10-Day China Itinerary: Beijing, Xi'an & Shanghai

798 Art District 798艺术区

Hours

the district itself is open around the clock; the galleries keep roughly 10:00–18:00

Ticket

free to enter

On a passport

Walking the district costs nothing. Ticketed exhibitions inside it run ¥30–¥120, paid at each venue.

Full 798 Art District guide

Summer Palace 颐和园

Booking

Required — opens the daily quota is released the evening before through the park’s own channel; in practice a weekday slot is still there on the day.

Last entry

19:00 in summer, 18:00 in winter — an hour before the gates close

Ticket

through-ticket ¥60 1 April–31 October / ¥50 in winter; park-gate only ¥30 / ¥20

On a passport

Passport at the gate. The through-ticket bundles the four ticketed inner sites; bought one by one on top of the park gate they come to more than it costs.

Getting in

Line 4 to Beigongmen for the north gate, or Xiyuan for the east gate — the two ends of a park you cannot cross quickly.

Full Summer Palace guide

Temple of Heaven 天坛公园

Last entry

park 21:00; monuments 17:30 summer, 16:30 winter — the monuments’ clock is the one that decides the visit

Ticket

through-ticket ¥34 1 April–31 October / ¥28 in winter; park-gate only ¥15 / ¥10

On a passport

Passport at the gate. Buying the cheap park ticket to save money is the classic mistake here — it covers the trees and not the Hall of Prayer.

Getting in

Tiantan East Gate on Line 5 puts you at the gate nearest the Hall of Prayer, which is the end most people want to start from.

Full Temple of Heaven guide

Terracotta Army 秦始皇兵马俑

Booking

Required — opens Peak-season slots open 7 days ahead on the official channels. Sources disagree on the off-season and public-holiday variants, so treat 7 days as the number to plan around and check the channel for a longer holiday window.. The site is capped at 65,000 visitors a day and stops selling when it fills. That is not theoretical: the museum's own August 2026 bulletin records seven consecutive days at or near 60,000, three of them over 65,000, and on 11 August the entire day's online allocation was gone by 12:30. In the summer holidays and over Golden Week, book the moment your date enters the window; the morning slots go first.

Last entry

Peak season (16 Mar – 15 Nov) last admission 17:00; off season (16 Nov – 15 Mar) 16:30. ⭐ The cutoff is the same at BOTH parks — the museum's own notice says so in as many words — so arriving at the pit halls at 16:45 does not buy you Lishan Park as well. The halls themselves stay open about ninety minutes past the cutoff. ⭐⭐ The number that actually strands people is earlier still: the last free inter-park shuttle leaves around 16:50, so leave the pit halls by 16:20.

Ticket

¥120 flat, all year — one ticket (一票制) covering both parks

On a passport

Real-name, passport required, booked online — there are no on-site ticket windows. The museum's own site (bmy.com.cn) accepts a passport directly, and a passport is one of the ID documents the gate scanners accept, so a foreign visitor can do this without WeChat or a Chinese phone number. The two WeChat official accounts are the other two sanctioned channels. ⛔ The museum states it has never authorised any third-party platform to sell its admission ticket, so a listing offering "the ticket itself" is not what it claims; a tour operator booking on your behalf in your own name is a different thing.

Getting in

华旅观光巴士兵马俑线 — a 21-line tourist-coach network running direct from named city-centre pickup points (Bell Tower / 钟楼饭店, 北大街, 朱雀门, 建国门, 永兴坊, 新城广场 and others) to the museum, about 40 km with no or few intermediate stops. ⚠️ Outbound coaches run 08:00–13:30 ONLY — there is no afternoon departure out of the city, so this option disappears after lunch.

Full Terracotta Army guide

Big Wild Goose Pagoda 大雁塔

Last entry

Temple grounds 08:30–18:00. The free North Square fountain show plays four times a day — 12:00, 16:00, 19:00 and 21:00 — about ten minutes each. ⛔ On Tuesdays the two daytime performances are cancelled for maintenance and only the 19:00 and 21:00 shows run.

