Senast uppdaterad: 2013-05-29

Itinerary

Day 1-2

Beijing is the capital of China since 1279. There are many historical points of interest; whereof the Forbidden City 故宫, the Summer Palace 颐和园, Temple of Heaven 天坦公园 and the Great Wall 长城 are the most important.
From the hotel it is possible to take a walk to the Tiananmen Square 天安门广场 and the Forbidden City 故宫. North of the Forbidden City there are a series of parks starting with the Jingshan Park 景山公园 just across the street from the northern gate of the Forbidden City. From the top of the hill of Jingshan Park you get a good view of Beijing and the Forbidden City. Further to the west you will find the Beihai Park 北海公园, which is very popular among Beijingers for skating in the wintertime. Beihai means the Northern Sea. Just south of Beihai is Zhongnanhai 中南海 (Middle and Southern Sea). That is the part of the government area where most of the high rank leaders work and live. It is often called the Forbidden City of the Modern China, since it is not open for ordinary citizens to visit - just as was the Imperial Forbidden City.
North of the Beihai Park, there are a few more lakes surrounded by parks; Qianhai 前海 (the Front Sea), Houhai 后海 (the Back Sea) and Xihai 西海 (the Western Sea). This part of Beijing is quiet and nice for a stroll along the lakeside. Older men are fishing, others are playing table tennis, yet others go for a swim in the water. Close to Houhai you can find some small tea houses 茶馆 where tea is served in the traditional way. There are also many cafes and restaurants. In the area of these lakes there are also some museums and parks worth visiting. Prince Gong's Residence 恭王府 has a traditional Chinese garden and Chinese styled buildings, as has the former residence of Song Qingling 宋庆龄故居
The city centre of Beijing has a mixture of narrow alleys and modern shopping areas. A traditional Chinese house is built in a square with a courtyard in the middle, siheyuan. Towards the alley there are no windows but just a high wall and a closed gate. Some of these courtyards are well preserved and it has become very popular and exclusive to live in such courtyard houses. There are also many old houses in very bad condition in the alleys. Most of the ordinary people living in the alleys do not have private toilets but have to use the public toilet in the neighbourhood. The Beijing authorities are very keen on tearing these areas down to get space to build hotels, shopping centres and office buildings.

In the evening day 2 you take the night train to Qufu.

Day 3

Qufu has more than 2,500 years of history. Qufu is most famous for a great sage, Confucius, whose philosophy has ruled China for over two thousand years and became known, packed with tea, by the western world in the 16th century. The city is still the center of the national cult of Confucius, and also the birthplace of the mythical Yellow Emperor (the legendary founder of the Chinese nation).
The historic walled city is small enough to walk but this little town is very bicycle friendly and, thus, a practical way to get around. Confucius Mansion, Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest are among the places of interest. "Confucius Forest" (Kong Lin) is a cemetery where you find Confucius, and many generations of his descendants, buried.

At night the city walls are decorated with ornamental lights. The moat around the walls make for a picturesque walk at night. Many of the local elderly gather around these places to dance.
Few of Qufu's residents are Christian or Jewish, but the city boasts a strong Muslim (Hui) community.
A great variety of restaurants can be found in the eastern part of the old walled city, a block or two east of Gulou Ave (the main north-south street of the old city).

Day 4-5

You will take a bus from Qufu to Qingdao, a beautiful city choosen for sailing events during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Qingdao (also known as Tsingtao) is regarded by some Chinese as one of the most beautiful and clean cities in China.
As you take your first step in this beautiful city, your first impression will probably be that this is not China. The Bavarian-style houses, the castle-style prison-turned hotel by the beach, even the pure taste of original beer pouring at every corner of the open street restaurants, are all thanks to the Germans who held this part of China in the late 19th century. While Qingdao has a long history, the eastern half of the city has been built since 1993, and there is no sign of it slowing down.

Not far from your hotel, you can explore the alleyways south toward the beach. You will pass many seafood markets and restaurants and what place better to have yourself some fresh seafood and, maybe, an original fresh beer. Dengzhou Road, where the Qingdao Brewery lies, may be of interest. In this street you can watch, or a participate in, beer drinking during the night. It is at this place many Chinese visitors choose to meet their friends. And it is obvious to tell who's a local and who's not...

