6-Day World Heritage Study Tour: Chengdu & Xi'an Sites

Arrival — met in Chengdu
Your guide meets you at arrivals and takes you to a central hotel; the transfer from Tianfu airport runs about forty to sixty minutes and rather less from the older Shuangliu field. Chengdu is a basin city, humid and often grey, sitting at 500 metres with the mountains that ring it usually hidden in cloud. It has a reputation in China for being the place where work is taken least seriously, and the first evening is designed to prove the point. If your flight arrives late, the teahouse visit moves to another day and dinner is taken at the hotel; tell us your arrival time when you book.

Evening — Heming Teahouse
Heming Teahouse has stood in the People's Park since 1923 and is the most famous of the city's several hundred old teahouses. You sit in a bamboo armchair at a low table under the trees, order a covered-bowl tea - jasmine, or a local green - and are given a thermos so that you can top it up yourself for as long as you stay. Around you, the park does what it does every afternoon: men playing cards and mahjong, retired teachers arguing, someone having their ears cleaned with long tuning forks by a professional, walkers circling the lake. You can try the ear cleaning if you like; it is an old Chengdu trade and entirely painless, and there is no medical claim attached to it beyond a certain amount of noise.

Dinner — a gentle introduction to Sichuan food
Sichuan cooking does not have to be hot, and this evening your guide will order accordingly: camphor-and-tea-smoked duck, sweet water noodles, steamed river fish with ginger, cold chicken in sesame and soy, dan hong gao from a street cart, and a clear soup. Leave the mapo tofu and the hotpot for later in the trip if you want them; tonight is about settling in. Over dinner your guide will talk through the week - the wellness day, the TCM appointment, the pandas and the hot springs - and take note of anything you want to change. Nothing on the table will be aggressively spiced unless you ask for it, and if you do, the kitchen will bring a separate dish rather than altering the rest of the meal.

Meals
Dinner

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — Dujiangyan Irrigation System
Discover the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a 2,200-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site built to tame the Min River. Its ingenious channels, embankments, and spillways, made with nothing more than bamboo, stones, and skilled labor, still control flooding and water the fields of the Sichuan plain. Walk across the Anlan Cable Bridge to appreciate the scale of this enduring engineering marvel.

Afternoon — Qingcheng Mountain
Hike Qingcheng Mountain, a Taoist sanctuary shrouded in misty forests and long revered as a birthplace of Taoism. Visit the Tianshi Cave, associated with the origins of the Taoist tradition, and savor Taoist vegetarian dishes at a hillside temple. The serene paths and forested slopes make an ideal setting for quiet reflection.

Evening — At Your Leisure
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure back in Chengdu.

Morning - the Leshan Giant Buddha
Drive south from Chengdu through the Sichuan basin to Leshan, where the Min, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. The cliff face above the confluence carries the tallest stone Buddha in the world: 71 metres from the hair to the toes, begun in 713 by the monk Haitong and finished in 803 with imperial support. The project was originally a flood-control measure in the widest sense - the monk believed the river was taking men's lives and the carving was meant to calm it - and, as it happens, the rock quarried off the cliff was tipped into the water and did narrow the channel. Walk the nine-turn plank road down the side of the figure to the platform at its feet, and note the repair history: the statue has been enclosed, repointed and coated repeatedly, and it is under continuous conservation.

Lunch
A river fish restaurant in Leshan, or a bowl of the city's bobo chicken - cold skewers lifted from a chilled chilli broth.

Afternoon - Mount Emei
Drive north-east to Mount Emei, whose slopes rise from around 500 metres at the base to 3,079 metres at the Golden Summit. Emei is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China and is the seat of a bodhisattva, and together with the Leshan Buddha it forms one UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1996. The mountain holds more than thirty temples, some of them well over a thousand years old and rebuilt many times. Depending on the weather and the time, either take the bus and the two-stage cable car to the summit, where the views run to the snow peaks of the west, or stay lower and visit Baoguo Temple at the foot and the Wannian Temple, whose surviving brick hall contains a bronze statue of the bodhisattva cast in the eighth century. Monkeys are common on the middle paths and take food from hands with no hesitation at all.

Evening - overnight at the mountain foot
Dinner and an overnight at the foot of the mountain, so that the drive back is a morning's work rather than a night's. If you would rather sleep in Chengdu, the day can be run as a long day trip and the return will finish late.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Mount Emei (or in Chengdu if you prefer to return the same evening).

Morning — High-Speed Train to Xi'an
In the morning your guide will transfer you to the station for the high-speed train to Xi'an and help with boarding and luggage, and a private vehicle and guide will welcome you at the arrivals hall in Xi'an with a name sign. The ride carries you from the Sichuan Basin into Shaanxi Province and is a comfortable, scenic way to travel between the two cities.

Afternoon — Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Start your half-day tour with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, one of Xi'an's most iconic landmarks. Built in 652 AD during the Tang Dynasty, it was constructed to house the Buddhist scriptures and statues that the monk Xuanzang brought back from India, and the seven-story brick tower rises about 64 meters. The pagoda forms the heart of the Da Ci'en Temple complex, and the surrounding area includes beautiful gardens and a large musical fountain that can be seen if time permits. Your guide will explain how this site embodies the religious and cultural heritage of ancient China.

Cultural Insight
Xuanzang spent more than a decade traveling and studying in India before returning to Chang'an with hundreds of Sanskrit texts, and the pagoda was raised as a safe repository for that precious library.

Evening — Chang'an Twelve Hours and Datang Everbright City
After the pagoda, head to Chang'an Twelve Hours, a themed neighborhood that brings the Tang Dynasty to life through Tang-style architecture, costumed performers and interactive scenes. Many visitors dress in hanfu and join the cultural activities, which makes it a vivid way to sense the prosperity of the era. Next, stroll through Datang Everbright City, a pedestrian boulevard of illuminated Tang-style buildings, sculptures and street performances whose night view is famously photogenic.

Meals — Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
All three meals are included on this day.

Morning — The Terracotta Warriors
This is not a history lesson, it is a confrontation. Standing at the edge of Pit No. 1 looking out over thousands of clay soldiers, the scale of what one emperor ordered into production is hard to take in. Your guide covers the three pits and the Bronze Chariot hall.

Afternoon — Huaqing Palace
Continue to Huaqing Palace, where the most famous love story in Chinese history played out around natural hot springs, and where the drama of empire and the drama of a single consort are inseparable.

Evening — Sajinqiao Night Market
Dinner at the Sajinqiao night market, a working-class neighbourhood where motorbikes weave between food carts and grandmothers argue cheerfully with vendors over the price of skewers.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — At Leisure
A free morning for meetings, packing or a final walk. Your guide remains available for anything arranged at short notice.

Afternoon — Transfer to the Airport
Your private vehicle transfers you to Xi'an Xianyang International Airport.

Evening — Departure
Check in for your onward flight and bring the programme to a close.

Meals
Breakfast included.