Your journey begins in Beijing, where ancient culinary traditions live alongside a bold new appetite for innovation. Upon arrival at the airport or train station, your travel expert welcomes you and transfers you to your hotel. After settling in and refreshing, the evening’s flavour-led introduction unfolds — an immersive exploration of Beijing through its revered food culture. 

We begin at a lively local market, where the air is rich with scent and steam. Hawkers call out their offerings — skewered lamb seasoned with cumin, chestnuts roasted over coals, and hawthorn fruits glazed in crystallised sugar. 

Every stall in these narrow aisles tells a story: one of dynastic origins, cultural blending, or regional migration. Here, food becomes a bridge — linking the Ming dynasty to modern tastes, street tradition to ceremonial table. 

From the market, step inside a private courtyard home, where the day’s experience becomes hands-on. Guided by a local host, you’ll learn the traditional techniques of rolling, folding, and shaping dumplings — culinary gestures passed down through generations. It’s simple, delicious, and deeply rooted in family practice. 

Flour dust settles across working hands, and soon the table fills with steaming dumplings made from your own touch. 

The evening culminates in the city’s must-have dinner: Peking Duck. At a celebrated restaurant, the bird is roasted in wood-fired ovens the traditional way — lacquered skin crisping to amber, the meat tender as tradition demands. 

Carved tableside with precise strokes, each slice is served with delicate pancakes, spring onion, and plum sauce. It's more than dinner; it’s ceremony, history, and flavour combined. 

A sensitively paced first evening, easy yet complete — the palate awakened, the spirit welcomed, the journey set in motion.

The morning unfolds with an effortless glide into local life as we set out on e-bikes for an immersive ride through Beijing’s hutongs. 

These historic alleyways are at their most atmospheric in the morning, when fruit sellers arrange their produce, neighbours greet each other across courtyards, and breakfast stalls send steam curling into the air. 

Riding through these narrow lanes offers an immediate sense of connection — a feeling of moving with, rather than just observing, the rhythm of the city. 

We pause at small neighbourhood food stops to sample classic hutong bites: freshly griddled pancakes, sesame pastries still warm, or simple dumplings prepared by family-run kitchens that have served their communities for decades. 

Your travel expert guides the pace, choosing shaded corners for refreshment breaks and revealing quiet courtyards, small squares where locals gather, and lanes that open suddenly into wider cultural spaces. 

A stop near the Drum and Bell Towers invites a moment to play traditional street games or simply enjoy the lively mix of old stories and present-day energy. The route is flexible, always shifting according to interests, mood, and the flow of the hutongs. 

Late morning, we transition on foot into another side of the hutong world — its growing creative scene. Behind modest doorways are reimagined courtyards now home to independent cafés, small design studios, roasteries, and concept shops. These spaces reflect a younger Beijing that respects tradition while experimenting with modern identity. It’s a softer, more contemporary expression of the same neighbourhoods explored earlier by bike. 

By mid-afternoon, we move to the 798 Art District — a dramatic contrast to the hutongs’ intimacy. Once a military factory complex, its Bauhaus-style warehouses now house galleries, murals, installations and open public spaces where industrial heritage and contemporary creativity collide. It’s bold, urban, and expressive. 

The day ends with dinner in one of 798’s converted factory restaurants, where industrial textures and modern cuisine echo the theme of reinvention. Today’s journey reveals Beijing as a city continually reshaped by imagination, community, and creative spirit.

We travel by high speed rail to Xi’an, entering a city whose influence on East Asian urbanism extends far beyond its walls. After settling in, our architect joins us to explore how the city’s Tang dynasty plan became a blueprint for capitals across the region. 

We begin with the ancient city walls, among the most complete defensive systems still standing. Their strict rectangular alignment reflects the geometry that defined Tang Chang’an, a city that once covered a footprint far larger than modern Xi’an. 

Walking along the ramparts, our architect explains how this plan influenced the layout of Nara and Kyoto in Japan, as well as major Korean capitals. Xi’an’s impact lies in urban order rather than individual buildings, offering a model of how power, ritual and daily life could be structured across a capital. 

Descending into the city, we trace the still legible logic of the grid: broad avenues separating residential wards, markets, temples and administrative zones. 

This pattern reflects not only practical needs but also symbolic ones, positioning the emperor at the centre of a precisely organised diagram of authority. 

In the old town, we explore the Drum and Bell Towers area where traditional timber buildings combine classical proportions with later adaptations. Raised platforms, axial alignments and bracket systems reveal the enduring principles of Chinese architecture, even as the surrounding district has modernised. 

By the end of the day, Xi’an emerges as a city shaped not only by its monuments but by an urban vision that influenced centuries of planning across East Asia.

PROGRAM CONCLUDES