How Long Will it Take?

[jojo1982]

Plan to do a trip to China.I am going to visit Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou， Chengdu and Lijiang. How long will it take to get around? Is 2 weeks enough? I found a company Tours4fun through Google, their prices are acceptable, but are there any cheaper tours available to China?

[jno]

I would have thought 2 weeks would be enough but it depends how long you want to spend in these places - with Beijing and Shanghai, both big cities, you could spend several days or just cram the highlights into a couple of days. It will also depend on internal travel arrangements: planes are a lot quicker than trains.

[mirela]

yeah, agree above, you may need spend at least 2 days in bejing, then shanghai,suzhou,hangzhou those 3 cities are nearby each other, but could take you 1 week, after go chengdu and lijiang. if you only go to those popular commercial turist destination, 2 weeks is ok, but if you wanna explore those places more, can be a bit tight, as china is too big, you will spend lots time on the way.

[JK2]

2 weeks seems very tight to me - you are talking very large distances. I presume you are going to Chengdu to see the pandas at Woolong breeding centre. Woolong is a long drive from Chengdu. You will need to allow arrival day Chengdu - drive to Woolong and overnight at hotel next day, see pandas following morning and return to Chengdu after lunch arriving evening. So that is 2 nights Chengdu, 1 night Woolong. I agree with mirela that you probably need a week to do Chengdu/Lijiang properly. Tours4fun seem to be a US company so I guess that is where you are departing from - if not and you are going from UK have a look at this website - Majestic China trip - http://www.shoestring.co.uk/web/site/default.a spx?m=zoeken&a=sr_countries&country=CN