Four days in Beijing, then a morning train and three in Xi’an. The fastest services from Beijing West to Xi’an North take four hours and ten minutes, which is a working morning rather than a travel day. Beijing first because its bookings are the hardest to get — the Forbidden City releases slots that vanish — and because ending in Xi’an puts the Terracotta Army on day six, with everything left in the last day inside the city wall.
At a glance
- Day 1Tiananmen Square → Forbidden City → Jingshan
- Day 2Great Wall at Mutianyu
- Day 3Temple of Heaven → Summer Palace
- Day 4Lama Temple → Shichahai → the hutong off Nanluoguxiang
- Day 5Morning train to Xi’an → City Wall by bike → Bell and Drum Towers
- Day 6Terracotta Army → Huaqing Palace
- Day 7Shaanxi History Museum → Muslim Quarter → Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Day 1
Through the Meridian Gate
Tiananmen Square → Forbidden City → Jingshan
Tiananmen Square is free but has its own booking and its own passport check, which surprises people who assumed they could just walk in; easiest taken early, on the way to the palace gate. The Forbidden City is the booking you make before you fly: closed Mondays, passport number required, peak slots gone early. Enter at the Meridian Gate in the south and leave by the north — it is a one-way walk of six centuries. Come out of the north gate and climb Jingshan, the hill directly behind it, for the whole plan of the palace laid out below you.
Day 2
The wall, and which section to pick
Great Wall at Mutianyu
A full day once you are there, roughly two hours from the centre each way. Pick Mutianyu over Badaling: it is restored, wooded, has a cable car up and a toboggan run down, and carries far fewer people than the section everyone has heard of. Go on a weekday if you can, and do not try to fit anything else into this day — the wall takes the whole of it and is worth the whole of it.
Day 3
An imperial garden, and the altar at six in the morning
Temple of Heaven → Summer Palace
The Temple of Heaven park fills from about six in the morning with people doing tai chi, dancing and playing instruments — the altar is the photograph, but the park is the reason to come early. Then the Summer Palace, which is an imperial lake and hillside park rather than a building to file through: at opening you can take a rowing boat out on Kunming Lake before the tour groups arrive, and the Long Corridor is worth walking the length of.
Day 4
Lanes, lakes and a working temple
Lama Temple → Shichahai → the hutong off Nanluoguxiang
The Lama Temple is a working Tibetan Buddhist monastery rather than a museum piece — incense is handed out at the gate and people are there to pray. An hour is enough, and it sits directly on metro lines 2 and 5. Then Shichahai: lakes, bars, and the hutong lanes running off them. Nanluoguxiang itself is a souvenir street now; the quiet alleys either side of it are what you came for, and they are free.
Day 5
The wall you can ride a bicycle along
Morning train to Xi’an → City Wall by bike → Bell and Drum Towers
Four hours and ten minutes on the fastest train. The Xi’an city wall is nearly fourteen kilometres of Ming rampart, unbroken all the way round and wide enough to cycle two abreast: ¥54 to go up and ¥45 for a bike, rented at the South Gate, which sits directly above Yongningmen metro station. An hour on top is the best hour in the city. Afterwards the Bell and Drum Towers stand two hundred metres apart at the centre the whole grid was laid out from — you reach the Bell Tower through the underground passage from the metro, because there is no crossing the traffic above.
Day 6
The army, and the palace at the foot of the mountain
Terracotta Army → Huaqing Palace
Three pits of life-size soldiers, found by farmers sinking a well in 1974 and still being excavated. Book seven days ahead — the passport you booked with is scanned at the gate — and give the site most of a morning. The same ticket covers the burial mound at Lishan Garden, a free shuttle away. Huaqing Palace is a stop back down the same road: a hot-spring retreat used by emperors from the Zhou to the Tang, and the setting for the 1936 arrest that turned the civil war. Do both on this one day, because they are out at Lintong, forty kilometres east.
Day 7
Back inside the wall: museum, quarter, pagoda
Shaanxi History Museum → Muslim Quarter → Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Everything today is inside the city wall. The Shaanxi History Museum is the best two hours you can spend on the Tang dynasty: free, real-name booked and capped, with slots released five days ahead at 17:00 Beijing time that go quickly. Then the Muslim Quarter, the Hui neighbourhood behind the Drum Tower — Beiyuanmen is the lantern-hung tourist street, while Xiyangshi and Dapiyuan running west off it are where the neighbourhood eats. Finish at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a seventh-century brick tower raised to hold the sutras Xuanzang carried back from India.
Eat like you mean it
- Peking duck and zhajiangmianDuck carved at the table into skin, meat and pancakes; the famous houses take bookings. Zhajiangmian is thick noodles under a salty bean-pork sauce with cucumber you stir through.
- Copper-pot lamb hotpotBeijing’s own: a charcoal chimney pot of plain broth, paper-thin lamb, sesame dip. Nothing like the Sichuan version.
- Roujiamo and biangbiang noodlesSlow-braised pork chopped into a flatbread that starts on a griddle. Biangbiang is one belt-wide noodle, slapped on the board, under chilli and scalding oil.
- Yangrou paomo and liangpiYou tear the bread into your own bowl, the smaller the better, and it comes back under mutton broth. Liangpi is the cold summer dish.
Where to stay
- Beijing: Dongcheng, inside the Second RingYou want the Forbidden City and the hutong lanes walkable, and the metro under both.
- Beijing: near Wangfujing or QianmenCentral, and the simplest place to be for a first trip and early-morning bookings.
- Xi’an: inside the city wallEverything on this route except the army is inside the wall, and the South Gate is a metro station.
Before you go
- Four bookings here take a passport number and release days ahead: Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Terracotta Army (7 days), Shaanxi History Museum (5 days, at 17:00 Beijing time).
- The Forbidden City and the Terracotta Army both scan the passport you booked with. Book in the name you are carrying.
- Mondays close the Forbidden City. Do not put it on the first day of a trip that starts on a Monday.
- For the wall, choose Mutianyu over Badaling — fewer crowds, far better views, cable car up and toboggan down.
- The fastest Beijing–Xi’an trains take four hours and ten minutes; slower ones run to nearly six, so check the time before you plan the day around it.
One honest thing — This route has more bookings than any other on the site, and most of them are real-name: the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Terracotta Army and the Shaanxi History Museum all take a passport number and all release their slots days ahead. Book before you fly, not on the morning. One gap worth naming: the Tang Paradise night district and the Huaqing evening performance, both standard on Xi’an itineraries, have no entries on this site.
