The Ancient Capitals Circuit: Seven ancient capitals in one journey through 3,000 years of Chinese history

Beijing and Xi'an get almost all the attention — the Forbidden City and the Terracotta Army are on every first-timer's list — but they tell only part of the story. Beijing was a capital for roughly 700 years (Yuan, Ming, Qing). Xi'an was a capital for over 1,100 years, but the last dynasty to rule from there fell in 907 CE. Between them are five other cities that were, at various moments, the largest, richest, and most culturally influential cities on earth — and visiting them in sequence reveals the arc of Chinese civilisation in a way that Beijing and Xi'an alone cannot.

The chronological logic is compelling. Zhengzhou and nearby Anyang (Yin Xu, UNESCO) take you to the Shang dynasty (c. 1,600-1,046 BCE) — the earliest archaeologically confirmed Chinese dynasty, where the oracle bones (甲骨文, jiǎgǔwén) preserve the oldest known Chinese writing. The Henan Museum in Zhengzhou has a Shang bronze collection that is, in my opinion, more impressive than anything in the National Museum in Beijing. Luoyang was the capital of the Eastern Zhou, the Eastern Han, and the Northern Wei, among others — its Longmen Grottoes (龙门石窟), begun in 493 CE, contain over 100,000 Buddha images carved into limestone cliffs along the Yi River. Kaifeng was the Northern Song capital (960-1127), a city of over one million people when London had perhaps 15,000 — the scroll painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" (清明上河图) depicts its streets in staggering detail. Hangzhou became the Southern Song capital after Kaifeng fell to the Jurchens in 1127, and Marco Polo arrived in the 1280s to find a city so beautiful he spent 17 years in China largely because of it. Nanjing was the Ming dynasty's first capital (1368-1421) before the Yongle Emperor moved the court to Beijing, and it became the Republic of China's capital in 1927.

The circuit is also logistically elegant. All seven cities are connected by high-speed rail, the longest single leg is 4.5 hours (Hangzhou to Beijing), and the entire circuit can be done in 2-3 weeks without a single domestic flight. The sequence works clockwise (Beijing → Zhengzhou → Kaifeng → Luoyang → Xi'an → Nanjing → Hangzhou → Beijing) or counterclockwise — both are well-connected, and the direction matters less than on routes like the Silk Road where westbound is clearly superior.

A 16-day clockwise circuit covers all seven capitals at a sustainable pace. Days 1-3: Beijing. Day 1: Forbidden City (¥60, book 7 days ahead on WeChat, 3-4 hours). Day 2: Temple of Heaven at dawn (¥15 park ticket, the morning tai chi and singing groups are as interesting as the architecture) and a Great Wall section — Mutianyu (¥45, 1.5 hours by car, cable car ¥120 return) is less crowded than Badaling and has a toboggan slide down. Day 3: Summer Palace (¥30) and the National Museum (free, book ahead — the ancient China gallery on B1 is the essential section).

Days 4-5: Zhengzhou and Anyang. HSR Beijing West to Zhengzhou East (2.5 hours, ¥300). The Henan Museum (free, closed Mondays) is the highlight — the Shang bronzes, particularly the square ding vessels used for ritual offerings, are some of the most important bronze-age artefacts in the world. Day 5: day trip to Anyang (HSR 40 minutes, ¥70). Yin Xu (殷墟, ¥90), the Shang capital site, has the oracle-bone pits, bronze foundry remains, and royal tombs that confirmed the Shang dynasty was historical, not mythical. The site is spread out and signage in English is limited — hire a guide at the entrance (¥200 for 2 hours). Alternatively, a day trip to the Shaolin Temple (少林寺) outside Zhengzhou — 1.5 hours by car, ¥80 entry — for the pagoda forest (the largest collection of ancient pagodas in China) and the kung fu performances (hourly, included in the ticket). I found Shaolin over-touristed and the kung fu shows staged for the bus-tour crowd, but the pagoda forest is genuinely moving.

