Itinerary

Great Wall, Terra Cotta Soldiers Museum and Three Gorges Hiking Tour

"This trip may only last for 15 days, but experience of Chinese Culture/History

and memories of beautiful mountain scenery will last for a lifetime."

On July 1, 2006 Qinghai-Tibet Railway put into operation

which changed the History of Tibet forever !!

click here

" A Breathe of Fresh Air "

to foster people-to-people relations between China and USA

click here

This is our regular Itinerary but it may change due to weather or any Unforeseeable situation.

For details of each sightseeing, visit Overview

Daily Itinerary:

Day/1 Depart Vancourver

The main group will depart from Vancouver.

Day/2 Arrive Beijing airport

Arrival in Beijing airport, you have to take a taxi on your own from Beijing airport to our hotel in Beijing. You will be given the name and address of our hotel in Beijing. You will meet the tour group for the first on dinner table in the evening.

Day/3 Hike BaDaLing Great Wall

Early in the morning we will leave Beijing to hike at BaDaLing

BaDaLing is where most tourists will see Great Wall.

Day/4 Hike JuYongGuan Great Wall

JuYongGuan Great Wall hiking will be a whole day hiking.

Day/5 MuTianYu Great Wall

MuTianYu Great Wall hiking is about five hours.

Day/6 JingShanLing Great Wall

JingShanLing Great Wall will be full day hiking.

Day/7 Return Beijing

Free afternoon for shopping or private sightseeing

Day/8 Visit TianAnMen and Forbidden City Museum

Take night train to Xian from Beijing.

Day/9 Arrive Xian in morning and visit Xian city

Visit Terra Cotta Soldiers Museum and city tour of Xian. Stay overnight.

Day/10 Morning flight from Xi'an to Yichang.

Travel to Yichang. Afternoon visit the world's largest Yangtze Gorges Dam.

An early night is recommended for the hiking next day.

Day/11 Xiling Gorge & Wushan Gorge

Early departure from the hotel after breakfast. A ferry boat journey take us to Yangtze Xiling Gorge. Three hours hiking at the steep Gorge.

We have lunch with a panoramic view of the gorge, then return to ferry boat to the next section - three hours hiking on the minor tributary Shennong Stream.

Day/12 Wushan Gorge

In the early morning, we take a ferry boat journey to the middle section of Wu Gorge. Have three hours hiking, then lunch will be provided. We will try to book tables facing the Goddess Peak, the most beautiful view of the Yangtze gorges. In the afternoon, we will have four to five hours hiking QuTang Gorges.

Day/13 Fengjie

We will cross the Yangtze River today and take a coach ride to the next hiking point. Hike at the huge natural pit (600m in height) which was visited by western explorers frequently . Lunch at the unique open-air restaurant. Return to Fengjie.

Day/14 Yunyang - Chongqing

Take a ferry boat journey to Chongqing

Day/15 fly to Beijing .

Early flight to fly to Beijing and connection flight home.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to e-mail us using the e-mail link on the Navigation Bar below. To see some letters from past tour members, please look at our References page. For more details about the tour package, including what is included,please see our Details page.

THE GREAT WALL

The Great Wall is perhaps China's most famous and most mythologized site. Several sections are conveniently visited from Beijing, including at Badaling, the most popular site, about 70 km (43 mi.) northwest of Beijing and at Mutianyu, 90 km (56 mi.) northeast of Beijing. These impressive brick and earth structures date from the Ming dynasty, when the wall was fortified against Mongol forces to the north. The Ming wall is about 26 feet tall and 23 feet wide at the base, and could accommodate up to six horsemen riding abreast. Watch towers were built on high points every 200-300 meters or so and were housed with small garrison forces that could communicate with fire signals or fireworks. These stretches of the wall are part of a system that extends from the Shanhaiguan fortress on the Bohai Gulf in the east to the Jiayuguan fortress in the west, altogether some 6000 km (3700 mi).

The Ming sections of the wall are only a late stage in a long history of the wall construction. The wall is most often associated with the First Emperor of China (Qin Shi Huangdi , reigning during 221-210 BC), who after unifying China by conquest undertook to link up previously existing sections of walls belonging to conquered states. The First Emperor mobilized massive conscripted labor forces, including convicts and prisoners, by some accounts up to a million strong, to conduct this building campaign.

While the Great Wall in its various versions had real military defensive functions, it also served symbolic purposes. For long periods Chinese populations lived south of the wall and nomads or semi-nomads lived north of it. The wall served as a symbolic reminder of dynastic authority and also of cultural distinction between settled agrarian culture and cities on the Chinese side and pastoral horsemen on the other. It continues today to serve as a marker of cultural and national identity.

*****************

We begin and end our hiking tour in Beijing. After meeting in Beijing we proceed to HeBei Province, where most of the parts of the Great Wall we visit are. HeBei Province has a population of about 65 million people. Among its cities we visit Chengde and Qinhuangdao (Including Beidaihe and Shanhaiguan).

As the capital of China, Beijing is one of the world's truly imposing cities, with a 3,000-year history and 13 million people. Covering 16,808 square kilometers in area, it is the political, cultural and economic center of the People's Republic. We spend three days in Beijing at the completion of the hiking tour.

