What to See in China: Beijing, Shanghai and Beyond

China rewards the traveller who accepts that they will not see all of it. The country runs from the deserts in the west to the coast in the east, and the famous sights are scattered across it: the imperial complex in the north, the river skyline in the east, the terracotta army in the middle and the karst mountains in the south.

So the useful question is not “what do I see in China” but “which two cities do I see, and what do I drop”. Most first trips answer that with Beijing and Shanghai, and add the Great Wall as the excursion that anchors the Beijing half.

Key Takeaways

• A first trip splits cleanly between Beijing in the north and Shanghai on the east coast, with high-speed rail between them.
• The Great Wall section that rewards you is Mutianyu, not Badaling: cable cars, fewer tour buses and a better walk.
• In Shanghai the cheapest good view of the skyline is the ¥2 ferry across the Huangpu, and the Bund at night is the free one.
• Coverage is excellent in the two cities and thin outside them, so download offline maps before you leave the urban corridor.
• Our China plans carry Breakout IP: HK, so Google, WhatsApp and Instagram open without installing a VPN, and the plan has to be live from the moment you land.

How do you see China on a first trip?

Two cities is the right number for a first trip, and the choice is really a choice between two different Chinas.

Beijing is the older one. It is the capital, it holds the imperial complexes and the Ming tombs, and it sits close enough to the Great Wall for a day trip without eating the week. Our Beijing destination page sets out the districts, the transport and the sights in detail.

Shanghai is the newer one. It is the commercial capital, the one with the river skyline, the art deco waterfront and the shopping streets, and it rewards an itinerary built around neighbourhoods rather than monuments. Our Shanghai destination page does the same job for that half of the trip.

Putting them together works because the high-speed rail links the two directly, so the country does not feel like two separate trips. Seven or eight days is the comfortable version: three or four in Beijing, three or four in Shanghai, and the travel either side of the train.

The third option is to give up the south and add an inland city instead. Xi’an, Guilin and Chengdu all sit inside the same coverage pattern as the two big metros, and each one changes the trip completely: Xi’an for the Terracotta Army, Guilin for the limestone river landscape, Chengdu for a stop that is not another megacity. Whether that is worth the extra travel depends on how many days you have.

What should you not miss in Beijing?

Beijing’s sights cluster into areas, and the areas are what an efficient day is built from. The centre and the north-west are the imperial half; the far north is the wall.

The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

Start at the Forbidden City, because it is the reason most people come to Beijing. It is an imperial palace complex of 980 buildings with 600 years of history behind it, which sounds like marketing copy until you walk through it. It is genuinely massive, so allow at least three to four hours, and take the audio guide: without it you are looking at a lot of very large wooden halls rather than a story.

Tiananmen Square is next door, and it works best early. The square is enormous, it is the political heart of the country, and the buildings around it include the Great Hall of the People. There are security checks at the entrances, so leave time for them and keep your passport with you. Our reviewers who came at six in the morning describe an almost empty square, which is a different experience entirely from the middle of the afternoon.

The Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is a short trip from the centre and it is a different mood from the Forbidden City: a sacred Taoist complex with circular architecture, built for the emperors to pray for good harvests. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is the building everyone recognises, and the surrounding park is where the city does its morning exercise. Go early and you will find locals doing tai chi in the trees around the halls, which tells you more about the place than the ticket gate does.

The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is the one that catches people out. It is an imperial garden built around Kunming Lake, with pavilions and the Long Corridor running beside the water, and you can rent a boat and go out onto the lake. What wins it is the crowd: it is noticeably less busy than the Forbidden City on the same day, and it gives you room to slow down after a morning of palace rooms.

The Great Wall and Mutianyu

The wall stretches more than 13,000 miles across the north of the country, and the section you visit depends on how far you are willing to travel. Mutianyu is the better one. Its watchtowers are well preserved, it has cable cars for the climb, and it is far less crowded than Badaling. Arrive early and you get the walk without the tour buses.

Badaling is the most restored section and the easiest one to reach from the city, including by the suburban railway, so it is the sensible choice on a short schedule or with children. Jinshanling is the third option worth knowing about: less restored, less visited, and the most authentic version of the wall.

Plan the wall as a full day rather than a morning. The section itself rewards a slow pace, and the signal thins as you move out of the city corridor, so the map on your phone is worth downloading before you leave.