Qingdao is a feast for seafood lovers. You will find an amazing selection of fresh fish and seafood and the price is... cheap! Grilled oysters seasoned with chili comes highly recommended!
The city has a wide range of christian churches, museums and parks if you're interested.
You will rent your bicycle in Qingdao and it is very pleasant to ride your bicycle along the very long beach and harbour area. You should not, however, ride your bicycle on roads. It may seem strange, but it is actually illegal.

Day 6

This morning, you will take a bus to the open suburb where you will start your cycling for around 30 kilometers before you come to the Hot Spring city. En route you will ride on small roads which connects one village to the other. Not every part of the road is concrete or asphalt road, it could be even dusty road. But this makes it possible to skip the heavy traffic and get a view of the countryside, with fields full of corn, potatoes and some crops you may not have heard of. Each inch of the land is cultivated and no space is wasted.
The village, where you will stay overnight, is called Hot Spring city. It is said that the hot water flows from deep underground through sea bed rock cracks. The water itself doesn't contain sulphur as ordinary hotspring, but taste salt instead. Many families drill a hole to get hot water for home supply. The temperature is high enough to boil eggs. There are many places to take a hot spring bath to ease your muscels after a day's cycling. We recommend one of the ordinary family's public bathroom. Panpan Bathroom, for example, is warmly recommended which is run by a hospitable young couple, Mr. Wu and his wife, Zhuang. We will stay overnight at a local farmer's home.

Day 7

The road to the next destination will be relatively flat and with even more cultivated land to see. You will ride on the big road for a few kilometers but, still, the traffic is not heavy. Then you will leave the bigger road on a small path which is accesible only for bicycles, wheelbarrows and one or two tractors going back and forth to their fields.
In the afternoon you will ride to Qianheqian village for overnight. This village lies by the rich fertilize beach of Wulong River (Five Dragon River). Habitants of this village never knew that they were sitting on an ancient kingdom until the archaeologist told them the pottery and bronze ware showed signs these wares belonged to the Ji Kingdom (11th - 7th century BC). Their cemetery could be dated back 3000 years. Later on more relics were found when they worked in their maize fields. More archaeologists flocked in 1976 but they were all told to stop. One explanation is that the underground is too wet and they were not ready for further diggings. So this site is now sealed with huge stone stella and all farmers are told not to dig deeper than the cultivation layer. We suppose if the great Gunnar Anderson, the founder of the Far East Museum in Skeppsholmen, were still alive, he would be happy to help with the work.
The homestay in this village could be very basic, thus, if you need a little more comfort, you may want to bring a light sleeping back.

Day 8-9

From the ancient village you continue the bicycling to Laiyang. The farmland will change slightly to wide plantations of peanuts and sunflowers. This area is the biggest cooking oil producer in China.
En route you will see women sitting in their house courtyard working with separateing peanut seeds from bundles of plants, while they exchanging gossip.
Nobody can tell how many families making a living out of growing peanuts and sunflowers to support such a large population. As you ride to Tuanwang Town, you will see a big industry zone, Luhua Peanut Cooking Mill, with an annual output of 800.000 tons of peanut cooking oil and 100.000 tons of sunflower seed cooking oil. Enough to supply eight billion people with their annual cooking oil consumption. If you have an interest, there is possibility to take a visit to the factory.

You will have a rest day in the friendly city of Laiyang, the city of pear in China. Avenue lights leading from the outside of the city to the city center, are all in shapes of a green pear. The Pear Festival is arranged every year to promote its fame. The annual output is eighty million tons. The pear tastes heavenly but it only stays fresh for less than ten days. So most of the pear is processed to make canned fruit, vinegar and wine.
Laiyang is also known as the Home Town of Dragons. In 1952, the first intact dinosaur fossil was unearthed in the south suburbs and it is now on display in Beijing. In September of 2011, two other dinosaurs fossils was on the way being unearthed. If you have an interest going there, your tour leader will arrange this.
Four kilometers southeast of the city is another place you might find interesting, the Red Land. Its clay and rock is all red and a beautiful river flows below the cliff to form a beautiful scenery. Ten kilometers to the south from here stand a stone pagoda six meters tall with a square platform. It is built in memorial of a nun who sailed across the strait from the Liaoning province. She devoted all her life to build a nunnery here but nothing has survived except the old pagoda.
If you like hiking there is a hill north of the city which should be ideal. It is said Qingshihuang, the emperor of Qin empire once stopped on this hilltop on his mission to seek elixir.

