11 Days Culture and Nature Tour: Beijing Xian Guilin and Shanghai

Nihao, welcome to China! Arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport where you are met by your private CCT tour guide and driver, and transferred to Dhawa Jinshanling Hotel at the foot of the Great wall with fantastic views. Free at leisure at hotel and enjoy a quiet, exhilarating night.

• Hotels: Beijing Aman Summer Palace, Beijing Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel, Beijing Fairmont Hotel

Great Wall

After a sound sleep, get up very early and get in Jinshanling Great Wall on the mountaintop. Watch the sun rise slowly on this enormous ancient fortification structure, without being disturbed by anyone else. Just you and your family enjoy the tranquil and magic moment. Then you walk for a while on the wall to view the world emerging from the clouds and mist.

Get down and later be driven to the downtown Beijing. This afternoon, you ride a pedicab, a public vehicle widely used in Beijing in the early 19th Century, to tour hutong, where the old Beijing can still be found. Visit a quadrangle courtyard and meet a local artist to learn playing diabolo. It is a very traditional trick that Chinese acrobats perform and a fun game for kids. (Other activities such as Chinese paper-cutting and Peking Opera mask painting can also be learned and experienced)

Enjoy Beijing Roasted Duck for dinner, and your guide will explain to you the dinning etiquette (optional).

Want to view the Great Wall from the air? We can also arrange you the Badaling or Mutianyu Great Wall helicopter tour (10 to 30 minutes), which offers a majestic panorama view. And you can have those aerial pictures of the Great Wall.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Hutong rickshaw

our hotel is located right next to Summer Palace, with a secret VIP access to this royal garden of ancient China. It blends the royal dignity with the delicate and graceful design of classical garden. A boat cruise on Kunming Lake inside Summer Palace is sure to relax you and the children, and allows you to view Summer Palace from another angle.

Walking Tiananmen Square is like traveling through time. Here, in world’s biggest city square, China experienced great changes in history and began its new era since 1949. It also connects Forbidden City that allows you to travel back to the past between the 15th and 19th Century.

Learn China’s ancient imperial history when touring Forbidden City. Here the world’s best-kept ancient wooden royal palace complex was home to 24 emperors and their concubines, and is now converted to a big, bewitching ancient Chinese culture and art museum, named Palace Museum, with numerous precious collections and relics.

If you prefer, your guide will lead you to watch a fabulous Shaolin Kung Fu Show at night (optional).

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Forbidden City

Visit Temple of Heaven, a best example of ancient Chinese religious architecture. The once royal altar where the emperors worshiped gods is now a public park and a wonderful place for local dancing and Taiji enthusiasts. Your family will take a private Taiji boxing lesson from a master in front of the Temple of Heaven.

Fly from Beijing to Xian, one of China’s premier historic capitals, with many sites of the Silk Road.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,
• Hotels:

Private Tai Chi lesson

Today, you are going to visit one of world’s most legendary ancient tombs – the tomb of Terracotta Army – grand, mysterious and interesting. You will meet thousands of life-sized Terracotta warriors, along with their horses and chariots. The entire army was built over 2000 years ago to protect Emperor Qinshihuang after he died.

You may feel that you have crossed the time to return to the 3rd century BC of ancient China’s Qin Dynasty. And then at a traditional dwelling house, you exercise your hands to make a mini terracotta warrior yourself. The entire making process keeps the children focused, and finally they get themselves the unique Chinese souvenir.

Biking on the Old City Wall of Xian – the longest and most massive of its kind in China – is a very special experience and a fun activity in the outdoors. Bike through the ancient gate towers and view Xian’s modern urban landscape.   

Important notes: the family-friendly activities in Xian including mini terracotta warrior making and City Wall biking are not available in winter.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Xi'an City Wall Biking

This morning, enjoy a brisk walk on Muslim Quarter, the center of Xian’s Muslim community and known as one of the most famous food streets in China. Enjoy its lively atmosphere as well as the hundreds of varieties of foods and snacks.

Later tour Small Wild Goose Pagoda dating to 707, an iconic structure in Xian that was built due to the spread of Buddhism via the great Silk Road. Enjoy watching the interesting traditional Shadow Play and Puppet Show. The skilled artists control the colorful silhouette figures and wooden dolls carefully behind the theatrical stage, with the help of lamp and music, to tell your family Chinese myths and legends.

Want to experience the typical Chinese family life? Go visit a local family and join the friendly hosts to make dumplings, the most popular Chinese food. With the willful imagination, the kids can make various shapes of dumplings.

Fly from Xian to Guilin.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,
• Hotels: Guilin Shangri La Hotel, Jolie Vue Boutique Hotel Guilin, Sheraton Guilin

Chinese shadow puppet show

Today, cruise Li River to view the dramatic Karst scenery. This is the best section of Li River, surrounded with picturesque scenery that has inspired numerous painters and poets to create artist works ever since the ancient times. You and your kids can try to figure out what the limestone peaks on the shore look like, maybe a “horse” or “fingers”.

Join the locals to walk through the West Street, the town center of Yangshuo from the past till the date. It is especially favored by international travelers, thus named “Foreigners’ Street”.

This afternoon, delve into traditional Chinese art by taking a calligraphy class or a painting class or both. Learn to use brush and inkstick and the way to apply on paper. Appreciate the artistic beauty of Chinese characters and write them down yourself. Or get inspired by the mountainous beauty to create a Chinese landscape painting.

Enjoy Impression Liu Sanjie night show (optional).

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,
• Hotels: Alila Yangshuo, Yangshuo Banyan Tree Hotel, Yangshuo Mountain Retreat

Traditional Chinese Art Lesson

This morning, you’re going to be thrilled with a super cool helicopter tour (about 10 to 30 minutes depending on your preference). View a surreal world dotted with karst pinnacles, silky rivers and small villages, which takes your breath away – definitely one of the memorable ones.

Taking a bamboo rafting on Yulong River is a fun and relaxing experience for family. Yulong River is regarded as the epitome of Yangshuo’s Karst landscape and a paradise on earth. Sitting on the bamboo raft, you can take in unparalleled idyllic scenery. (Countryside biking is also available if it is not a perfect season for bamboo rafting.)

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Yanghuo Helicopter Tour

Further explore Yangshuo by bike and venture to the heart of countryside. Find yourself to be embraced by endless rural farmlands, orchards and limestone peaks. And bike on the small paths to visit the traditional villages and knock at a local family’s door, then you’ll be invited in and shared with the local genuine way of living. 

Wave goodbye to China’s countryside life and fly from Guilin to Shanghai.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,
• Hotels: Grand Hyatt Shanghai, Four Seasons Hotel Pudong Shanghai, Grand Central Hotel Shanghai

Yangshuo countryside biking

Today, experience both Shanghai’s charming traditional vibe and amazing modern spectacles. Visit Yu Garden, a classical Chinese garden with outstanding design and refined layout.

Ride a vintage sidecar zigging through the old streets and corners of Shanghai, where the locals still retain the traditional Shanghainese lifestyle. Continue the ride and come to the Bund to see the historical colonial architectures and the futuristic Pudong skyline form into a seamless, perfect whole.

Later feel amazed at the artistic world of M50 Creative Park, where there are various bold, peculiar and bizarre contraptions created by artists around the world.

Enjoy the best Shanghai acrobatics show with VIP seat (optional).

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Sidecar Ride

Relax at hotel, until your guide and driver pick you up, and transfer you to Shanghai Pudong International Airport for your flight back home. It is the end of your 11 days China family adventure tour.

• Meals: Breakfast,

Shanghai Pudong area