Ticket

¥10 for the Da Ci'en Temple grounds

On a passport

Real-name ticketing — carry your passport. ⭐ The North Square fountain show, which is the main event for most visitors, is free and outside the ticketed grounds, so a traveller who only wants that needs no ticket at all.

Getting in

Dayanta (大雁塔) on Metro Lines 3 and 4, exit B or C for North Square. From the Bell Tower take Line 2 and change to Line 3 at Xiaozhai. ⛔ North Square (大雁塔北广场) is where the fountain is; Datang Everbright City is the pedestrian street to the SOUTH. The two are constantly confused and they are on opposite sides of the pagoda.

Full Big Wild Goose Pagoda guide

Shaanxi History Museum 陕西历史博物馆

Booking

Required — opens 5 days ahead, with the day's allocation released at 17:00 (main museum) and 17:30 (Qin-Han Museum).. The free allocation is the hardest ticket in Xi'an: travellers describe holiday and summer dates going in seconds. ⭐ The practical detail nobody publishes in English is that returns and unpaid orders drop back in a wave roughly two to ten minutes after the release hour, and people report succeeding at 17:02–17:10. There is no fallback at the door. ⛔ A no-show is punished: miss a booked slot without cancelling before entry closes and the document is blocked from booking for 180 days.

Last entry

Main museum, 6 May – 14 Nov 2026: 08:30–19:00, last admission 18:00. Winter: 09:00–17:30, last admission 16:30. ⭐ The Qin-Han Museum keeps its own clock — 08:30–18:00, last admission 17:00 — and its own ticket allocation.

Ticket

Free — the permanent galleries carry no admission charge

On a passport

Real-name, and a passport IS an accepted booking document — the museum names it alongside the mainland ID card, the Hong Kong/Macau and Taiwan permits and the permanent-residence card, and says mainland visitors are the ones restricted to the ID card. The friction is the channel: the basic display is booked through a WeChat official account. ⭐ Two ways past that: buy the ¥270 mural-gallery ticket online, which the museum says removes the need to book the free slot separately, or go to the Qin-Han Museum instead, which admits non-mainland visitors on a passport with NO booking at all.

Getting in

Metro Line 2 south from the Bell Tower to Xiaozhai (小寨, lines 2 and 3), then 778 m on foot — the museum publishes that distance itself, along with 834 m from Dayanta on lines 3 and 4. It sits between the Bell Tower and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, so the two pair naturally on one afternoon — ⛔ but only in that order, because the pagoda needs no booking and the museum does.

Full Shaanxi History Museum guide

Xi'an City Wall 西安城墙

Booking

Required — opens 7 days ahead on the official mini-programme, real-name with a timed slot.. Slots are rarely the constraint here; the bike queue is. Weekend afternoons 14:00–17:00 run 30–45 minutes at the South Gate rental desk.

Last entry

South Gate (永宁门) and the Wenchang, Wumude, Zhongshan and Jianguo gates run to 22:00. North (安远门), East (长乐门), West (安定门) and the minor entrances close at 20:00. Bikes may be returned to a different gate from the one you rented at, but after 20:00 every bike has to go back to South Gate.

Ticket

¥54 flat, all year

On a passport

Real-name, passport. Buy online on the official mini-programme, then — because the gates read Chinese ID cards or faces and a passport is neither — take the document you booked with to a ticket WINDOW and exchange it for a paper voucher. You enter on a scan of that voucher plus a face check. This is the one case where the windows the scenic area describes as withdrawn are the step a foreign visitor cannot skip.

Getting in

Metro Line 2 to Yongningmen (永宁门) — the South Gate sits directly above the station, five minutes from the Bell Tower and the Muslim Quarter. This is the gate about nine in ten foreign visitors use; North Gate (安远门) only makes sense if you are arriving from the railway station.

