Classic East China — 12 Days

Assemble and depart for China

The tour begins at the airport. EK248 leaves Rio de Janeiro at 03:30, so in practice you will be at the terminal late on the evening of the 21st rather than on the morning of the 22nd — worth knowing when you plan the day before.

The flight reaches Dubai at 00:30 the following night, and the connection to Shanghai leaves in the small hours after it.

Arrive Shanghai

EK302 lands at Shanghai Pudong at 15:30. You are met in the arrivals hall and taken into the city by private coach — about an hour, depending on the traffic on the elevated roads, which at that time of day is considerable.

The hotel stands on the Huangpu in the middle of the city, which means the rest of the afternoon is genuinely free rather than nominally free: the river is at the door.

A welcome dinner in the evening, and then an early night — the fastest way through eleven hours of time difference.

Shanghai — the medical centre, and then the city

The morning is given to the health check at the medical centre — around three hours, and the reason the rest of the day starts after lunch.

The afternoon is Shanghai in one loop. The Oriental Pearl Tower first, for the view that explains the city’s geography better than any map; then the City God Temple and the Yu Garden bazaar packed around it, where Shanghai looked like this before 1990.

Then the Bund — a kilometre and a half of banks, trading houses and hotels put up between 1890 and 1930, when this was the financial capital of Asia — and Nanjing Road East, the shopping street running inland from it.

In the evening, a cruise on the Huangpu. It is the only way to see both banks at once: the stone waterfront of the 1920s on one side, the towers of Pudong on the other, and ninety years between them.

Shanghai to Suzhou — gardens and canals

An hour and a half west to Suzhou, a city that has been rich, cultured and slightly smug about both for a thousand years.

The morning is the Humble Administrator’s Garden — the largest of the classical gardens, laid out from 1509 by a retired official who named it, with some irony, after an essay about a man unfit for public office. Water covers a third of it. That is the whole idea: everything is arranged so that you never see all of it at once.

After lunch the Suzhou Museum — I. M. Pei’s last building, designed in his eighties for the city his family came from, and a deliberate modern answer to the gardens next door. Then Shantang Street, a canal and a street running side by side since the ninth century, and a cruise on the Grand Canal itself.

Suzhou to Wuxi — the Grand Buddha and a night at Nianhuawan

The morning is Three Kingdoms City on the shore of Lake Tai — built in 1994 as the set for the television adaptation of one of the four great Chinese novels, and kept afterwards as a park. It is a film set, and it is honest about being one.

The afternoon belongs to the Lingshan Grand Buddha: 88 metres of bronze, cast in the 1990s and standing over the lake, one of the tallest statues in the world. The scale only registers when you are at the foot of it.

Below it lies Nianhuawan, a Buddhist resort town built in Tang-dynasty style — timber, water, lanterns — and tonight you stay inside it. Most groups photograph the Buddha and drive on; staying means you get the town in the evening, when it is lit and quiet.

Wuxi to Yangzhou — Daming Temple, Slender West Lake, and a hot spring

North across the Yangtze to Yangzhou, a city that was the wealthiest in China when it controlled the salt trade, and has been quietly declining and enjoying itself ever since.

Daming Temple in the morning — founded in the fifth century, and the monastery of Jianzhen, the monk who tried five times to cross to Japan, went blind in the attempt, succeeded on the sixth in 753, and founded a school of Buddhism there that survives today.

The afternoon is Slender West Lake, which is not a lake at all but a landscaped stretch of canal, narrow and deliberately so — the salt merchants built the gardens along it to impress an emperor who was known to be coming.

The evening is a hot spring in the hotel’s Chinese garden baths. It falls halfway through the tour, which is not an accident.

Yangzhou to Nanjing — mausoleum, mountain and the Qinhuai by night

Nanjing was the capital of China six separate times, and it wears all six.

The morning is the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum on Purple Mountain — 392 steps up to the tomb of the man both Beijing and Taipei still call the founder of modern China, which makes it one of the very few places either would agree about.