Situated in northeast China, Beijing adjoins the Inner Mongolian Highland to the northwest and the Great Northern Plain to the south. Five rivers run through the city, connecting it to the eastern Bohai Sea.

Administratively, the Beijing municipality equals the status of a province, reporting directly to the central government.

Rich in history, Beijing has been China's primary capital for more than seven centuries. China's imperial past and political present meet at Tiananmen Square, where the Forbidden City palace of the emperors gives way to the Great Hall of the People congress building and the mausoleum of Chairman Mao Zedong. The old city walls have been replaced by ring roads, and many of the old residential districts of alleys and courtyard houses have been turned into high-rise hotels, office buildings, and department stores.

THE FORBIDDEN CITY (Gugong)

At the city center is the imperial palace complex of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty emperors. In imperial times it was called the Purple Forbidden City from the association of the emperors with the color of the Pole Star. Surrounded by 10 meter (32 feet) high walls and gates and a 50m (164 ft.) wide moat, it was inaccessible to ordinary people, but well populated by imperial family members, their servants and staffs, officials, and guards.

The major ceremonial buildings of the palace are aligned on a north-south axis that extends beyond the walls toward the Temple of Heaven complex and Yongding Gate in the south. The main entrance to the palace complex is via the Meridian Gate (Wumen), from which the New Year was announced each year by the emperor, proclamations were read, and the fate of prisoners decided. Past five white marble bridges and the Gate of Supreme Harmony, a great courtyard could accommodate several thousand people for state ceremonies such as the imperial weddings.

The three most important ceremonial buildings are on the north-south axis, raised on a high white marble terrace, and accessed by ramps carved with ornate dragons over which the emperor was carried in a palanquin. The three main halls and associated side buildings formed the outer courtyard of the Forbidden City, devoted primarily to official and ceremonial functions, but including imperial libraries and studies. The inner chambers at the rear of the Forbidden City included private living and sleeping quarters of the imperial family, divided into three palaces and twelve courtyards. The Western Palaces were the residences of empresses, concubines, and princes. The Eastern Palace halls are now used as museum exhibition spaces, devoted to ritual bronze vessels, ceramics, craft objects, antique clocks, and paintings, including objects from the imperial collections and archaeological finds. The back precincts include the Palace of Aging Peacefully (Ningshou Gong) where the Qianlong Emperor of the late 18th century spent his retirement years.

TIANANMEN SQUARE

Just south of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square (The Gate of Heavenly Peace Square), the largest inner-city square in the world and that can hold up to a million people. It was cleared in 1958 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. It replaced an older open space in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main entrance to the imperial city and that had a longer history of political importance. On May 4, 1919, students demonstrated here against provisions of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I that were considered unfair to China. The May Fourth Movement spawned here was a widespread movement for political and literary modernization that impacted the rest of the century.

After the founding of the People's Republic, Tiananmen Square became symbolic of the socialist state through the construction in 1959 of the Great Hall of the People on its western side, and the Museums of Chinese History and the Chinese Revolution on its eastern edge. In the same period, a Monument to the People's Heroes was erected in the center of the square. In addition, following Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, a Chairman Mao Mausoleum building was erected directly on the main north-south axis of the square. It contains the preserved body of Mao in a crystal sarcophagus, along with a standing marble statue of the Chairman. China's imperial past, revolutionary history, and political present are all represented vividly in Tiananmen Square.

SUMMER PALACE

Fifteen kilometers (9 miles) to the northwest of Beijing is the Summer Palace. Yi He Yuan, or the Summer Palace, is the best-kept existing royal garden in Beijing. With a concentration of the best of ancient buildings as well as styles of gardening, it is a virtual museum of traditional Chinese gardening. Now a large park of 716 acres, it was formerly the imperial garden retreat from the summer heat of Beijing. Surrounding hills shelter the site, and the Kunming Lake provides a cooling effect. The site was used as an imperial park as early as the mid-12th century, and continued as an imperial garden in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In 1860 Anglo-French forces burned the site to the ground. It was reconstructed 25 years later by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888, using funds that had been reserved for building a modern naval force. It was completed in 1895, and the name was changed to Yiheyuan (Garden of Good Health and Harmony). The large marble boat that sits immobile by the edge of the lake is an ironic reminder of the waste and mismanagement that led to the decline of the imperial state.

***********

Photos from hikers in the past
(click for photos)

More Interesting Stories
click here

Note: when arriving in Beijing take a metered taxi only from the airport. Do not negotiate with unlicensed drivers. Metered taxis can be found after you exit the doors of the airport after picking up luggage.

Come ! Join us to meet Modern Tibetan Women
click here

HuangShan Trip Great Wall of China Trip
Hiking in China Home Page

Home Page / Overview/ Itinerary / References/ Details / Registration/ E-mail

15 days of Tibet Nomad hiking experience
click here

Copyright © 2002 China Hiking Adventures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The information in this communication is subject to change without notice. China Hiking Adventures Inc. will NOT be held liable for any inaccuracies in the information not maintained by China Hiking Adventures Inc. (such as a linked site).