Full Xi'an City Wall guide

Yu Garden 豫园

Last entry

16:00 — the 16:30 figure is when the garden is cleared, not when you can still get in

Ticket

¥40 in peak season (1 April to 30 June and 1 September to 30 November) and ¥30 in the low season (1 July to 31 August and 1 December to 31 March)

On a passport

a passport works at the window. ⚠️ The garden is small and the bazaar is not — budget an hour inside the walls and treat the rest of the block as a separate, free, much later-opening thing.

Getting in

Metro Lines 10 and 14 stop at 豫园. ⚠️ The station is named for the bazaar it sits under, not for the garden gate — the ticketed garden is a few hundred metres further in, past the crowds most visitors mistake for it.

Full Yu Garden guide

The Bund 外滩

Hours

the promenade is open 24 hours; the decision is not when it opens but when the far bank is lit

Ticket

Free — the promenade costs nothing, and the paid things are all optional add-ons across the river

On a passport

nothing to buy and nothing to book. ⭐ The money here is other people's: the observation decks opposite, the tunnel under the river, and the bars in the buildings behind you. The one thing worth ¥2 is the public ferry — see the access note.

Getting in

Lines 2 and 10 at 南京东路, then east along the pedestrian street to the water. Line 10 also stops at 豫园, which puts the garden and the promenade on one line.

Lights

19:00 in summer, 17:00 in winter — it tracks dusk, not a fixed hour

Full The Bund guide

Pudong observation decks 陆家嘴观光层

Last entry

21:30 at Shanghai Tower — the 22:00 figure is when it closes, not when it stops selling

Ticket

Shanghai Tower's floor-118 deck is ¥180 standard, ¥190 in summer and ¥199 on public holidays

On a passport

⭐ The useful thing nobody writes down: you are standing IN the skyline, so you cannot photograph it. The picture everyone actually wants is taken from the Bund, across the water, for nothing.

Getting in

Line 2 to 陆家嘴 puts all three towers within a few minutes of each other on the elevated pedestrian ring.

Full Pudong observation decks guide

The former French Concession 上海法租界

Hours

the streets are open at every hour; shops and cafés set their own, and the lanes are at their best late morning to early evening

Ticket

Free — it is a district of streets, and nothing about walking it is ticketed

On a passport

the plane trees are the attraction and they cost nothing. ⭐ The value here is a whole afternoon of walking rather than any single address, which is why it survives a rainy day better than the towers do.

Getting in

Tianzifang is beside 打浦桥 on Line 9. ⭐ But the Concession is better entered on foot from the east and walked west — the point is the streets between the landmarks, not the landmarks.

Full The former French Concession guide

Shanghai Museum 上海博物馆

Booking

Required — opens the East building takes individuals on the day with no booking. The People's Square building is capped at 8,000 day-session visitors and sold in timed slots, and while the Ancient Americas exhibition runs there is no free or unbooked entry to it at all.. weekend and holiday slots at the People's Square building; the East building is normally fine on the day.

Last entry

East 17:00 — one hour before close. People's Square 15:00, which is TWO hours before its doors shut and the single easiest way to lose a visit here.

Ticket

Free at the East building — but the People's Square building is ticketed until November 2027

On a passport

a passport is read at the door of the East building, and overseas visitors book through the museum's own website rather than the WeChat account. ⚠️ Two galleries inside East — 古代文明探索宫 and 数字馆 — still need their own advance booking even though the building is walk-in.

Getting in

the East building is in Pudong on 世纪大道; the People's Square building is 6.1 km west, on the square itself. ⛔ Read the address on your booking before you set off — the two share a name and nothing else.

Full Shanghai Museum guide

The former French Concession 上海法租界

Hours

the streets are open at every hour; shops and cafés set their own, and the lanes are at their best late morning to early evening

Ticket

Free — it is a district of streets, and nothing about walking it is ticketed

On a passport

the plane trees are the attraction and they cost nothing. ⭐ The value here is a whole afternoon of walking rather than any single address, which is why it survives a rainy day better than the towers do.

Getting in

Tianzifang is beside 打浦桥 on Line 9. ⭐ But the Concession is better entered on foot from the east and walked west — the point is the streets between the landmarks, not the landmarks.

Full The former French Concession guide