Start with the constraints you cannot move
Photo: Hermann Luyken / Wikimedia Commons / CC0.
Do not start a first trip to China by collecting twenty attractions. Start with the constraints the rest of the plan has to fit around: whether you can enter, the dates you can actually be there, and any international arrival or departure that is already fixed. A wedding, a conference, or a friend’s schedule belongs in that same list. A preference for a museum does not.
If the international ticket already exists, treat the arrival city, the departure city, and the dates as constraints. If it does not exist yet, you do not have to buy it before you know what the trip is for. The point is to see the edges before you fill the middle.
Entry comes before the route. How long you want to travel is not the same question as how long your entry status permits you to stay. Ordinary visa-free entry and visa-free transit are different conditions, and both depend on your passport. Check the current rule that applies to you before you design the days. That check lives in China entry requirements for tourists. This page does not keep a nationality list.
Count the days you can actually use
Once the dates are real, separate the calendar from the time you can spend on the places you came for. The morning you land, the morning you leave, and a move between cities often leave only part of a day. They are not wasted, and they are not full sightseeing days.
You do not need an hour-by-hour schedule yet. You need a time budget that is smaller than the number on the ticket. How that budget behaves is in how many days you need in China. Choose cities only after you have that number in view.
Decide what the trip is for
Before you name five cities, name one or two reasons for coming. Imperial history, the Great Wall, a modern city on foot, food, pandas, a coast, a landscape, a fixed event, or people you are visiting: any of those can be the reason. The list is not a menu to complete.
A city should answer a reason you already have. Choosing the city first, then inventing why it belongs, is how a first trip fills up with names. If the open question is whether the first days should be Beijing or Shanghai, that choice is in Beijing or Shanghai. It is a choice about the kind of days you want, not a ranking of the two cities.
Choose bases before attractions
With the reasons clear, choose the bases the trip actually needs. That base matters more to the shape of the trip than a pin for a single sight. Ask what belongs naturally around it. Then ask whether another city adds something those nights do not already give you.
Do not start from a pile of names and try to connect them afterward. A city has to justify the transfer it creates. How to make that call is in how many cities you should visit.
Draw the route before filling the days
Put the bases in an order you can see on the map. That does not mean the trip must run in a straight line. It means you should notice a return that exists only because the flight home leaves from the city where you landed.
If the international itinerary can arrive in one city and leave from another, check whether that avoids the extra domestic leg. It is something to look at, not a ticket everyone should buy. The route should be visible before the days are filled with sights. This page will not hand you a 7-day, 10-day, or 14-day route.
Decide how each major move works
For each change of base, decide whether that move is a train, a flight, or something else that actually fits the distance. Compare the whole sequence from hotel to hotel, not the time printed in the middle of the ticket. That comparison is in train or fly in China. Which kind of move suits the distance sits in getting around China, and the railway ride itself is in China high-speed rail.
Find the bookings that can control the itinerary
Not every visit needs to control the itinerary. A few bookings can decide whether a particular day is possible at all: a major site that requires a reservation, a ferry with a booking constraint, a full day at a theme park, a timed event, or anything with limited availability. There is no stable national list of those visits. The rules change, and most of them are not your problem.
After the route exists, find the few reservations that would break the itinerary if they were unavailable. Confirm those before you pack flexible sightseeing around them. Book the hard parts before scheduling the easy parts.
Choose hotels for the trip you actually built
A useful hotel is the one that fits the days you have already designed. “Central” is not one address that works for every plan. What matters is which part of the city you will use, whether the metro reaches it, how you will get to the station or airport on the first or last day, and where the long visits actually are.
A lower rate on the wrong side of a very large city can add unnecessary travel time every morning. There is no universal distance that makes a hotel correct. Neighborhood choices belong in the city guide for the place you are staying, after the base is chosen.
Fill the days last
Daily sightseeing is the last layer, not the first. The weak order is attractions, then more attractions, then cities, then transport, and only then the discovery that the trip does not fit. The workable order is the constraints, the usable time, the reason for going, the bases, the route, the few bookings that can break a day, and only then the details of each day.
Do not fix every hour. Leave room for a long meal, a wrong turn, weather, fatigue, and a place you decide to stay with. There is no correct percentage of empty time. The day should still have some.
Do not book everything at once
Some purchases should wait for the decision they depend on. A cheap domestic flight is not a reason to add a city you have not yet justified. Hotels in four cities are early if you have not decided that four bases make sense. A day built around one sight is early if you do not yet know the reservation exists.
That is not a rule to delay every booking, and it is not a rule to book the hotels on the first night you look. Commit first to the pieces the rest of the trip hangs on. Book the later pieces after those pieces are real.
Make the decision simple
Establish how you can enter, and how much time you really have. Decide why you are going. Choose the few bases that trip needs, connect them, and secure the bookings that can control the schedule. Fill the days after that.
A good itinerary is not the one with the most places in it. It is the one whose parts still work after you connect them.