5-Day Xi'an & Chengdu Wellness: TCM, Acupuncture & Hot Springs

Morning — Arrival and Rest
Your flight lands at Xi'an Xianyang International Airport. Your guide and driver meet you and take you to your hotel to check in and rest after the journey.

Afternoon — The Great Mosque of Xi'an
Step into the Muslim Quarter and on to the Great Mosque, founded in the Tang dynasty and rebuilt in its present form under the Ming. It is Chinese architecture in every detail — timber halls, moon gates, a pagoda-shaped minaret — yet it is a working mosque where more than a thousand worshippers pray each day.

Evening — Dumpling Dinner
Dinner is a dumpling banquet at Defachang, a Xi'an institution since 1936, where the filling and the shape change with every course.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — at a licensed clinic in the old city
The appointment is at a licensed traditional Chinese medicine clinic inside the Ming city wall, with a practitioner registered in China. The consultation follows the classical form - pulse at three positions on each wrist, examination of the tongue, then a long set of questions about sleep, appetite, digestion and temperature - and ends with a body-constitution assessment set out as a description of a pattern rather than a diagnosis of an illness. Xi'an is a dry, cold-winter city, and the line of questioning often turns on dryness and cold in a way that will sound familiar to anyone who has spent a winter here.

Late morning — one session, and a pharmacy
You have one treatment session - acupuncture, moxibustion, tuina or cupping, chosen when you booked. Needles at a licensed clinic are sterile and used once. After the session, the practitioner will show you the dispensary, where the traditional pharmacy is a wall of small drawers rather than a shelf of bottles: dried roots, bark, flowers, seeds, dates and fungi, weighed out on a brass balance and packed for boiling or for steeping. Some guests like to watch a herbal paste - a gaofang - being prepared in the winter months; it is a slow process of boiling down a decoction with honey or sugar to a thick syrup, and it is done only on request. If you buy any dried herbs or teas to take home, check them against your own medication with your doctor before using them.

Lunch
Lunch nearby on mild Shaanxi dishes: sour soup dumplings, steamed vegetable dumplings, cold noodles dressed with sesame and vinegar, and a clear mutton broth with radish. Ask for the chilli oil on the side, which is how it is normally served anyway, and the meal will be light enough to carry you through an afternoon of walking. If you would rather eat later, after the afternoon walk, your guide will reverse the order. The restaurant is a few minutes' walk from the clinic, and the same street has an old teahouse where you can sit for half an hour before the towers close in the late afternoon.

Afternoon — the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, at a slow pace
The two towers stand a few hundred metres apart at the centre of the old city, where the four main avenues of the Ming grid meet. The bell marked the opening of the gates at dawn and the drum marked their closing at dusk; both have been rebuilt on their original stone bases and are open to climb. The walking here is flat and the distances are short, with the vehicle waiting nearby. If you would rather keep the afternoon quiet, the teahouse near the clinic is a short walk from the towers and your guide will adjust the timings.

Evening — dinner and rest
Dinner on simple Shaanxi food, then back to the hotel. If you would like an evening out, the squares around the Bell and Drum Towers fill up after dark and are a flat five-minute walk from most hotels on this circuit. The hotel can also arrange a light room-service meal if you would rather not go out; after a treatment session that is a perfectly reasonable choice.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Xi'an.

Morning — Shaanxi History Museum
Visit the Shaanxi History Museum, home to some 370,000 artifacts spanning the region's long history. Highlights include Tang Dynasty gold and silver ware and Han Dynasty jade, offering a vivid sense of Xi'an's past as a capital and Silk Road hub.

Afternoon — Muslim Quarter
Explore the Muslim Quarter, where the city's Chinese Muslim community has lived and traded for centuries in the streets near the Bell Tower and Drum Tower. The area has been a center of settlement since the Tang Dynasty, and its food stalls, shops, and mosques make it one of Xi'an's liveliest districts.

Evening — High-Speed Train to Chengdu
Take a high-speed train to Chengdu. On arrival, you are met and transferred to your hotel for check-in.

Accommodation
Hotel options include The Temple House Chengdu, a chic blend of traditional Sichuan architecture and modern art, and Chengdu Marriott Hotel Financial Center, a high-rise hotel with skyline views and a Sichuan tea lounge.

Morning — at a licensed Chengdu clinic
Your appointment is at a licensed traditional Chinese medicine clinic in the city, with a practitioner who holds a national registration. The consultation takes an hour: the pulse at three positions on each wrist, the tongue, and a long conversation about sleep, appetite, digestion, energy and how you react to cold, heat and humidity - a line of questioning that makes particular sense in Chengdu, where the dampness of the basin is part of everyday life. Out of it comes a body-constitution assessment, described to you rather than diagnosed, with the practitioner explaining the working terms of the tradition and how they are used in practice.

