7-Day China Itinerary: Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai
The classic three-city route done honestly: what seven days actually buys you, which two bookings decide the whole trip, and the rail legs that make or break the schedule.
Seven days is not seven days.
If you fly in from Europe or North America, the arrival day is mostly immigration, baggage, an airport transfer and a shower. The departure day is a hotel checkout and a three-hour airport buffer. That leaves five usable days, and two of those contain a train ride. Every itinerary that promises you the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army, the Bund and a Yangtze cruise in a week is quietly borrowing hours it does not have.
This route is the standard one — Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai — because it works. The two rail legs are among the best-served in the country, the three cities cover genuinely different periods and moods, and you can enter at one end and leave at the other without backtracking. What follows is that route with the padding removed and the booking deadlines made explicit.
Who this route is wrong for
Skip it if you are coming for landscape. Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai are three dense urban environments with a lot of concrete between the highlights. If your mental image of China is limestone karsts, terraced rice or snow mountains, you want Guilin and Yangshuo or Yunnan, and you will need more than a week.
Skip it also if you are travelling with a child under five or anyone with limited mobility. This itinerary involves two intercity moves, three hotel check-ins and a lot of walking on stone. A two-city version — Beijing and Shanghai, four nights and two nights — covers most of the same ground with half the friction.
And if you are entering under visa-free transit, read the entry section before you commit. This route is compatible with the 240-hour policy, but only if you get one detail right.
The route
- Days 1–3, Beijing. Arrival, the imperial core, one Great Wall day.
- Day 4, Beijing → Xi'an. Morning train, afternoon in the walled city.
- Day 5, Xi'an. Terracotta Army in the morning, Muslim Quarter in the evening.
- Day 6, Xi'an → Shanghai. Train or flight, arrival evening on the Bund.
- Day 7, Shanghai. One district properly, then departure.
Reverse it if your flights are cheaper that way. Shanghai Pudong to Xi'an to Beijing works identically, and Beijing Capital and Daxing both have good long-haul departure options.
Days 1–3: Beijing
Day 1, arrival
Do not plan anything. Whatever you schedule, jet lag will win.
The one decision worth making in advance is the airport. Beijing has two: Capital (PEK) in the northeast and Daxing (PKX) to the south. They are roughly 80 km apart and there is no quick transfer between them. If your inbound and outbound are at different airports — which happens more often than people expect on separate tickets — you need to know that on day one, not day seven.
From Capital, the Airport Express to Sanyuanqiao or Dongzhimen connects to the metro and runs until around 22:30. From Daxing, the Daxing Airport Express runs to Caoqiao. Late arrivals should assume a taxi or DiDi instead; a delayed international flight clearing immigration at 23:00 will not make the last train.
Stay inside the second ring road, near Line 1, Line 2 or Line 6. Wangfujing, Qianmen and the Dongsi–Zhangzizhong corridor all put you within twenty minutes of the Forbidden City and within reach of Beijing West station for the Xi'an leg.
Day 2, the imperial core
Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park. On paper it is one day. In practice it is one long day, and the Forbidden City is where it can fall apart.
Book the Forbidden City before you fly. Tickets are released seven days ahead at around 20:00 Beijing time, and peak-season dates can clear in minutes. Standard admission is ¥60 from 1 April to 31 October and ¥40 from 1 November to 31 March. It is closed on Mondays outside statutory holidays — if your day 2 lands on a Monday, swap days 2 and 3 rather than trying to force it.
Booking is real-name and tied to your passport. Enter the passport number exactly as printed, including any letters, and carry the same physical passport you booked with. Some foreign visitors report being able to buy same-day at Donghua Gate with a passport, but treat that as a fallback and not a plan — it depends on daily capacity and is not something to build a schedule on.
Walk south to north through the palace and exit at the north gate. Cross the road into Jingshan Park and climb the hill. It takes fifteen minutes and gives you the only view that makes the scale of the place legible. Most people who say the Forbidden City was underwhelming did not do this.
