One Week China Itinerary: A Seven-Day Plan and Downloadable Worksheet

A seven-day example, with room to change

Treat this route as an editorial planning example rather than a booked package or a promise that a venue is open on your dates.

On arrival day, limit the plan to checking in and a short walk you can abandon if you are tired.

Use day two for the Palace Museum only after confirming admission, and swap it with the reserve day if your available reservation requires that change.

Put a Great Wall visit on day three only if the chosen section, weather and transport suit the least mobile person in your party.

Use day four for the Summer Palace or replace it with a lighter activity if the preceding day was demanding.

Keep day five empty until the two priority visits are secure, then use it for a missed visit, rest or an optional activity.

Give day six one neighborhood to explore and an open afternoon for packing and checking departure arrangements.

Leave day seven for checkout and departure unless your confirmed timetable leaves a comfortable margin.

What to write in each row

In the overnight column, write the actual hotel base rather than the city you merely pass through.

In the priority column, name the one visit you would regret losing and put all other stops in the fallback column.

For each reservation, record its status, the official source URL and the date you checked it.

Mark a reservation as confirmed only when you have the confirmation, and keep hoped-for visits visibly separate.

Store confirmation details privately rather than in a shared copy of the worksheet if they contain personal information.

Before printing, read the rows from bottom to top to check that your final activity still leaves room for your departure.

If you want two bases

Keep the same seven rows and replace one sightseeing day with a transfer day instead of adding travel on top of an already full schedule.

Choose the second base after checking your actual arrival and departure bookings, not just because a route map looks compact.

Write the hotel-to-station journey, boarding allowance, scheduled journey and onward transfer as separate blocks.

For an illustrative calculation, a four-hour ride plus one hour before and one hour after occupies six hours, because 4 + 1 + 1 = 6.

Those assumed buffers are a planning example, so replace them with allowances appropriate to your real booking.

If that transfer would consume the only reserve day, decide explicitly whether the second base matters more than flexibility.

Why the reserve is part of the itinerary

The Diary of a Tourist account describes a seven-day Beijing, Xian and Shanghai trip and presents an adjusted route based on the writer’s experience. [1]

Lavi’s first-person account describes a canceled return flight and a final morning that left only about an hour for the Forbidden City. [2]

Use those accounts as examples of planning tradeoffs rather than as current timetables or opening-hour advice.

Give the reserve a clear job, such as protecting your top reservation, so it does not disappear into a list of extra attractions.

When nothing goes wrong, decide on the optional activity the evening before instead of feeling obliged to fill every hour in advance.

Checks before turning the example into bookings

Verify the entry permission that applies to your passport and route before paying for travel.

Check each venue’s official opening calendar and booking process for the date you intend to visit.

Confirm walking demands and accessible transport with the relevant operator rather than assuming a famous attraction suits every visitor.

Keep a copy of the completed worksheet available offline and update its version date whenever a reservation changes.

A useful week is one you can carry out at your own pace, so remove an optional stop before removing the time that makes the rest of the plan workable.

Suggested seven-day layout

Download the blank seven-day worksheet

Open printable worksheet