Classic China: Rivers, Warriors & the Great Wall

China opens with its most theatrical city. You land at Pudong and transfer to your hotel on the Bund — the 1.5-kilometre curve of 1920s banking houses that made Shanghai's name. The towers of Pudong switch on across the Huangpu as you arrive. Tonight asks nothing of you: an unhurried check-in, a walk along the embankment if you have the legs for it, and a first, easy read of a city that runs on its own current.

Your guide meets you after breakfast for the two Shanghais. First the old city: Yu Garden, a Ming scholar's garden of rockeries and zigzag bridges, then the bazaar lanes for a street breakfast. The afternoon crosses into the former French Concession, a different world of plane-tree streets and low villas — the flatiron Wukang Mansion, the independent shops of Anfu Road, and the compressed shikumen lanes of Tianzifang. The day ends where the city began, on the Bund at golden hour, the embankment filling as Pudong lights up across the river.

Yesterday was old Shanghai; today is the city that grew up across the river in a single generation. Take the lift up one of Pudong's supertall towers for the whole sweep — the Bund a thin ribbon far below — then meet the water at eye level on a Huangpu cruise, colonial stone on one bank and glass towers on the other. The afternoon comes back down to street level in Xintiandi's restored lane houses and along Nanjing Road, with time for the city's own soup dumplings. An unhurried last Shanghai evening before tomorrow's flight south.

A relaxed morning in Shanghai, then the private car runs you to Pudong for the two-hour flight to Guilin — and China changes completely. The drive from the airport threads into Guangxi's karst country, the limestone towers of a thousand scroll paintings rising straight out of the fields. You settle in for two nights on the Li River, the karst peaks all around. Arrive, slow down, and let the landscape do the talking.

This is the Li River exactly as the scroll paintings promise. A cruise runs the iconic stretch — Crown Cave, the Nine Horses Mural, the sheer bends at Xingping that print on the back of the 20-yuan note — then you come ashore to walk the old flagstone street. The afternoon is gentler and closer to the ground: the flat Ten-Mile Gallery by bike, past the Big Banyan Tree and the arch of Moon Hill. For early risers, a bamboo raft on the quiet Yulong River at first light, before the day boats find it, is the pick of the trip.

A scenic morning transfer to Guilin North, then the high-speed train carries you north to Chongqing in about four and a half hours, karst giving way to the folded river country of the upper Yangtze. Chongqing is like nowhere else in China — a city built in vertical layers up the cliffs where the Yangtze meets the Jialing. Your two nights are high above the city, overlooking the two-rivers confluence. Tonight, the illuminated stilt-house facades of Hongya Dong stacked above the river, and the buzz of the Jiefangbei streets.

A day to feel how vertical Chongqing really is. Start early at Ciqikou, the old riverside town of cobbled lanes and teahouses, before the tour buses arrive. Then the city's party tricks: the Liziba monorail that runs clean through the middle of a residential tower block, and the veteran Yangtze cableway that swings you across the river the way commuters have crossed for decades. It ends the only way it can — a Chongqing hotpot, where the divided yin-yang pot keeps one side fiery and the other mild, so everyone finds their own heat.

A short morning flight lands you in Xi'an, one of China's four great ancient capitals and the eastern anchor of the Silk Road. Your base is inside the Ming-dynasty walls — a quiet corner of a busy city. The evening belongs to the Muslim Quarter, Xi'an's lantern-lit food street, where your guide steers you through roujiamo, hand-pulled biangbiang noodles and lamb skewers. Then up onto the Ming-dynasty walls that still ring the old town, floodlit and walkable — or rideable, by rental bike.

You beat the crowds to Lintong, because Pit 1 is best in the first hour — the long earth trenches and the massed ranks of the Terracotta Army, thousands of soldiers modelled with individual faces to guard the first emperor into the afterlife. A licensed guide walks you through Pits 1, 2 and 3 and the exquisite bronze chariots. Back inside the walls, the afternoon is gentler: the Bell and Drum Towers at the city's heart, and the Great Mosque, a serene compound where Chinese eaves and courtyards do the work of minarets and domes.

One more high-speed leg, north across the plains to Beijing in about four and a half hours, with lunch on the train. The capital is the grand finale — four nights to take in the imperial city without rushing. You settle a short walk from the Forbidden City and right on the Wangfujing shopping street, so the icons are on your doorstep. Tonight is deliberately light: a wander down the Wangfujing snack street, or an early Peking duck near the hotel, before the big days begin.

The wall is worth a full day, and Mutianyu is the section to give it to — beautifully restored, dramatic along its forested ridge, and far quieter than the coach-park crush at Badaling. A cable car lifts you to the ramparts; from there you walk the wall between watchtowers at your own pace, the mountains rolling away on both sides. The descent is the fun part: a toboggan run threads down through the trees for anyone who wants it, with the cable car on hand for those who don't. Lunch is in the village below before the drive back.

Today is the imperial heart of the city. You start on Tiananmen Square and pass through the Meridian Gate to walk the Forbidden City's central axis — the great halls of the outer court, the quieter inner palaces, the imperial garden — the sequence the emperors themselves moved along, laid out over 72 hectares. Climb Jingshan's artificial hill just to the north for the classic photograph: the sea of golden roofs spread out below, the Drum Tower beyond. The afternoon eases off along Qianmen Street, its Republican-era shopfronts restored for a slow browse.

A softer, greener day after the imperial heavyweights. The morning belongs to the Temple of Heaven, where the round blue-roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests stands at the end of long cypress avenues and locals gather to practise tai chi and play chess in the colonnades. The afternoon slows right down in the Houhai hutongs — grey-brick lanes best seen by pedicab, with lakeside willows and old courtyard gates — before a farewell Peking duck dinner to close the trip. If you'd like one more imperial set piece, the lakeside Summer Palace, with its painted Long Corridor and hillside Tower of Buddhist Incense, slots in as an optional morning.

The last day is deliberately easy. After two weeks of big-city icons there is nothing left to conquer — just a slow breakfast, a final wander around Wangfujing for gifts, and time to let the trip settle. When your flight calls for it, your driver runs you to the airport with room to spare. You leave with the full arc of China behind you: the Bund and the Huangpu, the karst rivers of Yangshuo, Chongqing's cliffs, Xi'an's buried army, and the Great Wall above Beijing.

Half the pleasure of this circuit is edible. Shanghai runs to delicate Jiangnan cooking — soup dumplings, red-braised pork, river shrimp — and a serious coffee scene in the old concession. Guangxi is river fish, rice noodles and pomelo; Chongqing turns the heat all the way up with its yin-yang hotpot, one side numbing-spicy, one side clear for the cautious. Xi'an is the Silk Road on a plate — roujiamo, biangbiang noodles, cumin lamb. And Beijing closes the trip where every China trip should, on lacquered Peking duck. Lunches and dinners are arranged to match each place whenever you'd like them included.