Forbidden City, Beijing
Arrive in Beijing and transfer to the stylish 5* Grand Hotel and stay in rooms overlooking the rooftops of the Forbidden City for a four nights. Meet your fellow travellers at a welcome dinner.
This morning head for Tiananmen Square, a vast, modern expanse overlooked by the mausoleum of Chairman Mao, the Monument to the People’s Heroes, theGreat Hall of the People and the National Museum of China. Explore the Forbidden City and some of its thousands of halls, courtyards and pavilions of the imperial palace that were home to the Emperors of China until the last was evicted in 1924. Afterwards, stroll around Jingshan Park, once part of the palace gardens and beautifully laidout with pavilions, fruit trees and flowers. Finally, visit the manicured gardens of the Summer Palace outside the city, created by an ambitious minister to curry favour with the Empress Cixi with money intended for the navy.
Today drive out of the city to a less-crowded section of the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu. Here, the wall winds across jagged mountain tops, and you can walk along a well-restored section for about a mile and a half, passing watchtowers and battlements, admiring the rugged scenery.
Visit the Temple of Heaven, its circular main building representing heaven, its pillars representing the months, hours and seasons, and rectangles symbolising Earth. Drive to an industrial suburb of Beijing, to a 1950s electronics factory that has been transformed into a contemporary artistic and cultural centre. This is 798 Art Zone where avant garde Chinese artists can exhibit their work, and the factory works very well for this purpose, with plenty of north light and a huge indoor space, complete with Maoist slogans on the walls – a fascinating contrast to the ancient imperial sights of Beijing.
Take the fast train to Shanghai, a comfortable journey of around five and a half hours in first class seats. Stay three nights at 5* Grand Central Hotel, the famouse Nanjing Road and the Bund are just a short stroll from the hotel.
Visit the superb Shanghai Museum, a striking modern building showcasing centuries of Chinese civilisation – precious ceramics, bronzes, rare jade sculptures, exquisite calligraphy, traditional folk costumes and furniture. Later, stroll through the 400-year-old Yuyuan Garden, with its elegantly landscaped ponds and pavilions, rockeries and statues that provide an oasis of tranquility and beauty. Visit Jade Buddha Temple whose two jade statues were carried all the way from Burma by Chinese monks on their backs.
Enjoy a day trip to Hangzhou, with a romantic cruise on the scenic West Lake, its banks dotted with temples, pagodas, pavilions and gardens. Visit a traditional pharmacy where you can learn more about Chinese medicine by viewing the exhibits in its museum and the demonstrations in the preparation hall, and also seek advice if you wish in what was considered the best pharmacy of the Qing era and which is certainly one of the finest buildings in Hangzhou. Also visit the extravagant manor house created by the founder of the pharmacy who filled his villa with exquisitely carved furniture and works of art. In the historic old town shop for silk, tea, hand-made fans and scissors.
Fly to Xian, China’s first capital and eastern terminus of the Silk Road, for a two-night stay at the 5* Sofitel Hotel in Xi’an. This afternoon tour Xian’s immense City Walls, 60ft wide and 40ft high, complete with towers and battlements, a moat, a hundred ramparts and 18 fortified gates all along its 8 miles – a masterpiece of ancient military engineering.
Visit 7,000 Terracotta Soldiers who’ve stood guard over China’s first emperor for over 2,200 years, and now, painstakingly repaired along with their chariots and horses, they still stand in battle formation in giant exhibition halls erected around the pits where they were discovered in the 1970s. After touring the site, return to the city centre to visit the Muslim Quarter surrounding the imposing Great Mosque.
View some of China’s finest artefacts at the Provincial Museum on a private tour of its treasures, prehistoric stone age, bronze age and from every imperial dynasty up to the 19th century, such as Neolithic ceramics painted with scenes of everyday life, bronze swords and statues, gold and silver artwork and ancient wall murals. Later, fly to Guilin, an impossibly beautiful region of karst mountains, rice fields and winding rivers, and stay three nights at the 5* Shangri La Hotel.
Enjoy the Li River Cruise to Yangshuo, through romantic, dreamy landscapes of mountains and mist, phoenix-tailed bamboo shrouding the banks where women do their washing and oxen plough the fields behind, small fishing boats selling your freshly-caught lunch to the cooks on board your boat. Later visit Jiuxian Garden Village, undergoing a unique conservation and regeneration project to preserve its culture and Ming-dynasty architecture. Tonight attend a spectacular son et lumiere show, a dramatic performance on water with a cast of hundreds on bamboo rafts.
Learn about the production, preparation and health benefits of the special tea grown at the local Research Institute, once the exclusive tea garden for the Ming emperors. Also explore Reed Flute Cave inside one of the karst mountains, an enchanted forest of dramatically-illuminated stalagmites and stalagtites that have created bizarre natural sculptures.
