for the warriors, one for the city. It also sits conveniently on the rail line between Beijing and Chengdu.
Shanghai — 2 to 3 days
The counterweight to Beijing: the Bund, the concessions, the towers of Pudong, and the best food scene in the country. Shanghai is where you see what modern China decided to look like.
Add the water towns nearby — Zhujiajiao or Suzhou — for a day if you have one.
A first trip with more time: add one of these
With fourteen days you can add a fourth base, and this is where a trip stops resembling everyone else’s.
Guilin and Yangshuo — 4 days
The karst landscape on the back of the CNY 20 note: limestone peaks, the Li River, and rice fields you can cycle through. The strongest scenery in eastern China and the easiest to reach.
Chengdu — 3 to 4 days
Pandas at a serious conservation base, the best regional cooking in China, and a teahouse culture that slows a trip down. Also the gateway west, to Tibet and Yunnan.
Zhangjiajie — 3 days
Sandstone pillars rising out of cloud — the landscape that inspired the floating mountains in Avatar. Nothing else in China looks like it, and it is a park rather than a city, so it changes the texture of a trip.
A second trip: where it gets interesting
- Chongqing — a vertical river city built across cliffs, with a night skyline that has made it a social-media phenomenon. Two days.
- Hangzhou and Suzhou — West Lake and the classical gardens, an hour or less from Shanghai by train and easily combined. Three days for both.
- Yunnan — Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La: ethnic minority cultures, mountains and old towns. A trip of its own, a week minimum.
- Pingyao — a walled Ming and Qing merchant town that survived intact. One or two nights, and it is on the Beijing–Xi’an line.
- Harbin — worth going in January and not otherwise: the ice festival is one of the genuine spectacles of Asia.
A third trip, or a specialist one
- Tibet — Lhasa and the plateau. Requires a permit in addition to a visa, and the permit process is a real constraint rather than a formality.
- Zhangye Danxia — the striped rainbow mountains of Gansu, on the old Silk Road.
- Xiamen and Gulangyu — a coastal, colonial-era island, unlike the rest of the country.
- Huangshan — the Yellow Mountains, the granite peaks in a thousand Chinese paintings.
- Jiuzhaigou — turquoise lakes and travertine terraces in northern Sichuan.
How many days each destination needs
| Destination | Days | Trip |
|---|---|---|
| Beijing | 3 – 4 | First |
| Xi’an | 2 | First |
| Shanghai | 2 – 3 | First |
| Guilin & Yangshuo | 4 | First (with 14 days) |
| Chengdu | 3 – 4 | First (with 14 days) |
| Zhangjiajie | 3 | First or second |
| Hangzhou + Suzhou | 3 | Second |
| Chongqing | 2 | Second |
| Yunnan | 7 + | Second or third |
| Tibet | 7 +, permit required | Third |
The two mistakes that spoil first trips
Too many bases. Six cities in fourteen days means six hotel check-ins, six station transfers and six mornings lost to logistics. Four is the practical ceiling; three is better.
Ignoring the holiday calendar. Chinese New Year and National Day Golden Week (1–7 October) fill every train and every attraction in the country. See best time to visit China before fixing dates.
We publish destinations in depth rather than all at once, and we finish one before starting the next. The destinations page shows exactly which guides exist today and which are still planned — the counters are the real numbers.