China Itinerary: A Planning Table You Can Download and Fill In

Download the table before you choose cities

The main gap found in the routes checked for this page was that none of them offered an actual table you could download and fill in as a file.

A downloadable planning table matters because the order of your days is a decision you will revise many times, and a file keeps every revision comparable.

Downloadable itinerary tables are not the same as printable web tables, and a page that displays a schedule in the browser may still leave you nothing to edit offline.

Keep one column for the day number, one for the overnight base, one for the transport booked, and one for the single booking that makes the day possible.

If a cell is empty because you have not decided yet, write the decision you still owe rather than leaving it blank.

Worked example: turning hours and minutes into planning slots

High-speed rail and flight legs are usually quoted in hours and minutes, while your itinerary is organised in half-day and full-day blocks.

For a hypothetical 4-hour 20-minute rail leg, write 4 + 20 ÷ 60 = 4.33 hours, and if you allow a 90-minute station buffer, the block becomes 4.33 + 1.5 = 5.83 hours.

That 5.83-hour block is more than half a day and less than a full day, so it consumes one morning or one afternoon rather than an entire date.

Apply the same arithmetic to a 2-hour 45-minute flight: 2 + 45 ÷ 60 = 2.75 hours before buffers.

Buffers are the part travellers under-count, because airport and station time sits outside the published journey duration.

Worked example: counting days when the count is not the calendar

A route label such as 10 days and a calendar span are different measurements, and the difference shows up the moment a trip crosses a departure or arrival day.

For an illustrative plan, if day 1 is the arrival date and the last day is the departure date, a 10-day route occupies 10 calendar dates but may contain only 8 usable sightseeing days.

Write the usable days as 10 − 2 = 8 so the subtraction is visible and does not quietly disappear.

Worked example: 120 hours ÷ 24 = 5 days, so a permit or transit window quoted in hours needs converting before you place it in a daily row.

A converted figure tells you the size of the window, not whether you qualify for the scheme that created the window.

Check opening patterns before you lock the order

Museums and major sites in China often close on a fixed weekday, so a route built only from travel time can put you in a city on the one day its headline attraction is closed.

Add an opening-check column beside every attraction row and record the source and the date you checked it.

Published routes for this topic group their advice into daily tables, which is a signal that day-by-day ordering, not a city list, is what travellers actually need. [3]

Searches for this topic return many multi-day route formats, which indicates that route length is the deciding variable rather than any single destination. [5]

If two candidate days are interchangeable, prefer the one whose attraction has the tighter opening restriction.

Fit the route to your walking capacity, not to a map

Several routes checked for this page attach physical conditions to specific stops rather than to the trip as a whole, including height discomfort, motion sickness and long stair sections. [1]

A route that cannot be walked by the least mobile member of your group is a route that needs a different plan, not a faster pace.

Record the walking load for each day in its own column so the total is visible before you book non-refundable transport.

Travellers who cut destinations rather than days usually finish more of the plan they wrote, and that advice appears as a recurring correction in first-time route guides. [5]

Build the route around one anchor per day, then add optional stops only if the anchor leaves room.

A final pass before you book anything

Read your finished table aloud as a sequence and check that every overnight base is reachable from the previous row.

Confirm that each day has exactly one anchor, one booked transport, and one written fallback.

Compare your table against the official entry and booking rules that apply to your nationality and your region, and note the check date beside the rule.

An itinerary is a working document, so keep the version history rather than overwriting your first draft.

Download the itinerary planning table

The table below is an original worksheet. Open it, save it, or print it, then fill in your own route, transport and booking fields.

Open the downloadable China itinerary worksheet