Days 6-7: Kaifeng and Luoyang. HSR Zhengzhou to Kaifeng (30 minutes, ¥45). Kaifeng's Millennium City Park (清明上河园, ¥120) is a theme-park reconstruction of the Song-dynasty capital based on the famous scroll painting — it is touristy, crowded, and actually quite well done, with costumed performers, traditional crafts, and a good night show (¥299 for the evening performance). The Iron Pagoda (铁塔, ¥30), an 11th-century brick pagoda faced in brown glazed tiles, is the genuine article — it has survived floods, earthquakes, and wars for 900 years. Kaifeng to Luoyang: HSR 1 hour (¥100). Luoyang's Longmen Grottoes (¥90) demand at least 3 hours — the 17-metre Buddha in the Fengxian Temple, carved during the reign of Wu Zetian (China's only female emperor, r. 690-705 CE), is the climax. Go early (08:00 opening) to avoid the tour groups that arrive by 10:00.

Days 8-10: Xi'an. HSR Luoyang to Xi'an (1.5 hours, ¥180). Xi'an requires three full days. Day 8: Terracotta Army (¥120, 1 hour east of the city — take bus 306 from Xi'an railway station, ¥7, 1 hour, vastly cheaper than a taxi at ¥200+). Book tickets ahead and aim for opening time (08:30) — by 10:30 Pit 1 is a wall of selfie sticks. Day 9: cycle the 14-km city wall (¥54, bike rental ¥45 for 2 hours) — the only complete ancient city wall in China and one of the best urban bike rides in the world. Muslim Quarter for dinner — the grilled lamb skewers and yangrou paomo (羊肉泡馍, crumbled bread in lamb soup) are the best street food on the entire capitals circuit. Day 10: Shaanxi History Museum (free, book 3-5 days ahead, 3-4 hours for the main galleries), Big Wild Goose Pagoda (¥50), and a Tang-dynasty music and dance show in the evening (¥300-400, touristy but the costumes and instrumentation are authentic).

Days 11-13: Nanjing. HSR Xi'an to Nanjing (4.5-5 hours, ¥500). Nanjing is the most emotionally complex stop on the circuit. Day 11: Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (free, 392 steps up — the view back down is the point) and the Ming Xiaoling tomb (¥70, the Sacred Way with its stone elephants and camels is the best-preserved Ming funerary sculpture anywhere). Day 12: Nanjing Massacre Memorial (free, deeply affecting — budget at least 2 hours and expect to be emotionally drained afterward) and the Nanjing City Wall (¥30, the Zhonghua Gate section is the most impressive gate complex). Day 13: Confucius Temple (夫子庙) and the Qinhuai River — touristy, commercialised, and genuinely beautiful at night when the lanterns reflect in the water. Nanjing's salted duck (盐水鸭, yánshuǐ yā) is the city's signature dish — simple, subtle, and best eaten cold.

Days 14-16: Hangzhou. HSR Nanjing to Hangzhou (1.5 hours, ¥120). A gentler end to the circuit. Day 14: West Lake (free) — rent a bicycle (¥20/day) and circle the lake (about 15 km, 2 hours with stops). Leifeng Pagoda (¥40, rebuilt 2002 with an escalator — a jarring modern intervention) has the best lake views. Day 15: Lingyin Temple (灵隐寺, ¥75), one of China's largest and wealthiest Buddhist temples, in a forested valley that feels far from the city. The Feilai Feng (飞来峰) cliff carvings outside the temple, dating from the 10th-14th centuries, are the hidden highlight. Longjing village for tea — the Dragon Well (龙井) green tea grown on the terraced hillsides is China's most famous green tea, and you can taste it at a farmer's house for ¥50-100. Day 16: your departure or HSR back to Beijing to close the circuit.