Day 10

Back on the bicycle. Today you will go to Qixia, around 50 kilometers to the north from Laiyang. It is said that the best apples in China are from Qixia. The route Laiyang-Qixia should be called The Road of Apples. Most of the plantations in this area are appletrees. They come in many names; Red General, Red Gold, National Light and around a hundred more. Many of the most famous apples in Japan are grown and exported from here. Each household's output is ten thousand tons. The total apple output of Qixia is two million tons a year. During your cycling, you will guaranteed be offered free apples, probably more than you can eat, from the local people at their plantations. Your hotel will be close to the downtown and the night market. Here you will finish the bicycling part in Shandong province.

Day 11

You'll take a bus to Yantai which will take about one hour. Compared to Qingdao, less concession architectures are seen in this city, but this doesn't mean that Yantai was less harassed by invaders. In 1842 Yantai was baptized to the British in the Opium War, then the Germans came followed by Americans. The port at this headland has always been a nice place to anchor for navy fleets and fishing boats, both in the past and the present. Walking down to the east coast, you will see fishing fleets and fishermen coming with their fresh fish, and those on the beach are repairing their fishing nets.
Quite late in the evening we will take the night ferry with one thousand six hundred seats to cross the Yellow Sea to the city of Dalian. The cruising will take six hours and you will see the first ray of sunlight rising from the sea horizon.

Day 12-13

Arrival at Dalian early in the morning. It is said that the women of Dalian are fashion frontrunners in China, thus annual fashion festival is always a big event. Beside that, Dalian is nothing more than a modern big chinese city and therefore we will take long distance bus from here to Dandong.

The ice-free city of Dandong is an important port in the Yellow sea that both Russia and Japan have been wrestling for since the late 19th century. Now it is a quite large and busy port in northeastern China.
Dandong is a quite small city. Travelers come to Dandong for its vicinity to the North Korean border. The quiet riverside city is most famous for the pockmarked Yalu River Bridge spanning distressingly over the river. The bridge survived the bombing during the Korean War, a time when the city still had its old name Andong. Now it is open to the public to commemorate "the defeat of the American Aggression" and is the first choice for a glimpse of North Korea.
Wandering around here you will find great influences from North Korea, though you may not observe that most of the local residents themselves are Korean nationality. Restaurants, coffee bars with Korean style furniture and even TV series are mostly in Korean language.
Many Chinese travelers depart from here to the other side of Yalu River to visit North Korea. As a westerner you are not allowed in to North Korea without a Visa, which could take weeks to get. Instead you have to settle with taking a boat cruise on the Yalu River, looking at the other side and. You are allowed to take photographs and Chinese travelers have great fun doing this while foreigners seem more shy to raise their camera here. In Dandong you can visit the Korea War Museum to learn about stories that happened here half a century ago.

Not everything in Dandong has to do with North Korea. About 25 kilometers northeast of Dandong is the Tiger Mountain Great Wall (虎山长城). This is the easternmost section of the Great Wall. We leave it up to you to decide if it is the beginning or the end of the wall. Hopefully you'll have the chance to ride a bicycle back and forth to visit this place.

Day 14

You take a bus to Shenyang but stop en route for a few hours at the Bengxi Water Cave. This limestone cave is 2800 meters long, boasting to be the longest cave in the world as they know so far. Taking the official boat to visit this huge cave is the only way and one hour inside the cave is required.

From here to Shengyang is another two hours.

