Beijing & Shanxi · Imperial Capital & Ancient Heartland – 10 Days 9 Nights

Arrive in Beijing and transfer to your hotel. Your guide meets you at arrivals — from here, everything is handled.

The rest of the day is yours to recover from the flight and settle in at your own pace. No sightseeing is scheduled. Tomorrow morning begins with Beijing’s imperial heart.

The morning opens at Tiananmen Square — the vast public plaza that has anchored Beijing’s political geography for six centuries — before entering the Forbidden City through its southern gate. The world’s largest surviving imperial palace complex unfolds across 72 hectares of vermillion walls, golden roofs, and ceremonial halls. A guided walk through the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony, and the Hall of Preserving Harmony traces the arc of imperial power across the Ming and Qing dynasties. Audio headsets keep the commentary clear in the crowds.

Lunch is a Huishang-style meal near the palace district. The afternoon shifts to Shichahai Lakes, where 800-year-old courtyard homes still line the waterfront and locals play chess on the sidewalk, then through Yandai Xiejie, one of Beijing’s oldest and most atmospheric slanting lanes. The day finishes along Qianmen Street and Dashilar Street — century-old shopfronts still selling silk, tea, and traditional medicine south of Tiananmen.

Dinner is Donglaishun lamb hotpot — Beijing’s most famous copper-pot hotpot restaurant, serving paper-thin sliced lamb since 1903.

The morning belongs to the Summer Palace, China’s largest imperial garden — 300 hectares of lake, hill, and the world’s longest painted corridor stretching 728 metres along the lakeshore. A guided walk through the Hall of Benevolent Longevity, Kunming Lake, and Longevity Hill traces the story of Empress Cixi, who famously diverted the imperial navy’s budget to rebuild the gardens.

After a Huaiyang-style lunch — the refined river cuisine of the Yangtze Delta — the afternoon continues to the Old Summer Palace, the once-opulent garden of gardens burned by Anglo-French forces in 1860. Walking through the stone column ruins and Western-style fountain remnants puts the Summer Palace in a sharper frame: one survived, the other did not.

A drive past the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube — the steel-lattice Olympic stadium and bubble-clad aquatics centre from 2008 — offers an exterior view of Beijing’s modern architectural chapter before returning to the hotel district.

Dinner is Peking duck, served in the classic Beijing style: crisp skin carved tableside, thin pancakes, scallion, and sweet bean sauce.

The morning belongs to the Yungang Grottoes — a UNESCO World Heritage site with 45 surviving cave chambers housing 51,000 carved figures and colossal Northern Wei Buddhas cut directly into a kilometre-long cliff face in the 5th century. The guide walks the key chambers including the Tanyao Five Caves and the Five Flower Caves, with context on the Gandharan artistic influences that shaped the earliest carvings before Chinese Buddhist aesthetics fully took hold.

From Datong, drive to Yingxian to see the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda of Fogong Temple — 67 metres tall, built in 1056, and held together entirely by interlocking timber joints without a single iron nail. Its “five visible, nine hidden” floor structure is one of the most studied puzzles in Chinese architectural history. A hands-on Bracket-Joint Workshop (*dougong*) lets guests try assembling the same locking system the pagoda’s builders used nearly a thousand years ago.

Dinner is a Northern Wei heritage banquet (*Beiwei Jiayan*). The evening continues into Yingxian’s old town night market — local snacks including Yingxian cold noodles (*liangfen*), braised beef knuckle (*niuyao*), and the gelatinous street bite known as *diliu* are all worth trying standing up.

Two of Shanxi’s most dramatic sites share the day. The Hanging Temple on Mount Heng clings to a sheer cliff some 60 metres above the ground — galleries, halls, and pavilions pinned to the rock face by wooden beams that have held for over 1,500 years. The structure fuses Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism under one impossible roof, and seeing it in person raises the obvious question: how, and why here.

Continue to Yanmen Pass, historically known as China’s First Pass — the great northern frontier barrier where Chinese armies defended against steppe incursions across centuries of dynastic warfare. The watchtowers and wide views into the grassland landscape put a different kind of weight on the journey.

The route continues south to Pingyao Ancient City, a UNESCO World Heritage walled town where the Ming-Qing merchant streetscape is preserved so completely it can feel like stepping into a different century. Check in at Pingyao Huiguan, a guild-hall courtyard inn inside the walled city.