If you must prune the circuit to 10-12 days, here is the honest ranking. First tier — do not skip: Beijing (the imperial endpoint, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall), Xi'an (the Terracotta Army, the wall, the Muslim Quarter — and 13 dynasties of history), and Luoyang (the Longmen Grottoes are, in my view, the single most impressive Buddhist site in China outside Dunhuang, and the White Horse Temple is quietly extraordinary).

Second tier — worth it if you have time: Nanjing (the Ming tomb and the Republican history are significant, the city wall is the best-preserved in China, and the food is excellent, but it adds a 5-hour HSR leg from Xi'an that some itineraries cannot accommodate) and Hangzhou (West Lake is a UNESCO landscape and the Southern Song capital story is fascinating, but Hangzhou's ancient-capital identity is thinner on the ground than Luoyang's or Xi'an's — the Song imperial palace is mostly gone, and the city feels more like a modern tech hub with a beautiful lake).

Third tier — skip if you are short on time: Zhengzhou (the Henan Museum is superb but the Shang dynasty is hard to grasp without the Yin Xu day trip, which adds a day) and Kaifeng (the Song-dynasty history is rich but the physical remains are limited — the Iron Pagoda and the reconstruction theme park are not essential stops compared to the Longmen Grottoes or the Terracotta Army). If I had 10 days, I would do Beijing (3), Luoyang (2), Xi'an (3), and fly home from Xi'an.

A note on Zhengzhou: it is the most overlooked stop on the circuit and the one I would defend most strongly. The Henan Museum's collection of Shang and Zhou bronzes is world-class — the scale, casting quality, and decorative complexity of the ritual vessels are staggering, and the museum is rarely crowded. The Anyang day trip to Yin Xu connects you to the archaeological origins of Chinese civilisation in a way that no other stop can match. If you are interested in the deep past — the China of oracle bones and bronze-age kings — Zhengzhou earns its place. If your interest skews to the imperial and the visually spectacular (Ming-Qing palaces, Tang Buddhist caves, Qin terracotta armies), it is a harder sell.

The food on the ancient capitals circuit is spectacularly varied — you cross four of China's eight great culinary traditions in two weeks. Beijing: imperial cuisine and northern wheat dishes. Peking duck (北京烤鸭, Běijīng kǎoyā) at a mid-range restaurant like Siji Minfu (四季民福, ¥200-300 for a whole duck) is worth the expense once — the skin, dipped in sugar, is the best part. Zhajiang noodles (炸酱面) is the everyday Beijing lunch — thick wheat noodles with fermented soybean paste, cucumber, and radish. The Muslim Quarter snack streets in Xi'an are better, but Beijing's Guijie (簋街) street of restaurants open until dawn is a reliable late-night option.

Zhengzhou and Henan: central plains food, wheat-based, hearty. Huì miàn (烩面) — wide, hand-pulled noodles in a lamb broth with tofu skin and coriander — is the province's defining dish (¥20-30 for a large bowl). Kaifeng's soup dumplings (灌汤包, guàntāng bāo) predate the better-known Shanghai xiaolongbao by centuries — the thin-skinned dumplings filled with hot broth are the Song-dynasty imperial snack that migrated south with the court in 1127. Luoyang's water banquet (水席, shuǐ xí) is a 24-course meal of soups and broth-based dishes served in sequence — it is an experience more than a meal, and the quality varies wildly by restaurant. The Zhenbutong (真不同) restaurant has been serving it since 1895 and is the most reliable option (¥200-400 per person).

Xi'an: Muslim-influenced northwestern food, the best street food on the circuit. Yangrou paomo (羊肉泡馍) — crumbled flatbread in lamb soup — is the canonical dish. The Muslim Quarter (回民街, Huímín Jiē) is a kilometre of grilled lamb skewers (¥5-10 each), persimmon cakes (柿子饼), cold noodles (凉皮, liángpí), and pomegranate juice. It is crowded, touristy, and the best food street in China. Go in the evening when it is at full chaos.

