Four days in Xi'an: a buried army, and a Muslim quarter as old as the Silk Road
Three nights inside the walls: the bell tower and the Hui lanes on arrival, the terracotta warriors on the second day, the wall and the Tang city on the third, and the mosque before you leave.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Xi'an
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
For a thousand years this was the capital, under the name Chang'an, and the eastern end of the road that ran to Persia and Rome. Thirteen dynasties ruled from here. What that leaves you with is a compact walled city with layers of empire stacked underneath it and an army of clay soldiers half an hour east.
It is also the easiest big Chinese city to orient yourself in. The Bell Tower sits at the exact centre of a rectangle of Ming walls, four roads run out from it to four gates, and everything inside is a short walk or two metro stops away.
The other reason to come is dinner. The Hui community has been in these lanes since traders arrived along the Silk Road, and the food they cook, lamb, cumin, hand pulled noodles, flatbread torn into soup, is unlike anything else in the country.
Highlights
- Pit One at the terracotta warriors, where two thousand figures stand in formation in the trenches they were dug out of
- Cycling the full thirteen kilometres of the Ming city wall, a loop that needs a couple of hours and no skill
- Eating your way down the Hui quarter after dark, when the lanes are lit and the grills are going
- Tang gold, Han jade and Zhou bronzes in the Shaanxi History Museum, nearly all of it found within an hour of the door
- The Great Mosque, a working mosque built as a Chinese temple, with a minaret shaped like a pagoda
Where to stay
Xi'an, three nights
Stay inside the walls. The rectangle is only about three kilometres by two, hotels of every price sit inside it, and being able to walk home from dinner in the Hui lanes is worth more than a swimming pool.
The area around the Bell Tower is the obvious base and puts a metro station under your feet. The South Gate end is quieter and a five minute walk from the wall steps.
Day by day
Day 1 in Xi'an
The centre of the rectangle, and the lanes behind it
Xi'an was laid out on a grid and never lost it, so the first afternoon is mostly about standing at the middle and understanding the shape of the place. Everything today is within ten minutes of everything else.
The two towers are best done as a pair, and the ticket that covers both costs barely more than one. Time it for one of the short drum or bell performances, which happen most hours.
Then walk into the Hui quarter and stay there. It gets better as the light goes, and you should not plan anything afterwards.
- 15:00
Bell Tower
ArchitectureThe exact centre of the old city, sitting on a traffic island reached by an underpass. Ancient bells inside, short performances through the day, and a rooftop gallery that gives you the four roads running out to the four gates.
- 16:30
Drum Tower
ArchitectureFour minutes west of the Bell Tower and its opposite number, holding a rank of drums that once marked the hours. Go up for the view down into the Hui lanes, which is where you are going next.
- 18:00
Hui Muslim Quarter
VisitA dense grid of alleys behind the Drum Tower where the Hui community has lived and cooked for centuries. Come hungry, walk slowly, and buy small things from several places rather than sitting down once.
With more time: The souvenir stalls along Huimin Street expect bargaining and start at roughly twice what anyone pays, so treat the first number as an opening bid.
Day 2 in Xi'an
The terracotta army, and the emperor who ordered it
In 1974 farmers digging a well east of the city hit a clay head. What came out of the ground was an army of eight thousand life-sized soldiers, each with a different face, buried to guard a dead emperor.
Go early and go straight to Pit One, the biggest, before the tour groups fill the gallery. Then work backwards through pits Three and Two, which are smaller, less restored and in some ways more interesting, since you can see the figures still lying broken where they fell.
The mausoleum itself is a wooded hill a couple of kilometres away and has never been opened. It sounds like an anticlimax and mostly is, but standing on top of an unexcavated tomb that ancient histories describe as containing rivers of mercury is worth twenty minutes.
On the way back, the Tang emperors' hot spring palace sits at the foot of Mount Li and breaks up the drive.
- 08:30
Army of Terracotta Warriors and Horses
HistoricThree excavated pits under aircraft hangars, holding around eight thousand figures, a hundred chariots and forty thousand bronze weapons, all made for one emperor's afterlife. Pit One first, at opening. Hire the audio guide; without it the pits are silent and unexplained.
- 13:00
Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum
HistoricThe burial mound of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, still sealed after two thousand years. A shuttle runs from the warriors on the same ticket. There is not much to see, and that is rather the point.
- 15:00
Huaqing Palace
NatureThe Tang court's hot spring retreat at the foot of Mount Li, where the emperor Xuanzong installed his favourite concubine. Most of the buildings are later reconstructions, but the excavated Tang bathing pools underneath are the real thing.
With more time: Chiang Kai-shek was arrested at Huaqing in 1936 in the incident that forced the Nationalists into an alliance with the Communists, and the bullet holes in the window frames of his room are still shown.
Day 3 in Xi'an
Round the wall on a bicycle, then out to the Tang city
The Ming wall is the best thing in Xi'an that is not made of clay soldiers. Nearly fourteen kilometres of it, wide enough at the top for four cars abreast, and completely intact all the way round.
