Help needed on itinerary

Yes, Sichuan food is very famous.Yadīng Nature Reserve is Very worth a visit.From the Leshan to zigong, there are buses.

Hi,

You're trying to fit in too much! You have chosen some very interesting places on your list, and some good ways of getting into less-touristed, more traditional corners of China, but you don't have nearly enough time for everything on your list. Here are some thoughts:

Yunnan is a good introduction to China. Places like Dali and Shaxi and even Tiger Leaping Gorge see tourists and have nice infrastructure, but are not overwhelming and offer plenty of opportunities for activities like hiking and cycling.

I'd skip Sichuan if I was you, and head straight from Yunnan to Guizhou or Guangxi. The region around Kaili is very interesting, particularly if you manage to catch a festival or two. Guilin and the surrounding region is touristy, but taking in the karst scenery there is certainly an iconic Chinese thing to do.

Well done for wanting to spend so much time in Guangdong, it's an underrated and very interesting province. I'm pretty familiar with Guangzhou, and have never heard of the Yuyin Mountain Villa. There's a fair amount to see in and around Guangzhou. I wouldn't go to Foshan if I was you - with limited time, there are more interesting sights around. The region around Kaiping is well worth a trip though, and if you do go, you should spend at least one night there.

Hong Kong is fascinating and can easily eat up a few days. Shenzhen is anything but cute, but I've never spent longer there than the time it takes to buy a train ticket out of town.

Chaozhou is a very interesting city with lots and lots of sights, but do not go there for the over-priced, entirely modern floating bridge.

I've twice been to Meizhou, but never to Dapu. Meizhou and the surrounding countryside is lovely, and Dapu's probably interesting as well. You are well off-the-beaten track there.

Xiamen and Quanzhou are both interesting - Quanzhou has some unique historical sights.

By now you hardly have any time left to see the big, popular cities of the north, never mind Hunan. You really need to pick and choose what you have time for!!!

Again, Wuhan is anything but cute...

Anyway, some lovely ideas in your itinerary beyond the standard thing we get on here all the time, but you really need to cut it down.

I agree with @Giora that this is way way more than will fit in 47 days. A quick count and adding in transportation timing for what it would take to get around and appropriate time per place, and I have this coming in at 87 days, nearly double the time you have. If you are on a low budget, all the traveling around this vast a geographic area, will add up.

I would also agree that spending the first part of your trip in Yunnan is valid. However, I'm not sure I would prioritize southeast coastal China over other areas. To some extent, it may depend on how much you really want to get Hong Kong into this trip. If that is dispensable this time around, then perhaps Yunnan > Guizhou > Guilin area > Zhangjiajie > north to Beijing is a valid plan. Upper Sichuan by the time you get into November, will be getting pretty cold and snow is possible, so maybe timing not so good. You should take another pass at your wish list and really prioritize hard.

"Cute" is not an applicable adjective to very much in China these days, so don't get your expectations out of whack with reality.

Thank you for your responses!
@Giora why would you skip Sichuan? It seems to me like one of the province with the most to do...
I also have the opportunity to start with Hong Kong and move from there.

@jiejie I do have to go to Hong Kong on this trip to get a visa for Russia. Did you edit your comment about Yuangang? Is it not true that harvest is done and not yet flooded? By cute I mean we want to see typical Chinese villages, seems to be more and more difficult with local tourism booming.

Well for starters, you have to skip a bunch of places off of your list, and Sichuan is a bit of a detour. The main interest in Sichuan is up in the mountains - Chengdu is a fairly typical modern Chinese city that's had its historic center bulldozed to oblivion. It has good food, but there is very little to actually see. The city's main tourist draw is its panda zoo. I personally find Yunnan rather more interesting than Sichuan.

Neither Shenzhen nor Wuhan are "typical Chinese villages"... Some of the places on your list will take you to very quaint and interesting villages, largely untouched by tourism. But getting around places like that can be tricky, particularly if you don't speak Chinese.

We are having a little bit of trouble wrapping our heads around an itinerary since there is SO MUCH to do and see.