Nanjing: Jiangsu cuisine, delicate and subtle. Salted duck (盐水鸭, yánshuǐ yā) is the city's signature — poached, cooled, and served at room temperature with a ginger-scallion dip. Duck blood and vermicelli soup (鸭血粉丝汤, yāxuè fěnsī tāng) is the Nanjing breakfast — rich duck broth with tofu puffs, vermicelli noodles, and cubes of congealed duck blood. The Confucius Temple night market is touristy but fun for an evening snack crawl.

Hangzhou: Zhejiang cuisine, the most refined on the circuit. Dongpo pork (东坡肉, Dōngpō ròu) — red-braised pork belly named after the Song-dynasty poet Su Dongpo — is the city's most famous dish. West Lake vinegar fish (西湖醋鱼, Xīhú cù yú) is a whole carp in a sweet-sour vinegar sauce — it is an acquired taste (the freshwater carp can be muddy) and I have seen more foreign travellers disappointed by it than delighted. Longjing shrimp (龙井虾仁) — shrimp stir-fried with the local green tea leaves — is the safer bet.

If I had to pick the best eating city on the circuit: Xi'an for street food and variety, Nanjing for refined Jiangsu cooking, and a three-way tie for specific dishes (Peking duck in Beijing, huì miàn in Zhengzhou, Longjing shrimp in Hangzhou).

Crowds are the single biggest issue, and they are worse on this circuit than on any other China route I have written about. The Forbidden City receives 80,000 visitors a day in peak season. The Terracotta Army can feel like a rugby scrum around Pit 1 by 10:30 a.m. The Longmen Grottoes boardwalk along the Yi River is a solid wall of tour groups from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in April, May, September, and October. The solution everywhere: go at opening time. The Forbidden City opens at 08:30 — arrive at the Meridian Gate at 08:00 and you will be inside with the first wave, which thins out rapidly once through the gate. The Terracotta Army opens at 08:30 — the first hour is manageable; by 10:30 Pit 1 is packed. Longmen Grottoes at 08:00 in April is almost empty, and the morning light on the west-facing Buddha carvings is better for photography. The cost of this strategy is a series of early mornings — but the alternative is experiencing China's greatest cultural sites through a screen of selfie sticks and tour-guide flags.

Tickets require advance booking at every major site — this is not optional. The Forbidden City sells out 3-7 days ahead in peak season and tickets are only available via the official WeChat mini-program (search "故宫博物院" in WeChat). The Terracotta Army uses a similar WeChat system. The Shaanxi History Museum is free but the advance booking window opens 3-5 days ahead and fills within hours during peak season. The National Museum in Beijing is also free with advance booking. If you are not on WeChat (which requires a phone number for registration), book through your hotel concierge or a travel agency, and expect to pay a ¥100-300 surcharge per ticket.

HSR tickets are best booked on Trip.com (English, foreign cards accepted) or the official 12306 app (Mandarin only, but now accepts foreign passport registration). Book 1-3 days ahead for most legs — the Xi'an-Nanjing 5-hour leg may require booking further ahead on Fridays and Sundays. The circuit works well by HSR alone, with no domestic flights required — the total HSR cost for all legs is approximately ¥2,000-2,500, which is very reasonable for the distance covered.

A caution: this circuit is intense. You are visiting seven cities with dense, historically weighty sites in 2-3 weeks, and museum fatigue is real. By day 10, the fifth museum and the third pagoda can blur together. Build in rest days — Hangzhou is the natural decompression stop (West Lake is restorative in a way that the Forbidden City is not), and Nanjing's tree-lined streets and relaxed Jiangsu pace are a break from the Xi'an-Luoyang intensity. Skip at least one scheduled site if you are exhausted — the circuit will still make sense. Also: Henan province (Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Luoyang) has noticeably less English infrastructure than Beijing, Xi'an, Nanjing, or Hangzhou. A translation app and offline Chinese are essential for the Henan segment.