6-Day Xi'an Deep Dive into Chang'an Culture

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 and Horses Museum
Drive east to Lintong and stand at the edge of Pit 1, where more than six thousand life-sized soldiers face east in battle formation. Each face is different; the bronze weapons were still sharp when they came out of the ground. Your guide walks you through Pits 1, 2 and 3 and the Bronze Chariot hall, and explains how a workforce of artisans produced an army on an industrial scale in the third century BC.

Afternoon — Huaqing Palace
Continue to Huaqing Palace at the foot of Mount Li, where Emperor Xuanzong built thermal baths and pavilions for his consort Yang Guifei. The same courtyards later became the setting for the 1936 Xi'an Incident, so the site carries both the most famous love story and one of the decisive political moments of modern China.

Evening — The Grand Tang Mall
After dark, walk the Grand Tang Mall, a 2.1-kilometre pedestrian avenue of Tang-style architecture, light installations and street performance that recreates the night market of Chang'an at the height of the dynasty.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — Xi'an Museum and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda
Trace thirteen dynasties at the Xi'an Museum, then climb the grounds of the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, built in the Tang to house the scriptures Xuanzang brought back from India.

Afternoon — The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and a Tang Tea Ceremony
Visit the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, where the monk Xuanzang translated the scriptures he carried from India. Continue into the Tang Dynasty Lotus Garden for a tea ceremony in the Tang manner — the tea is boiled, not steeped — led by a scholar who places it in the context of Chang'an and the Silk Road.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — Hanyangling Underground Museum
Descend into the Hanyangling underground museum, built over the tomb of Emperor Jingdi of the Han. Glass-floored corridors hang above the excavation pits, so you look down on thousands of ceramic figures — a buried retinue on a smaller, more intimate scale than the Qin emperor's.

Afternoon — The Guanzhong Folk Art Museum
Walk through the Guanzhong Folk Art Museum, where Ming and Qing courtyard houses, thousands of horse-tethering stones and everyday implements have been rescued from demolition across the plain and reassembled. It is the domestic architecture of Guanzhong in one place.

Evening — Huayin Laoqiang
Watch Huayin Laoqiang — singing, speech and percussion hammered out with wooden clappers. It is often called China's ancient rock and roll, and it comes from the Yellow River boatmen.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — The Ming City Wall
Walk the ramparts of the Ming city wall, the most complete ancient defensive structure in China, at an unhurried pace.

Afternoon — The Stele Forest and a Rubbing Workshop
Enter the Stele Forest, a sanctuary of more than two thousand stone inscriptions spanning the Han to the Qing, and the greatest repository of Chinese calligraphy anywhere. Under expert guidance, make a traditional ink rubbing of your own to take home.

Evening — Academy Gate and Qinqiang Opera
Browse Academy Gate cultural street, lined with brushes, ink stones, antique and calligraphy shops, then take your seat at the Yi Su Society for Qinqiang, the oldest and rawest of the Chinese operatic traditions.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, 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.