China is larger than Europe, best to try to digest a few provinces rather than the whole country

We like hiking, beautiful scenery and landscape, quaint little towns, museums from time to time and good eats. We are not big fan of temples and monasteries, we've seen an awful lot in the past months.

What do you mean by quaint towns? A lot of the places on your list a huge cities or tourist traps.

We have 47 days total. Also, of course we are budget travellers and tend to travel more slowly than others.

Your proposed itinerary appears to travel ludicrously fast and takes in a lot of very expensive sights.

Yuángáng: rice terraces. Since we can take a bus from Vietnam to Hékou and there's a bus service to Yuángáng it seems like a no brainer.

If you want a quaint town, Jianshui might be the closest thing to it and is right on the way from Yuan[y]ang on the way to Dali. The nearby village of Tuanshan is lovely, and tourism has not yet destroyed it. It is also Chinese, unlike most of Yunnan's villages which represent various ethnic minorities. (youll see plenty of Chinese villages later, but you might want a taste early in the trip)

Dàli-Shāxi-Lijang: Get our Chinese bearings for a few days and prepare our first trek to the Tiger Leaping Gorge

Lúgū Hú: relax around the lake
Yàdīng Nature Reserve: second trek

The road to Lugu Hu and Yading is somewhat rough. Navigating it without Chinese skills is possible but will be difficult. Expect transport to take the better part of a day.

Chengdu: seems like a fun town with good food to unwind. Maybe a day trip to Sānxīngduī

I wouldnt describe Chengdu, a city of 15 million people, as a town. There is good food all through Yunnan and Sichuan. There are some ok sights and plenty of other stuff to see in and around Sichuan.

Sanxingdui isnt much of a sight. There are some wonderful artifacts that were unearthed there, but if you travel there it is mostly just a field.

Lè Shān: giant Buddha
Zigong: dinosaur museum
Luòbiao: hanging coffins
Chìsui: Nature reserve and bamboo forest
Kaili: minority villages and homestays
Ānshùn: villages to explore in the surrounding areas
Guìlín: karst peaks and villages around plus day trip to Tiānmén Mountain

Guilin is a city with a transit hub. You want Yangshuo, 2-4 hours east of there.

Longji: rice terraces

I would skip the second rice terraces.

That's a lot of travel up to this point. I would expect you would be nearing the end of your 47 days if you travel slowly.

Guangzhou: trips to Yuyin Mountain Villa, Foshan and Kaiping
Yangjiang: beaches (are they swimmable in October?) and maritime Silk Road museum
Hong Kong
Shenzhen: seems cute with art galleries
Chaozhou: Guangji bridge
Dàpù: scenery and old towns in surrounding areas
Xiàmén: cute city with easy trips to Gulàng Yu and Fújiàn Tulóu
Quánzhōu and around: Chóngwu fortified city, Xúnpun and Ānxī
Wuyí Shan: mountain with one-day hikes, ancient villages and bamboo rafts
Jingdézhèn: I love pottery and porcelain, possible trip to Yáoli

I would skip ALL of this.

Despite what you might have heard, Shenzhen is not cute. It's a soulless modern city famous for prostitution, luxury spas, organized crime, and being cheaper than Hong Kong.

The beaches at this point will be cold, as it will be late November if you do Yunnan and Sichuan first.

Guangzhou is a huge city with enough to keep one interested but not enough to thrill you.

Jingdezhen was famous for pottery 3 centuries ago, but is now a polluted industrial wasteland
Xiamen and Gulangyu are much more interesting for domestic tourists than foreign. Their luxurious colonial mansions look like small, bland early 20th century, normal homes in Canada/Europe. The Fujian Tulou are very cool, but it's a long way to travel to see them.

Zhāngjiājiè: National Park (Avatar look-a-like forest), rafting and caves
Fènghuáng: scenic village with houses on stilts

Doubling back towards Sichuan. Fenghuang is a pretty large town. It use to be beautiful, but rampant tourist development compounded by nasty flooding have left it rather worse for the wear.

Túnxī and around: nice old streets, good street food, Huīzhōu villages
Huángshān: 1-2 day hiking
Shanghai
Sūzhōu: bike around town, museums and gardens. Visit water towns around
Nánjīng: palace ruins and it seems beautiful

Kind of a detour to head over to the eastern provinces. Being the most developed they are also the most expensive and some would say least interesting.