If you still have energy, the Temple of Heaven is a separate ticket and a separate metro trip, and works better as an early morning on day 3 than as an exhausted afternoon here.
Day 3, the Great Wall
Treat this as a full day out of the city, not a half-day excursion.
The main sections used by visitors are Badaling (closest, most developed, has its own rail connection, busiest), Mutianyu (about 70 km northeast, cable car and toboggan, restored and comfortable), and Jinshanling (further out, partly unrestored, a real hike, thin crowds). Each needs a different amount of the day. Badaling can be done in five hours door to door. Jinshanling will eat ten.
For a first visit on a seven-day trip, Mutianyu is the sensible middle. The restored walkway is easy underfoot, the cable car removes the worst of the climb, and the crowd density is manageable outside Golden Week.
Whichever you choose, book a return car or a scheduled bus in advance and confirm the pickup time. The classic day-3 failure is getting to the wall easily and then spending two hours trying to leave.
Day 4: Beijing to Xi'an
The high-speed line runs from Beijing West to Xi'an North, roughly 1,216 km via Shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou. Journey times run about 4.5 to 6 hours depending on the service; the fastest G-trains do it in a little over four hours. There are around forty departures a day, so you are choosing a time rather than hoping for a seat.
Three things about Chinese rail that catch people out:
The booking window is short. Tickets on 12306 typically go on sale 15 days before departure. You cannot lock this leg in three months ahead the way you would a European train. Set a reminder.
Ticketing is real-name. The passport you book with is the passport that gets scanned at the gate. No nicknames, no shortened names, no second passport.
"Beijing" is not a station. Beijing has West, South, North, Beijing station and Fengtai. Xi'an has North and the old Xi'an station. Xi'an North is where the high-speed trains go, and it is about 12 km from the walled city on Metro Line 2. A ticket to the wrong station is a wasted afternoon.
Take a morning departure — something leaving between 08:00 and 09:30 gets you into Xi'an North in the early afternoon with the day still usable.
Xi'an, afternoon
Drop bags and walk the city wall. It is 13.7 km around, fully intact, and you can rent a bicycle on top. A full circuit takes about two hours by bike. If that sounds like a lot after a train ride, ride the south gate to the west gate section and come back down — you get the same view of the old grid without committing to the whole loop.
Stay inside the walls. Bell Tower, Nanmen and the Muslim Quarter are all walkable from each other, and it means you can eat late without worrying about the metro closing.
Day 5: The Terracotta Army
Go early. The site opens in the morning and the first two hours are meaningfully calmer than the rest of the day.
Tickets are released about seven days ahead on regular days and up to ten days ahead around public holidays. Book online rather than relying on the on-site window, which can be a long queue for a slot you may not want.
The museum is about 40 km east of the city. Options in rough order of hassle:
- Tourist bus from Xi'an railway station — cheapest, direct, but the area around the station is a known spot for unofficial buses that route you through a jade shop. Board only from the official stand.
- DiDi or taxi — around an hour each way, and easy to arrange a return.
- Metro Line 9 plus a connection — workable, slower.
Give it three to four hours. There are three pits and a bronze chariot hall, and the order matters: Pit 1 last, not first. Pits 2 and 3 are smaller and stranger, and seeing them after the famous view of Pit 1 makes them feel like leftovers.
Back in the city, spend the evening in the Muslim Quarter. It is touristed and it is still worth it. Roujiamo, biangbiang noodles, persimmon cakes, hand-pulled lamb. Cash is largely gone here — have Alipay or WeChat Pay working before you arrive rather than discovering the problem at a stall.
If you would rather trade the Muslim Quarter for something quieter, the Shaanxi History Museum is the best regional museum in the country and needs advance booking of its own.
Day 6: Xi'an to Shanghai
Two real options.
High-speed train. Xi'an North to Shanghai Hongqiao takes roughly six hours on the fastest services. It is comfortable, city centre to city centre, and there is no baggage drama. Second class on this route is fine; business class is a large price jump for a marginal gain.
