6 Days: Shanghai and Beyond
Six days gives you room for everything the shorter versions of this trip have to trade off against each other: both classic day trips, a proper water-town detour, and a real two days in Beijing rather than the compressed sprint a five-day trip forces. This is the gateway itinerary that doesn’t feel like it’s cutting corners anywhere.
Book these before you go: the Beijing G-train on Trip.com (book the moment your dates are firm), a Beijing hotel (Agoda) for the two-night stay, and a Great Wall Mutianyu day tour on Viator .
| Day | Focus | Key cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Land, visa/eSIM setup, the Bund | Free (the Bund promenade) |
| 2 | Suzhou day trip by G-train | ¥21-40 second-class fare |
| 3 | Hangzhou West Lake day trip | ¥73 second-class fare |
| 4 | Wuzhen or Tongli water town | Check current transport fares |
| 5-6 | Beijing: Forbidden City, Great Wall | ¥550-700 G-train fare |
Day 1: Arrival and the Doorway City
Land at Pudong (PVG) if you’re flying internationally, or Hongqiao (SHA) if you can route through it, since it puts you right beside the station you’ll use repeatedly this week. Sort your visa status before you fly: the 240-hour transit (55 countries including the US) requires a confirmed onward ticket to a third country, while the separate 30-day unilateral waiver (roughly 50 countries, not the US) doesn’t. Because this itinerary loops through Beijing and back rather than exiting through a different country, travelers relying on the 240-hour transit should double-check their specific routing qualifies, and Americans in particular should plan on a standard tourist visa if it doesn’t.
Get your eSIM and VPN sorted before departure, not after landing, since both are genuinely difficult to arrange once you’re inside the Great Firewall. Spend the afternoon on the Bund, free and best at dusk, and treat it as the opening chapter of a story the rest of this week is going to complicate: Shanghai was built as a foreign treaty port and looks almost nothing like the China you’re about to see further out. The Shanghai guide has the deeper in-city checklist if you want it.
Day 2: Suzhou
23-30 minutes from Hongqiao by the fastest G-trains, around ¥21-40 second class, 350+ departures daily. The Humble Administrator’s Garden and the Suzhou Museum both sit close to the station.
Day 3: Hangzhou
About 45 minutes each way, roughly ¥73 second class, Metro Line 1 running direct to West Lake from Hangzhou East. A 9:15am departure gets you lakeside by 10:25am with the full day still ahead.
Day 4: Water Towns and a Different China
Wuzhen and Tongli are the deeper Jiangnan water towns beyond the near option of Zhujiajiao, genuinely quieter and a better read on small-town Jiangnan life than either Suzhou or Hangzhou give you at this point, both of which have grown into genuine day-trip circuits in their own right. Check current transport schedules ahead of time since neither connects as directly as the last two days did, and treat today as a slower, more observational stop before tomorrow’s early start.
Day 5-6: The Beijing Hop
G-trains run Hongqiao to Beijing South 44-46 times a day, the fastest in 4h24m, most in 4.5-7.5 hours, second class around ¥550-700. Book this the moment your dates are confirmed, the sub-5-hour departures sell out first. Take an early Day 5 train, spend the afternoon on the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, and stay overnight.
Day 6 belongs to the Great Wall, most visitors go with Mutianyu over the more crowded Badaling section, roughly 1.5-2 hours from central Beijing. With a full second day, you can also work in the Summer Palace or a hutong walk before catching an evening train back to Shanghai, or, if it suits your onward flight better, fly out of Beijing directly rather than doubling back.
If six days is more than you need, the 5-day itinerary compresses Beijing into a tighter overnight, and the full gateway guide covers Xi’an, Guilin, and Chengdu if you’re weighing Beijing against a different second stop.
Book the Beijing train first, before hotels, before anything else, the whole back half of this trip depends on getting that reservation locked in early.