Late morning — one treatment session
You then have one session chosen when you booked: tuina, which is a firm clothed massage worked along the meridians; acupuncture; moxibustion; or cupping. Sixty to ninety minutes. It is a single session for relaxation and experience, not a course of treatment, and no result should be expected from it beyond feeling looser afterwards. If you are pregnant or take anticoagulant medication, tell us in advance. Nothing said in the room replaces the advice of your own doctor, and no change to any prescribed medicine will be suggested. You will be asked to say if the pressure is too much, and it is entirely normal to ask for less; a good practitioner checks with you repeatedly and adjusts.

Lunch
A mild Sichuan lunch on the road out of the city, at the restaurant your guide uses for the mountain: steamed fish with ginger and spring onion, chicken soup with Chinese yam, seasonal greens, wood ear fungus and rice. Tell us in advance if you would rather eat entirely vegetarian, and the kitchen will replace the fish and the chicken with tofu and mushroom dishes without any fuss. If the day is warm, ask for the cold noodles as well; the Chengdu version is dressed with sesame and vinegar rather than chilli oil. The driver will wait at the door rather than in a car park, so lunch can start as soon as you arrive.

Afternoon — Mount Qingcheng and the hot spring
Qingcheng Mountain, an hour west of Chengdu and about 1,260 metres at its wooded summit, is where the Daoist tradition traces the founding of its organised church to Zhang Daoling in the second century. It is a place of shaded stone paths, small temples, bamboo and, above all, quiet - UNESCO listed it together with the Dujiangyan irrigation system in 2000. You do not have to climb: the vehicle drives to the lower complex at Jianfu Temple and the walking from there is short and level, or can be skipped altogether. The reward at the foot of the mountain is a hot spring fed by the geothermal water of the Longmen range, with a set of outdoor herbal pools, a warm mineral bath and quieter indoor soaking rooms. Between ninety minutes and two hours here, at your own pace.

Evening — back in Chengdu
Return to the city in the evening, which takes about an hour, and eat lightly near the hotel. Ask for a bowl of Qingcheng-style vegetarian noodles - the mountain's Daoist kitchens have made a speciality of them for centuries - or a clear chicken soup with a plate of steamed greens, then take an early night. After a long soak in warm water most people sleep well, and tomorrow is a slow day by design. If you would rather not go out again, the hotel will deliver a bowl of noodles and a plate of steamed greens to the room, which is the sensible choice after an afternoon in the water.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — a second session, or not
You have the option of a second treatment session this morning - tuina, a herbal foot soak, or another hour of the same work you had earlier in the week - and it is booked for those who want it and cancelled without charge for those who would rather have a slow morning in the hotel. Guests who take it usually find the second session easier than the first, because by now the practitioner knows what you carry in your shoulders and your back and can work more directly. The clinic is a fifteen-minute drive from most central hotels, and the session can be moved to the previous evening if your flight leaves early.

Late morning — Wangjiang Tower Park
Wangjiang Tower Park sits on the south bank of the Jin river and is named for the four-storey pavilion at its centre, built in memory of Xue Tao, the Tang-dynasty poet and courtesan who lived in Chengdu in the ninth century and is said to have made her own writing paper, tinted pink with the flowers of the riverbank. It is also one of the best collections of bamboo in China: more than a hundred and fifty species planted along the paths, from pencil-thin hedge bamboo to groves thick enough to shut out the city. The walk is level, shaded and short, and the park teahouse is a good place to sit for half an hour with a last cup of jasmine tea.

Lunch
A final Sichuan meal, ordered mild: chicken soup, steamed fish, cold sesame noodles, stir-fried greens and rice. If you have time, the local dessert to try before you leave is tang you yuan - three kinds of glutinous rice balls in a sweet soup, served hot. If you have an afternoon flight the meal can be moved forward and the park visit dropped; if you are leaving in the evening there is time for both. The kitchen also does a sweet fermented-rice soup with glutinous rice balls, which makes a better last dish than it sounds and is eaten all over Sichuan in the colder months.

Afternoon — departure
Transfer to Chengdu Tianfu airport, Shuangliu airport or Chengdu East railway station, allowing at least two and a half hours before an international flight. Please give us your departure details when you book and we will schedule the morning around them - including moving the treatment session to the previous day if that suits you better. A porter service at the airport is available and inexpensive, and your guide will walk you to the check-in counter rather than leaving you at the kerb; at the railway stations thirty minutes is normally enough. If you are continuing to another city in China rather than flying home, the domestic terminal is much quicker and ninety minutes is usually sufficient.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
Day ends on departure - no hotel night included.