If you have a spare half day, the Ming Tombs are the natural pair. Thirteen imperial tombs from the Ming dynasty, with a Spirit Way walkway lined by stone animals and figures. They get a fraction of the visitors the wall does, and they are the natural thing to combine with a Great Wall visit.

The Lama Temple, the Zoo and Houhai

The Lama Temple is a Buddhist complex with five grand halls and 500 arhat statues around a courtyard of juniper trees. It is one of the most important temples in the city and it is calm in a way the Forbidden City is not.

The Beijing Zoo is in the same western part of the city, and the pandas are the reason people go. Get there early in the morning when they are active, and treat the other enclosures as the bonus rather than the plan.

Houhai is the opposite register: a lake area in the western district full of bars and restaurants that come alive in the evening. It is the natural place to end a day of imperial sightlines, and it is the part of Beijing that locals actually use.

798 Art Zone

The 798 Art Zone is a former military factory turned art district, with galleries, studios and cafes in the old industrial buildings. It is the least ancient thing on this list and one of the most distinctive. Allow a few hours, walk rather than dash between galleries, and pick up something there that you will not find in a shop on Nanjing Road.

Getting around Beijing

Getting around Beijing is simpler than it looks. The metro is one of the most extensive systems in the world, with more than 500 stations, and a fare between ¥3 and ¥10 depending on the distance. It reaches the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace without traffic, which is the point. The one rule is timing: between 7 and 9 in the morning and 5 and 7 in the evening, lines 1, 4, 10 and 13 are extremely crowded, so shift those hours if you can.

Coverage in the city is excellent, with 5G across the central districts and on the metro itself. Download Didi before you arrive: it is the local ride-hailing app, it registers with an international number, and it is the easiest way to get a car without speaking Chinese.

One planning note for the day: aim at Mutianyu rather than Badaling. It is the less crowded section, it has cable cars, and the walk along the restored towers is the reason people make the trip.

What is worth seeing in Shanghai?

Shanghai is where the trip gets faster and louder. The sights sit close together, the metro is fast, and the plan is more about where you walk than what you tick off.

The Bund and Pudong

The Bund is the waterfront promenade lined with colonial-era buildings, and directly across the water sits the modern Pudong skyline. The contrast is the reason to be there, and it is at its best at night when the towers are illuminated. If you only have one evening in Shanghai, spend it walking the Bund after dark.

For the view from the other side, the Huangpu ferry crosses between Puxi and Pudong for ¥2. It is cheap, it is scenic, and it gives you the skyline from the water rather than from a riverside pavement.

Yu Garden and the Old City

Yu Garden is a classical Chinese garden with rockeries, pavilions and koi ponds, and the Old City around it is the best street food in Shanghai, with xiaolongbao on almost every corner. Arrive early: this is the one place in the city where the crowd arrives before you do.

Nanjing Road and People’s Square

Nanjing Road is the pedestrian shopping street that runs from People’s Square down to the Bund. The western half is modern malls, the eastern half keeps the traditional shops, and the whole thing is a good place to watch how the city actually moves.

People’s Square is the central square with People’s Park and a museum cluster around it, plus a metro interchange and an underground shopping mall large enough to lose an afternoon in when the weather turns.

The Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Tower

Two observation towers, two different characters. The Oriental Pearl Tower is the TV tower with spheres at 263 and 351 metres, and the sphere restaurants are a decent excuse to eat above the city. Tickets are cheaper on weekdays.

Shanghai Tower is the taller one at 632 metres, with an observation deck on the 118th floor and 360-degree views over the city. Book the deck in advance, because the tickets sell out.

Xintiandi and the French Concession

Xintiandi is the neighbourhood of restored shikumen stone gate houses turned into bars, restaurants and galleries, and it comes alive after dark. The French Concession is the slower counterpoint: tree-lined streets, boutiques, European-style cafes and small restaurants worth finding by wandering.

Both work well by bike, with dedicated bike paths and bike-sharing apps across the city. Cycling the Concession is a different experience from walking it.

The Jade Buddha Temple and the Maglev

The Jade Buddha Temple holds two jade Buddha statues brought from Burma, and it is an active place of worship with monks and worshippers rather than a monument. It is the quietest of the Shanghai sights and a good contrast to the skyline.