Xi'an: terracotta warriors
Bejing

Detour back into central China before hitting Beijing.

47 days sounds like a lot, but it really isnt enough to try to tackle the entire country. My first time going through China backpacking I did less in 75 days and I travel fast.

You are going to want to save 5-7 days at the end for Beijing, as it is one of China's real highlights.

Starting in Yunnan makes sense. Yuanyang, Dali, and Tiger Leaping gorge are all lovely. Through in some manditory transit connections in Kunming and Lijiang + Jianshui if you like and you are looking at 9-11 days easily.

That leaves you 30 days to get from Yunnan to Beijing. You can still fit a fair amount into that, but you need to budget your time well.

Somewhere along the way, fly to Hong Kong, get your Russian visa and then fly back to your next destination. No reason to head down through Guangdong's mega cities and endless industrial parks unless that is what you really want to see. Note that going to Hong Kong and back onto the mainland will require a multi entry Chinese visa.

I did edit my post above, but it is true that Yuanyang in October is the awkward period between harvest and flooding. I've been there the first few days of November and most major terraces were already flooded. Longji isn't going to be any better and in fact, worse, since they don't flood until spring. But lay that aside for awhile.

Chinese visa: will you have a single-, double-, or multiple-entry visa? How many days duration of stay--just the standard 30 or something more. Russian visa: are you looking to get a transit visa (up to 10 days) say for crossing on the Trans-Siberian, or will you need a regular tourist visa allowing you longer?

Helping you further with some creative ideas on paring down and putting things together in a logical, cost-effective fashion, depends a bit on answers to these questions. Also, what day were you planning on leaving Vietnam for China?

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. For the record, I was not attempting to do all this in 7 weeks! I figured that by writing down the things/places that are interesting to us, it would give a better idea of our likes to help is cut down.

@rpbourne quaint for me means a place where its pleasant to walk around, there might be little coffee shops or interesting architecture. Maybe I did not express myself correctly, I saw bigger cities as a base to access smaller villages. Since I've never been to China, it's difficult to evaluate which places are huge tourist traps like you said. So if you can be more specific, it would be very helpful.
I was trying to avoid flying because it gets expensive. Another option I have is to fly directly to Hong Kong and start the journey from there.

@jiejie I'm applying for the Chinese visa in Hanoi. As Canadians, we get 90 days. I have the paperwork for a single or multiple entry. I'm trying to determine which one I need, it's only yesterday that I found out I absolutely needed to stop by Hong Kong. We need a regular tourist visa for Russia, so it might eat up more time than I thought.
We planned on leaving Vietnam October 8th, it's a Saturday. I know local tourism is stronger during weekend, we are flexible and as long as our visa is done, we can leave earlier or later.

I have just been to Guizhou and could give you a few tips on it:
- You do not specific need to spend a whole day to visit terrace. There are terrace everywhere in mountain villages in Guizhou. The best season to see the terrace is Sept when the fields are filled up with fully grown rice. Farmers usually do not farm in winter so you might end up seeing nothing.

• Going to Fenghuang from Guizhou is easier. When you finish your trip to Anshun/Chishui/Kaili, go back to Guiyang, take the high speed train to Huaihua (~2 hrs), change the normal train to Jishou (~1 1/2 hrs), and take bus to Fenghuang (1 hr). This is much safe than taking a direct bus from Changsha(Hunan) to Fenghuang which takes almost 6 hours and the road condition is not really good. To play safe I always choose train rather than bus. ;)
  -> So the route would be like this:
  Yunnan -> Guizhou -> Fenghuang/Zhangjiajie -> Guilin -> Guangdong
  There is no direct train from Zhangjiajie to Guilin however, you may need to transfer at Huaihua/Changsha/Guiyang.

• The museum in Wuhan (Hubei Province Museum) seems closed. You may need to check again.
• For journey overnight, I suggest choosing the hard-bed. You could hardly sleep on hard-seat, especially when you are allocated the corridor seat. But you may check the price first. Sometimes hard-bed price is similar to the 2nd-class High speed rail lol.

Hope these help.