Terracotta Army

3d · Terracotta Army, City Wall, Muslim Quarter, the Wild Goose Pagodas.

7d · Seven days in Beijing and Xi'an at a pace that works for children: fewer sites per day, breaks built in, and activities with hands-on appeal — the Panda Base of the north and hands-on history at the Terracotta Army.

7d · The canonical first-time China loop: two days in imperial Beijing, one day in Xi'an for the Terracotta Army, and two days in Shanghai. Linked by HSR throughout.

7d · The first-time-traveller's loop: imperial Beijing, the Terracotta Army at Xi'an, Shanghai's skyline. Connected by overnight train or short HSR.

UNESCO · The walled city of Pingyao, inscribed by UNESCO in 1997, preserves the most complete example of Ming-Qing urban planning in China — its banking heritage, city wall, temples and courtyard residences forming a cohesive historical ensemble.

UNESCO · UNESCO-listed pair of Ming-Qing Huizhou merchant villages in southern Anhui, renowned for whitewashed walls, inky horsehead gables and moon-shaped ponds.

A seven-storey Ming Dynasty pagoda standing on the bank of the Yangtze River in Anqing, considered one of the finest riverside pagodas in southern China and long used as a navigation landmark by Yangtze river pilots.

UNESCO · UNESCO-listed archaeological site in Hangzhou preserving the remains of a 5,000-year-old city with a sophisticated water-management system, jade ritual culture and social hierarchy — regarded as one of the earliest state-level societies in East Asia.

UNESCO · UNESCO-listed capital cities and royal tombs of the Koguryo Kingdom in Jian, Jilin — the Chinese portion of a transnational heritage property shared with North Korea, representing one of the most powerful states of ancient East Asia.

UNESCO · UNESCO-listed collection of private gardens in Suzhou — four inscribed in 1997 and five more added in 2000 — representing the pinnacle of Chinese garden design through the refined integration of architecture, water, rock and plant.

Clusters of ancient stone watchtowers rising above Tibetan village complexes in the Dadu River valley, said to be among the oldest surviving examples of Tibetan defensive architecture.

Yuan-dynasty drum and bell towers that kept official time for imperial Beijing. Climbable; daily drum performances.

The walled city of Pingyao, inscribed by UNESCO in 1997, preserves the most complete example of Ming-Qing urban planning in China — its banking heritage, city wall, temples and courtyard residences forming a cohesive historical ensemble.

UNESCO-listed pair of Ming-Qing Huizhou merchant villages in southern Anhui, renowned for whitewashed walls, inky horsehead gables and moon-shaped ponds.

UNESCO-listed archaeological site in Hangzhou preserving the remains of a 5,000-year-old city with a sophisticated water-management system, jade ritual culture and social hierarchy — regarded as one of the earliest state-level societies in East Asia.

UNESCO Natural World Heritage site in Inner Mongolia — the third largest desert in China, featuring some of the world's tallest stationary dunes and a unique network of freshwater and saline lakes sustained by a still-unexplained subterranean water system.

UNESCO-listed capital cities and royal tombs of the Koguryo Kingdom in Jian, Jilin — the Chinese portion of a transnational heritage property shared with North Korea, representing one of the most powerful states of ancient East Asia.

UNESCO Natural World Heritage site — a serial property of six Danxia landscapes across six provinces, representing China's defining red-cliff-and-pillar sandstone landform type, including Danxia Mountain, Zhangye, Taining and Langshan.

UNESCO-listed collection of private gardens in Suzhou — four inscribed in 1997 and five more added in 2000 — representing the pinnacle of Chinese garden design through the refined integration of architecture, water, rock and plant.

UNESCO-listed Suzhou garden organised symmetrically around a central residence. Less crowded than the four most-visited gardens.

Blog · Xi'an was the capital of unified China for ~1,000 cumulative years across 13 dynasties. The Han and Tang peaks, the Qin layer (Terracotta Army), the Ming-walled city, and how the modern visit reveals each layer.