7-Day Beijing & Chengdu Family Tour: Great Wall, Palaces & Pandas

Morning / Afternoon — Arrival & Hotel Check-in
Upon arrival at Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) or Beijing South Railway Station, your private guide and driver will warmly greet you and escort you to your hotel for check-in, allowing you to settle in and freshen up after your journey.

Lunch — near Wangfujing Street
Have lunch at a family-friendly restaurant near Wangfujing Street.

Afternoon — Wangfujing Stroll
Take a leisurely stroll along Wangfujing Street, one of Beijing's most famous pedestrian thoroughfares, lined with shops, department stores, and food stalls that capture the pulse of modern city life. For the adventurous, the nearby Wangfujing Snack Street presents a fascinating — and sometimes daring — array of local street food, from skewers to candied fruit. It's a lively, low-pressure first taste of the capital.

Dinner — Welcome Peking Duck
Savor Beijing's iconic Peking Duck, carved tableside and served with thin pancakes, scallions, and sweet bean sauce — a delicious introduction to northern Chinese cuisine.

Evening — at your leisure
The rest of the evening is yours to rest at your hotel after your arrival.

Morning — The Forbidden City
Explore the immense Forbidden City, the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built between 1406 and 1420, it served as the home of 24 emperors over nearly 500 years and contains some 980 surviving buildings spread across 72 hectares. Your guide will bring the history alive as you walk through its grand halls and courtyards.

Lunch — Near the Forbidden City
Lunch is arranged at a restaurant near the Forbidden City.

Afternoon — Jingshan Park
Climb the hill in Jingshan Park for the quintessential postcard view of the Forbidden City's golden rooftops. The hill is the highest point in central Beijing at about 46 meters and was created from earth excavated while the palace moat was dug. From the summit pavilion the full layout of the palace and the surrounding city unfolds beneath you.

Evening — Casual Dinner
A casual dinner is arranged for the evening.

Meals
Breakfast at the hotel; lunch near the Forbidden City; a casual dinner.

Morning — Mutianyu Great Wall
Drive out of Beijing to the Mutianyu Section of the Great Wall, one of the best-preserved and most scenic stretches of the wall. First built in the Northern Qi dynasty and rebuilt in the Ming dynasty, this section is known for its beautiful mountain scenery and fewer crowds than other parts. Take the scenic cable car up, then walk along the wall past its many watchtowers before enjoying the thrill of the toboggan ride back down.

Lunch — Countryside Restaurant
Lunch is arranged at a countryside-style restaurant near the wall.

Afternoon — Return to Beijing
Return to Beijing for some free time to relax or do some souvenir shopping. Your guide can suggest options depending on your interests.

Evening — Casual Dining
A casual dinner is arranged for the evening.

Meals
Breakfast at the hotel; a countryside lunch near the wall; a casual dinner.

Morning — over the divide
The flight from Beijing to Chengdu crosses one of the sharpest environmental boundaries in China. North of the Qinling range the country is dry, cold in winter, and organised around wheat and coal; south of it the Sichuan basin is humid, mild, foggy, and organised around rice, bamboo and tea. The Qinling itself is a mountain wall roughly a thousand kilometres long, and it has separated the two regions politically as well as climatically for most of Chinese history - the basin has been an independent kingdom more than once, most famously Shu, and it has been a fallback capital in wartime, including during the Second World War when Chongqing in the same basin held out for eight years.

Early afternoon — arrival in Chengdu
Chengdu is a city of about twenty million people in a municipality and it presents as relaxed, which is not the same thing as quiet. The visible economy of the street is food, tea and retail. Your guide meets the group at the airport and takes everyone to the hotel; after check-in there is time to walk before the afternoon session, and the shape of the next two days is explained: one day of traditional physical culture and team challenges, and one day that closes the programme.