Flight. About two and a half hours in the air, from Xi'an Xianyang to either Pudong or Hongqiao. Once you add the airport transfer at both ends, security and a realistic delay allowance, the door-to-door difference against the train is smaller than the timetable suggests — and Xi'an Xianyang is a long way out of town.
Take the train unless a flight is dramatically cheaper. Book a departure that lands you in Shanghai by late afternoon.
If you would rather break this leg, Luoyang sits directly on the Xi'an–Zhengzhou line and the Longmen Grottoes are a short ride from Luoyang Longmen station. It turns a six-hour ride into a two-night detour, which does not fit inside seven days — note it for a longer trip.
Shanghai, evening
Get to the Bund after dark. It is the one thing in this city that is exactly as advertised. Walk north to south along the promenade with Pudong across the water, then cut inland to the Rockbund area.
Stay in Puxi — the People's Square, Jing'an or former French Concession areas — unless your departure is from Pudong and you value the transfer over the atmosphere. Puxi is where the walking is.
Day 7: One district, then out
Do not try to see Shanghai. Pick one thing and do it properly.
- Former French Concession: plane trees, lane houses, Wukang Road, coffee. The most pleasant half-day walk in the city.
- Yu Garden and the old city: dense, ornamental, crowded, historically the most interesting.
- West Bund museums: modern, spacious, good if the weather is poor.
Then the airport. Pudong (PVG) handles most long-haul departures; Hongqiao (SHA) is mostly domestic and regional. Check your ticket rather than your memory — they are about 50 km apart. The Maglev from Longyang Road covers most of the run to Pudong in around eight minutes, but you still need to reach Longyang Road, so budget the whole chain and not just the headline number.
Three hours before an international departure. Two is optimistic on a Friday.
The two bookings that decide this trip
Everything else on this itinerary can be improvised. These cannot:
- Forbidden City — seven days ahead, 20:00 Beijing time, real-name, closed Mondays.
- Beijing–Xi'an rail — 15 days ahead on 12306, real-name, correct station.
The Terracotta Army is a close third. Everything after that is flexible.
The entry question — answer it before you book
Whether you need a visa for this trip depends on your nationality, passport type, purpose and route, not on the itinerary itself. Start with the entry checker and confirm against the National Immigration Administration.
One point specific to this route: if you are relying on 240-hour visa-free transit, all three of these cities sit inside the permitted area, and since December 2024 you may enter at one approved port and exit at a different one. But the policy still requires an onward ticket to a third country or region — not back to where you came from. A round trip from London to Beijing and home again does not qualify, no matter how short it is. A London–Beijing–Shanghai–Seoul routing does.
Seven days is 168 hours, comfortably inside the 240-hour window, so time is not your constraint here. Eligibility is.
What this itinerary leaves out, on purpose
No Yangtze cruise. No Zhangjiajie. No Chengdu pandas. No Hong Kong. Each of those is a two-to-three day commitment once you count the transport, and squeezing one in means cutting the Great Wall or the Terracotta Army — which defeats the point of choosing this route.
If you have ten days rather than seven, add Chengdu between Xi'an and Shanghai. The Xi'an North to Chengdu East high-speed run takes about three to four and a half hours, with the fastest service just over three hours, and Chengdu absorbs three days without effort.
If you have five days rather than seven, drop Xi'an. Beijing and Shanghai with a fast train between them is a genuinely good short trip. Xi'an compressed into a single night is not.
Official sources
- China Railway 12306, English site: https://www.12306.cn/en/
- Palace Museum official ticketing: https://gugong.ktmtech.cn/
- Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum: https://www.bmy.com.cn/
- National Immigration Administration, visa-free transit: https://en.nia.gov.cn/n147418/n147463/c183412/content.html
- National Immigration Administration, unilateral visa exemption: https://en.nia.gov.cn/n147418/n147463/c183390/content.html
Ticket prices, release windows and closure days change. Confirm each on the official channel for your actual dates before you book anything non-refundable.
Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.