The Maglev train is the other end of the scale: a commercial train that reaches 431 km/h, taking seven minutes from Pudong Airport to Longyang Road station. There is no need to book, you buy a ticket and ride it.

Getting around Shanghai

Getting around Shanghai is the easiest part of the trip. The metro runs over 800 kilometres with more than 500 stations, and lines 1, 2 and 4 are the useful ones for a visitor. The fare is again ¥3 to ¥10 depending on distance. The Bund, Pudong, Xintiandi and the French Concession all sit inside strong 5G coverage, so the signal is not a problem in the centre, and the Huangpu ferry adds a cheap, scenic way across the river whenever the walk along the promenade gets long.

Is the rest of China worth the trip?

Adding a third city, or a third week, depends on what you missed.

Xi’an is the one most people regret skipping. The Terracotta Army sits just outside the city and is one of the archaeological finds of the last century: a buried army of life-size figures, every soldier carved with a different face and a different rank of armour.

Guilin changes the landscape rather than the buildings. The karst peaks along the Li River are the countryside China is usually pictured as, and the cruise down the river past the rice fields and the bamboo rafts is the reason to go.

Chengdu is the third inland option, and the coverage inside the city is solid in the same way it is in Beijing and Shanghai.

Further out, Hangzhou and its West Lake, the sandstone pillars of Zhangjiajie, the rice terraces around Longji, the Shaolin Temple and the old town of Lijiang all justify a longer trip. They need more days, not more money.

The practical warning applies to all of them. Outside the urban corridors the signal thins, and it thins fastest in exactly the places people go for the landscapes: remote sections of the Great Wall, the distant provinces, rural stretches between cities. Download offline maps before you leave the city, and treat the coverage as an urban resource rather than a national one.

How do you get around China and what do you take with you?

The transport in China is fast, cheap and legible once you know the rules. Didi covers everything the metro does not reach, and it takes an international number at registration, so you can set it up the evening you land. Taxis are plentiful and cheap by international standards, and the ferry across the Huangpu is the exception worth making on foot at ¥2.

What you carry matters more than the ticket price:

• A power adapter. Chinese outlets use their own plug shape and a flat pin does not fit most sockets.
• Cash. Small vendors and local restaurants frequently do not accept foreign cards.
• Time. Avoid the metro rush hours between 7 and 9 in the morning and 5 and 7 in the evening, particularly on lines 1, 4, 10 and 13.

And the point that ties the whole trip together: without coverage there are no maps. No maps means no metro, no Didi, no navigation back to the hotel at night, and no translation when a sign only exists in Chinese. That is why the data plan has to be active from the moment you land, not from the moment you think you need it. Our plans start counting their days when the phone first connects to a network in the destination, so you can install the eSIM at home on Wi-Fi and it starts when you arrive.

Which eSIM should you pick for China?

These are the China plans, priced as they are published today. The prepaid tiers give you a fixed amount of data over a fixed window, and the unlimited tiers give you 3 GB per day at full speed and then unlimited data at 1 Mbps for the rest of that day, which is enough for maps and messaging and slow for video.

Plan	Data	Validity	Price
1 GB	1 GB	7 days	$3.99
3 GB	3 GB	15 days	$6.99
5 GB	5 GB	30 days	$8.99
10 GB	10 GB	30 days	$13.99
20 GB	20 GB	30 days	$23.99
50 GB	50 GB	30 days	$50.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	3 days	$8.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	5 days	$13.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	7 days	$18.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	10 days	$26.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	15 days	$38.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	20 days	$48.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	25 days	$57.99
Unlimited	3 GB per day at full speed, then unlimited at 1 Mbps	30 days	$67.99

Every plan includes Breakout IP: HK, the fixed Hong Kong exit point that opens Google, WhatsApp and Instagram without a separate VPN, and connects to China Mobile and China Unicom, the two networks that cover the cities and the transport corridors. The plans are data only: no number, no SMS, so WeChat is the local tool for messages.

Start with the China destination page for the full catalogue, and check your model on the compatible phones page before you buy, because many regional variants sold in the mainland market ship without eSIM support.

Three guides cover the ground next to this one. If you are still working out how you will pay, how to pay in China explains Alipay, WeChat Pay and when cash is still the answer. Opening Google, WhatsApp and Instagram in China sets out what the block applies to and how the Hong Kong exit point works around it. For timing, our guide on the best time to visit China covers the seasons and the crowd peaks.