Late afternoon — the old lanes
The Wide and Narrow Alleys quarter, restored and reopened in the early 2000s, is the most legible version of old Chengdu: Qing-dynasty courtyard houses, rebuilt shopfronts, a few working residences kept behind the tourist frontage, and courtyard teahouses where people sit for hours over one cup. The party walks the three parallel lanes and the guide points out what is original and what is reconstruction - an important distinction in a city that has been rebuilt several times, most recently after serious damage in the 2008 earthquake in the surrounding region.

Evening — a Sichuan meal and the next day's brief
Dinner is Sichuan food, ordered at a level of heat the group can actually eat, with the guide explaining the difference between the burning heat of chilli and the numbing effect of Sichuan pepper, which is what makes the cuisine distinctive. Over dinner the teams for tomorrow's challenges are drawn and the rules are explained: mixed teams, points for cooperation rather than speed, and one station that can only be completed if the whole team finishes together.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — Giant Panda Base
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, established in 1987, is a world-renowned conservation center on the city's outskirts dedicated to the care and study of China's beloved giant pandas. Your group can observe pandas at close range — from cubs to adults — and learn how keepers feed them and prepare bamboo and panda cakes. Bring your camera for an intimate encounter with these adorable creatures.

Afternoon — Dujiangyan Irrigation System
About a 40-minute drive away, the Dujiangyan Irrigation System is an ancient engineering marvel built around 256 BC by the Qin statesman Li Bing and his son. As the world's oldest non-dam irrigation works, it still regulates the Min River and sustains the Chengdu Plain today — a testament to over 2,200 years of ingenuity. Your guide will explain how its fish-mouth levee and channeling design turned flood-prone land into a fertile heartland.

Evening — At Your Leisure
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure — you may rest at the hotel or explore the nearby surroundings on your own.

Morning - Sanxingdui Museum (depart 08:00)
Drive north to Guanghan and the Sanxingdui Museum. The site was first noticed by a farmer in 1929; the pits excavated from 1986 onwards produced bronze masks with exaggerated eyes, a bronze tree nearly four metres tall, and quantities of jade and gold unlike anything else in Bronze Age China. The finds forced historians to treat the Shu kingdom of the Chengdu plain as a civilisation in its own right rather than a footnote to the Yellow River.

Lunch
A restaurant near the site.

Afternoon - Jinsha Site Museum
Return to Chengdu and the Jinsha Site Museum, discovered in 2001 during building work and dated some five centuries later than Sanxingdui. Its signature object is the gold sun-bird disc, a thin ring of four birds circling a twelve-rayed sun, now the emblem of the city. Because Jinsha sits inside Chengdu, the museum allows students to see excavation trenches where they were found.

Evening - Debrief and return
Discussion of how archaeology rewrites history, then return to your hotel.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.

Morning — Chengdu to Leshan (depart hotel ~08:00 AM)
Your guide and driver collect you from your Chengdu hotel and drive south to Leshan in Sichuan Province, a journey of about two hours. The Leshan Giant Buddha is a 71-metre seated figure of Maitreya carved directly into the cliff where the Min, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. Work began in 713 AD under the monk Haitong and was finished in 803 AD, ninety years later. Your guide leads you down the nine-turn plank road cut into the rock beside the statue, bringing you level with the head, the shoulders and the hidden drainage channels that channel rainwater away from the stone.

Cultural Insight
The statue is the tallest stone Buddha in the world and was inscribed by UNESCO in 1996 as part of the Mount Emei Scenic Area, including the Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area. Its ears measure seven metres from top to lobe.

Lunch — Leshan
Lunch at a local restaurant in the scenic area.

Afternoon — River view and return to Chengdu
A short river crossing gives the one view that the stairway cannot: the complete figure, from the crown of the head to the hands resting on the knees. You then drive back to Chengdu, arriving in the late afternoon.

Evening — Departure
Your guide assists with check-out and the transfer to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport or Chengdu Tianfu International Airport for your onward flight. Groups extending their stay are transferred back to their Chengdu hotel instead.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
Departure day — no hotel night included.