Hire a bike at the South Gate and do the full circuit. It takes about two hours at a wander, the surface is stone slabs so nothing goes fast, and every few hundred metres a watchtower gives you a look down into the courtyard houses inside and the tower blocks outside.
In the afternoon go south, out of the Ming city and into what was the Tang one, where the museum and the pagoda are ten minutes apart.
- 09:00
Xi'an City Wall
OtherTwelve metres high, wide enough on top to cycle four abreast, and unbroken for nearly fourteen kilometres around the old city. Bikes are hired at the steps by the hour, the full loop takes about two hours, and going anticlockwise keeps the afternoon light behind you.
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- 13:30
Shaanxi History Museum
CultureThe provincial collection, running from neolithic pottery through Zhou and Han bronzes to Tang gold and glazed camels, almost all of it dug up within an hour's drive of the building. Free, timed and heavily booked, so reserve a slot days ahead.
- 16:30
Big (Wild) Goose Pagoda
ArchitectureBuilt in 652 to house the sutras a monk brought back from India, and now the emblem of the city. Climb it for the view over the southern suburbs, and stay for the fountain show in the square below, which is loud and very popular.
With more time: The Little Wild Goose Pagoda, from 709, sits in a quieter park nearer the wall, costs nothing to enter, and shares its grounds with the city museum.
Day 4 in Xi'an
A mosque that looks like a temple
The last morning belongs in the Hui quarter again, at the building most visitors walk past the end of without noticing. The Great Mosque is reached down a souvenir alley and then through a gate, after which the noise stops.
There is no dome and no visible minaret. Instead there are courtyards, a spirit wall, stone arches and a pagoda that calls the faithful to prayer, because Chinese Muslims built in the only architectural language available to them.
The airport is an hour out and the high speed station about twenty minutes, so this fits before anything but the earliest departure.
- 09:00
Great Mosque
ReligiousA working Ming dynasty mosque laid out as a series of Chinese courtyards, with room for a thousand worshippers and a minaret built as a pagoda. Non-Muslims can walk the grounds but not the prayer hall. Cover shoulders and knees, and avoid Friday midday.
With more time: If you have another two hours, the Forest of Steles near the south wall holds four thousand inscribed stone tablets, including the one that records the arrival of Nestorian Christianity in China.
Before you go
Getting around
Inside the walls, walk. The Bell Tower to the Drum Tower is four minutes and the Muslim quarter starts immediately behind it.
The metro handles everything outside: line 2 runs north to south through the old city, and the Shaanxi History Museum and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda are both a few stops out on line 4 or a short taxi ride.
The terracotta warriors need a bus, a driver or a tour. Tourist bus 5, sometimes signed 306, leaves from beside Xi'an railway station and takes about an hour. Ignore anybody in the station forecourt who offers to take you somewhere better.
Tickets and timing
Book the terracotta warriors online with your passport number and go on the first slot of the day. By eleven the walkway around Pit One is three deep and you will be looking at the backs of heads.
A combined ticket covers the warriors and the Qin Shihuang mausoleum mound, with a free shuttle between them, so buy both together rather than paying twice.
The city wall stays open into the evening and the last hour of light on it is the best one. Rent a bicycle at any of the four gates, leave a deposit, and drop it off at whichever gate you finish at.
Eating in the Hui quarter
The two dishes to get right are yangrou paomo, mutton soup with flatbread you tear up yourself into the bowl before it is filled, and roujiamo, chopped braised meat in a griddled bun that predates the sandwich by a long way.
Beiyuanmen is the main lit-up lane and the busiest. The alleys either side of it, quieter and mostly Chinese-signed, do the same food better and cheaper.
Almost everything here is halal, so pork is absent and alcohol is scarce. Nobody minds if you drink elsewhere; the point is that the tea is good and the queues move.
Xi'an spends most of its tourist reputation on one afternoon in a field east of town, which is fair enough, because there is nothing else like those pits anywhere.
But the city itself is the better surprise. A complete Ming wall you can ride round, a Muslim quarter that has been cooking for a thousand years, and a museum full of things that were under the streets you walked in on. Give it four days and it stops being a stopover.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Xi'an worth more than a day trip from Beijing?
- Yes, and treating it as one is the common mistake. The warriors take most of a day on their own, and the city wall, the museum and the Hui quarter are the reasons Xi'an is a good place to be rather than a stop. Four days is comfortable, three works if you skip the last morning.
- How do I get to the terracotta warriors?
- Tourist bus 5, also signed 306, runs from the east side of Xi'an railway station to the site in about an hour for a few yuan. A taxi or a car with a driver costs more and saves an hour each way. Avoid the unofficial minibuses touting outside the station, which take people to a replica museum instead.
- Beijing to Xi'an, train or plane?
- Train. The high speed service takes four and a half to six hours city centre to city centre, runs many times a day, and gets you into Xi'an North station on the metro. Flying is nominally quicker and is not once you add two airports.
- When should I come?
- March to May and September to October. Summer is hot and the pits are hotter, winter is cold and dry with real air pollution, and the first week of October is when the whole of China is also visiting the warriors.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it into the planner and move the days around, or add a night if you want the Han tombs and the Tang pagodas as well.