Day 15-16

You will have two days to visit Shengyang, the Capital of Liaoning Province and the largest city in the northeast of China.
It was here, on September 18th 1931, that the Mukden incident ignited a war between China and Japan that would see the Japanese occupation of all of Northeast China. Mukden Palace, the former Imperial Palace of Shenyang, is one of two royal complexes extent in China today. The palace is splendid and is built in a distinctly ethnic Manchu architectural style.
The city's proximity to the former Soviet Union is seen on its matchbox style houses. Mao's huge statue, at the busy traffic hub of Zhongshan Road and Nanjing Road, was erected just two years after the Culture Revolution started and is now the landmark of Shengyang.

There are plenty of things to do and see while here; pagodas, statues, palaces, museums, and parks. The largest museum in northeast China, the provincial museum, is recommended for an insight to the culture of this part of China. The collection cover bronze ware, pottery from pre-China to recent calligraphy. Here you can also find the first two imperial tombs of the Qing Dynasty. The imperial palace and the two tombs are all listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Sights in the old city, Shenhe District, can be walked between.

If you want an insight to the popular chinese liquer, Baiju, you should visit The old Longkou Wine Museum. A small museum beside the Laolongkou distillery tells the history of Baiju production
The last evening you take a night train to Chengde.

Day 17

Early in the morning, you will arrive in Chengde. This was Emperor Kangxi's favorite stopover for hunting in Mulan, sixty kilometers to the north.

And here in the beautiful Chengde, large magnificent buildings were built for the emperors to host his country and feast those nobles from so far of his empire and rewarded them great gifts .

Not only the sunlight in always blue sky, fresh air which is still there we also can enjoy, we can choose to hike on the ruined section of the Great Wall near here, visit Mountain Resort, The Palace , and rings of Buddhism monasteries nearby, and enjoy the local food, snack even wild game - pheasant, deer meat and hare but they are not cheap.
Stay overnight at a Monastery Hotel near the Mountain Resort.

Day 18

We charter a bus to Beijing so you can stop, en route, to visit Jinshanling 金山岭 or Simatai 司马台 the most beautiful sections of the Great Wall. Expect to arrive late at our hotel in Beijing.

Day 19

One more day in China's capital city. Beijing is changing rapidly and it seems as almost all city is under re-construction. Many new buildings were constructed for the Olympics, such as the famous Bird nest and the Water Cube. And new subway lines have opened. The new Beijing has lots of high-rise buildings, roads in three layers and a great deal of neon and modern architecture. The most modern part of the city centre is situated around the Wangfujing Street 王府井大街. Jianguomenwai Dajie 建国门外大街 is another area with several large shopping centres, such as the Friendship Store 友谊商店.

Not far from the Friendship Store, to the East, you will also find the famous Silk Alley 秀水市场 where you can buy clothing garments of all kinds, only some of them made of silk. Another good place for shopping is the Hongqiao Market 红桥市场 just north of the Eastern Gate of Tiantan Park. The Hongqiao Market is no longer a regular market in the street, but a modern four storey-building where everything from CD-players to pearls are sold.

The Tiantan Park 天坛公园 is one of the largest parks in Beijing. In the middle of the park you will find the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan 天坛) which was one of four important temples where the emperor made annual offerings. In each direction from the Forbidden City you will find each of these temples. To the North; Temple of Earth (Ditan 地坦). To the West; Temple of Moon (Yuetan 月坦). To the East, not far from Friendship Store; Temple of Sun (Ritan 日坦). Temple of Heaven, which is to the south was the most important of these temples since the emperor was regarded as the son of heaven.
In most parks there are a lot of activity in the mornings. People gather to do any kind of exercise; taiqi, qigong, dancing and even singing opera. In some parks old men bring their bird cages and let the birds sing together while the men chat away. Tiantan Park 天坛公园 is probably the park with most morning activities of all. It is quite an experience to walk around in the park in the early morning surrounded by all the activity. In the evenings you can visit an acrobatic show or a performance of Peking Opera. The Lama Temple, Yonghegong 雍和宫, is a nice a quiet temple well worth a visit.
In case you have time, book your returnflight a few days later and explore more of the important sights of Beijing,

Day 20

Tour ends.