Dinner is a Jinshang folk-music performance paired with Pingyao street-food specialties. A nighttime walk through Pingyao’s lantern-lit streets is a fine way to close the evening.

A full morning inside Pingyao Ancient City. Walk the 6.4-kilometre city wall circuit, explore the old county government compound — one of the best-preserved in China — and visit the Rishengchang Exchange Shop where China’s first private banking system was born in 1823. The merchant courtyards and guild buildings that line the streets tell the story of how Pingyao’s merchants became the wealthiest private financiers in the Qing empire.

Lunch is along Ming-Qing Heritage Street — small restaurants and stalls with menus that haven’t changed much in a century.

The afternoon continues to Guangsheng Temple, built on foundations dating to the Han dynasty and home to the Flying Rainbow Pagoda — a 13-storey glazed-tile tower covered in polychrome ceramic figures and considered one of the finest surviving ceramic pagodas in China. The Yuan-dynasty murals inside the Water God Temple are an important but easily overlooked part of the same complex. A hands-on Glazed Tile or Cloisonne Workshop (*liuli* or *diancui*) connects the decorative arts seen throughout the region’s temples with techniques still practised locally.

The evening arrives at Mount Yunqiu Yaodong Courtyard in Kangjiaping Village on Yunqiu Mountain. The Kangjiaping night market is worth a wander before settling in — stone-vaulted cave rooms built into a hillside village, warm in winter, cool in summer, and unlike any other accommodation on the route.

Yunqiu Mountain is a national 5A scenic area and a Daoist cultural mountain in southern Shanxi. The morning explores the Taerpo Ancient Village (*Taerpo Gucun*), a thousand-year-old settlement of stone and earth still inhabited by local families, and the 10,000-Year Ice Cave — a permafrost cavern where ancient ice formations persist year-round inside the mountain, even through Shanxi’s hot summers. A hands-on Flower-Bread or Plant-Dyeing Workshop — flower-bread shaping (*niehuamo*) is an intangible heritage craft passed down through Yunqiu’s villages, and plant dyeing (*zhiwuran*) uses natural pigments from the mountain’s vegetation.

Lunch is a Yunqiu wellness banquet (*Zhonghe Yangsheng Yan*), drawing on the mountain’s Daoist culinary traditions.

The afternoon continues south to the Hukou Waterfall — the second-largest waterfall in China and the only major falls on the Yellow River. The river narrows from 300 metres to 50 through a single rock chasm, forcing the full current into a roaring, mist-filled spectacle. The viewing platform puts you close enough to feel the spray. A donkey ride along the riverbank is a lighthearted included experience.

The night is spent at Chongning Castle Hotel in Lingshi — a Qing dynasty fortress dating to the Yongzheng reign, once part of the Wang Family Compound estate. Hot spring pools drawn from 1,900 metres underground are open throughout the evening — herb-infused, flower-bath, and mineral soaking pools. Alternatively, explore the castle grounds at night or stroll along the Wang Family Compound pedestrian street outside.

The Wang Family Compound — sometimes called the Folk Palace — covers 250,000 square metres of Qing dynasty merchant architecture, making it one of the largest private residential complexes ever built in China. The Red Gate Fort and High Family Cliff sections alone take most of a morning to walk properly. The carved brickwork, woodwork, and stonework across the compound’s facades represent a level of craft investment that becomes comprehensible only when you understand the scale of Shanxi merchant wealth at its peak.

The afternoon continues to Zhangbi Castle near Jiexiu — a Northern Dynasties-era fortified village built above a network of 1,400-year-old military tunnels that run beneath the entire settlement. The above-ground fabric is a mix of defensive walls, old temples, and inhabited historic lanes; the tunnels below are a reminder that Shanxi’s villages were designed not just for living but for surviving. A hands-on Glazed Tile or Cloisonne Workshop at the castle lets you try the decorative craft techniques that adorn temples and merchant estates across Shanxi.

From Jiexiu, board the high-speed rail back to Beijing — the modern contrast that closes the Shanxi arc, with the province’s full historical span compressed into one smooth return. Arrive in Beijing and transfer to your hotel for a final night in the capital.

After breakfast, transfer to Beijing Capital or Daxing International Airport for the onward international flight. The final morning is kept simple — no sightseeing is scheduled so the departure feels orderly rather than rushed.

If your flight allows extra time in the city, the guide can suggest nearby options. Otherwise, the journey ends here.