The afternoon is Niushou Mountain, where a relic of the Buddha’s skull, rediscovered in 2008, is kept in a domed palace built inside a worked-out quarry. It is the most ambitious piece of religious architecture built in China this century and almost nobody outside the country has heard of it.

In the evening the Confucius Temple quarter along the Qinhuai River, lit and crowded the way it has been since the Ming, when this was where the examination candidates came to sit the imperial exams — and where they went afterwards.

Nanjing to Hangzhou by high-speed rail — West Lake and Songcheng

The morning is a high-speed train at 300 kilometres an hour. For most visitors this ends up being one of the things they remember longest about China, well after the gardens have blurred together.

The afternoon is West Lake — a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape, which is a rarer designation than it sounds: the lake is listed not for its scenery but because a thousand years of Chinese painting and poetry took their idea of beauty from it. The Leifeng Pagoda stands above the southern shore, rebuilt in 2002 over the ruins of the one that collapsed in 1924.

At 19:00, Romance of the Song Dynasty at Songcheng — a large-scale stage production of the city’s history, and one of the most-watched shows in the country.

Hangzhou to Wuzhen — and Xitang after dark

North to Tongxiang and Wuzhen, the best preserved of the delta water towns.

The afternoon is the East Scenic Zone — the lived-in half, where the workshops are still working: indigo cloth hung out to dry in the yards, rice wine fermenting, wood being carved. It is a town that was restored rather than rebuilt, and the difference shows.

In the evening, on to Xitang Ancient Town — a second water town about an hour away, and the one to see at night. Nine rivers meet here, and more than a kilometre of covered riverside walkway runs along the water so that the town can be walked in the rain. After dark the lanterns come on under the eaves and the whole thing doubles in the canal.

Wuzhen to Shanghai — silk, jade, and a free afternoon

The morning is the Silk Museum and the Treasure Experience Hall — how a cocoon becomes thread and thread becomes cloth, and how jade and pearl are cut and set. The delta has been the centre of Chinese silk production for two thousand years, so this is local industry rather than a diversion.

Both have a retail area attached, and it is worth being plain about that: there is absolutely no forced shopping on this tour. No minimum spend, no pressure, no obligation of any kind. Buy something if you want to and nothing if you do not.

The afternoon returns to Shanghai, with free time at a shopping centre before the evening.

Shanghai — free time, and the flight home

The day is yours until the transfer. EK303 leaves Pudong at 23:00, so there is a full day to use — the Shanghai Museum, the former French Concession, Tianzifang, or simply the Bund again in daylight, which is a different place from the one you saw at night.

The transfer to Pudong is timed around the flight. Allow for the traffic; the airport is a long way out.

Home

EK247 leaves Dubai at 08:05 and reaches Rio de Janeiro at 15:55. Breakfast is served on board.

We hope the twelve days leave you something worth keeping. China is a great deal larger than this corner of it, and we would be glad to show you the rest.

Booking

• Fixed departure: 22 October – 2 November; group of twenty in ten twin rooms
• English-speaking guide throughout China
• Two retail-attached visits (Silk Museum, Treasure Experience Hall) — no forced shopping, no minimum spend, no pressure of any kind
• Day 3 medical centre session runs approximately three hours; details supplied at booking
• Passport details required for every traveller (flights, hotels, real-name ticketing)
• Sequence and timings may be adjusted by your guide for traffic, weather or capacity; all named sightseeing delivered wherever conditions allow

Before you go

• Weather: 12–22°C, humid, good chance of rain — best travelling month; bring layers, waterproof, comfortable shoes
• A great deal of walking; the mausoleum is 392 steps. Nothing technical, days are long
• Mobile payment dominates — set up Alipay / WeChat Pay with a foreign card before leaving; carry a little cash for the water towns
• Some apps and sites are not reachable on Chinese networks; arrange roaming or a travel eSIM first
• Carry your passport at all times — hotel check-in, high-speed rail, real-name ticketing
• Delta cooking is mild, sweet, heavy on freshwater fish — tell your guide about allergies at the start