8-Day Ancient Jin Tour: Xi'an, Pingyao & Datong

Morning — Arrival at Xi'an Xianyang International Airport
Your guide and driver meet you in the arrivals hall with a name sign and take you by private vehicle to your hotel in the city centre. The early arrival means the whole day is still ahead of you, but a long-haul flight deserves some rest first.

Afternoon — Check-in and Rest
Settle into your 4- or 5-star hotel and recover from the journey. Your guide confirms the programme for the coming days and is on hand for anything you need.

Evening — The Muslim Quarter
Dinner is in the Muslim Quarter, a grid of lanes where Hui families have sold food since the Tang dynasty: hand-pulled biangbiang noodles, cumin lamb skewers, roujiamo and sweet persimmon cakes. Afterwards walk to the Bell and Drum Tower square, where the two Ming towers are floodlit against the modern city.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — The Terracotta Warriors Museum
Enter Pit 1, the largest discovered ancient military formation in the world: six thousand life-sized soldiers, each with distinct features, standing in their original order. Visit Huaqing Palace afterwards, the imperial hot-spring retreat where Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei bathed beneath the plum blossom.

Afternoon — Return to the City
Transfer back to Xi'an and take the rest of the afternoon at an easy pace.

Evening — The Ancient City Wall
Stroll the 14-kilometre Ming rampart, the most complete city fortification surviving in China. From the top you read the whole city at once — the grid of the old town, the gates, the tiled roofs, and the modern towers beyond the moat.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — The High-Speed Rail North
Transfer to Xi'an North and board the train for Pingyao, about two and a half hours. The Guanzhong plain gives way to the loess plateau as the line climbs into Shanxi.

Afternoon — The Walled City
Arrive and enter Pingyao Old Town, where the entire 2.7-square-kilometre Ming-Qing street grid survives behind its walls — shopfronts, courtyard houses and the drum tower exactly as the Jin merchants left them. Check into a courtyard inn.

Evening — First Evening in the Old City
An evening walk on Mingqing Street under the lanterns. Pingyao fed and financed the Qing empire's trade in tea, dye and grain; tomorrow you meet the bank that did it.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — The City Wall and Rishengchang
Start early with a walk on Pingyao's city wall, the most complete Ming-era fortification in China, with the whole old town spread below in a grid of grey tiles and red lanterns. Then visit Rishengchang, the draft bank that became the first clearing house of Chinese finance.

Afternoon — The Wang Family Manor
Drive to the Wang Family Manor in Lingshi county, often called the private Forbidden City for its scale: 56 courtyards, more than a thousand rooms, and ornament on every surface — the accumulated wealth of a Shanxi merchant clan made architectural.

Evening — Shanxi Dinner and Courtyard Theatre
Back in Pingyao for a Shanxi dinner, then settle into the courtyard theatre for an authentic local performance.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — North to Datong
Depart Pingyao for Datong, roughly three and a half hours by coach, or via a Taiyuan high-speed connection. The route crosses the Lüliang mountains into the wild, open country of northern Shanxi.

Afternoon — The Hanging Temple
Go directly to the Hanging Temple on the slopes of Mount Heng. Built in 491 CE and rebuilt since, the entire complex is supported by beams driven into the rock face — a building that appears to defy gravity and has done so for fifteen centuries.

Evening — Datong
Check in to your hotel. Datong, capital of the Northern Wei and later a Jin stronghold, has a distinct northern character: broad boulevards and a cuisine built on wheat and lamb.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — The Yungang Grottoes
Journey to the Yungang Grottoes, one of the most important Buddhist cave complexes in China. Carved between 460 and 525 CE under the Northern Wei, the cliffs run for nearly a kilometre with colossal Buddhas and densely worked cave walls.

Afternoon — Huayan Temple
Visit Huayan Temple, a Liao-dynasty royal monastery whose main hall is among the three earliest and largest surviving wooden structures of the Liao period. The monastery was oriented to the east, unusual for its time.

Evening — At Leisure
Free evening in Datong.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — High-speed Rail to Xi'an
Board the high-speed train south. This is the longest single leg of the inter-city journey: watch the northern highlands give way to the central plains.

Afternoon — Hui Street
Arrive in Xi'an and go straight to Hui Street for free exploration: souvenir shops, skewers, a bowl of lamb soup, and bottles of Xi'an's thick rice wine to carry home.

Evening — Farewell Dinner
Join your fellow travellers for a farewell dinner of Shaanxi specialities and raise a glass to a journey that ran from the Qin emperor's army to the wooden temple on a cliff.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — Huajue Lane and the Great Mosque
Visit the Great Mosque on Huajue Lane, one of the largest and best preserved mosques in China. Founded in the Tang dynasty, it sets Arabic script and Chinese timber architecture side by side in the same courtyards, a record of more than a thousand years of Islamic life in Chang'an.

Afternoon — Shopping
Free time for last-minute shopping: cured beef, sweet fermented rice wine, date cake, hand-cut paper-cuts and calligraphy. Your guide can point you to shops the city itself buys from.

Evening — Departure
Your private transfer takes you to Xi'an Xianyang International Airport for your onward flight.

Meals
Breakfast included.