In Transit Overnight: Overnight flight.

Afternoon: Welcome to your Road Scholar program in China. Join your National Guides in the hotel lobby at 5:30 pm before dinner. Get acquainted with each other and your National Guides who will accompany you throughout your program in China.

Dinner: Dinner is at a nearby restaurant.

Evening: Use this evening to adapt to the time change. Take a stroll in the surrounding neighborhood, swim in the hotel pool, or just relax at your hotel. Your two National Guides will invite those who wish for a walk around your hotel neighborhood. On your walk, your guides will help you start to learn some useful phrases in Chinese. Don't be surprised if local children call out 'Hello' to you in English or in Chinese (Ni hao!)

Lodging: Four Points by Sheraton Daning Hotel Shanghai

Meals Included: Dinner

Breakfast: This morning join your National Guides for your hotel's buffet breakfast.

Morning: This morning, we take a walk on the Bund, Shanghai’s River promenade beside art deco and neo-classic buildings stemming from the city’s colonial history. The river is an artery of the world’s busiest port and bustles with activity. Across the river, view ‘new Shanghai’ – until recently undeveloped farmland and now a forest of glittering skyscrapers.

Lunch: Lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Afternoon: After lunch, adults explore Shanghai Fine Arts Museum, home to China's best collection of painting, sculpture, ceramics, and bronzes. Children join their guide for a 5-minute passenger tram ride under the Huangpu River to the Oriental Pearl Tower. After exploring its history museum with walk-in dioramas of old Shanghai, children ride to the top of the tower for a bird's eye view of the city with the winding bustling Huangpu River below. Then return to your hotel.

Dinner: Dinner at a restaurant en route to Shanghai Acrobatics Theater

Evening: Acrobatics is considered one of China's performing arts 'treasures'. It has a history of thousands of years and figures in other genres such as Chinese opera. This evening, enjoy a witty and skillful performance by the famed Shanghai Acrobatics Troupe.

Lodging: Four Points by Sheraton Daning Hotel Shanghai

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Tai ji/ Flight to Guilin-Yangshuo/ Discussion: Social Problems in China/ Children's Batik Workshop

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel. Optional tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: Flight to Guilin.

Lunch: Lunch served in flight

Afternoon: Arrive in Guilin city and coach to the small town of Yangshuo set amongst green karst mountains on the beautiful Li River. During your coach ride, you can enjoy the karst mountain scenery or practice Chinese finger counting with your National Guides.

Dinner: Dinner at a local restaurant.

Evening: Adults join their National Guide for some informal Chinese conversation and a discussion of current social issues in China including the one child/one family policy. Children join a batik workshop.

Lodging: Green Lotus International Hotel

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Tai ji/ Biking or Electric Cars to Countryside/ Li River Cruise/ Outdoor Folk Musical

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel. Optional tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: Local electric carriages transport you to the nearby countryside where you can explore local villages enveloped by magnificent karst mountains. Or you can choose to bike. In the countryside, you have the option of climbing the 800 steps of Moon Hill for magnificent views or continue on to local villages to learn about life there. (Anyone biking must have and wear a bike helmet.)

Lunch: Lunch at a local restaurant.

Afternoon: Depart for the banks of the Li River, a source of much Chinese landscape painting and poetry. Embark on an afternoon's cruise amid this serene and unique landscape.

Dinner: Dinner at a restaurant

Evening: This evening, enjoy the open-air musical, 'Third Sister Liu,' directed by the renowned Zhang Yi Mou (the director of Beijing 2008 Olympics magnificent Opening and Closing Ceremonies). Set amidst the natural scenery of the Li River and surrounding mountains, Zhang's musical Folk Opera uses actors and singers from local fishing families wearing ethnic costume and singing traditional folk songs in an extraordinary setting.

Lodging: Green Lotus International Hotel

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel. Optional tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: Depart by coach for the city of Guilin. At the Guilin Music Institute, learn about the names and sounds of traditional Chinese instruments and enjoy a private performance.

Lunch: Lunch at Guilin airport restaurant or en route

Afternoon: Flight to Xi'an city.

Dinner: On the way to your hotel, stop for a dinner of special dumplings for which Xi'an is famous. Some come in shapes of tiny animals, fruits and vegetables and with a myriad of fillings from meat to wild greens.

Lodging: New World Hotel

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Terra Cotta Warriors/ Bike or Pedicab on Old City Wall/Calligraphy Workshop

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel.

Morning: Explore the amazing excavation site of a 2,000-year-old Emperor's tomb containing thousands of life-size terra cotta warriors, cavalrymen and graceful archers -- each believed to represent an actual member of the Emperor's retinue.

Lunch: Lunch at a restaurant.

Afternoon: Return to Xi'an city. Choose to return to your hotel to relax or swim or join your National Guides for a walk atop Xi'an's complete city wall. You may decide to rent a bike, a tandem or pedicab to go further.

Dinner: Walk to a nearby restaurant.

Evening: At a calligraphy workshop, learn to write your name in Chinese characters with brush and ink on rice paper.

Lodging: New World Hotel

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Tai ji/ Talk: Chinese Cultural History/ Mask Painting Workshop/ Flight to Chengdu/ Face-Changing Masks Magic

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast in your hotel. Optional Tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: At Xi'an's International Studies University, a presentation for the adults discusses Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism as a way of illuminating the Chinese 'character' and life views. Meanwhile, children will enjoy a Chinese mask painting workshop where they can also learn to say the colors in Chinese.

Lunch: Lunch in the university dining room.

Afternoon: Flight to Chengdu city in Sichuan Province.

Dinner: Dinner a at restaurant.

Evening: This evening discover one of the most mysterious and enthralling of traditional Chinese performing arts: 'Bian Lian' or face-changing, an art form that originated in Sichuan Province. Marvel as masters change the bright masks on their face within a fraction of a second.

Lodging: Chengdu Panda Garden Hotel

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: Early buffet breakfast in your hotel and check-out.

Morning: We make an early start this morning so that you can observe baby and adult pandas at their most active time in a naturalized habitat. At the Chengdu Giant Panda Research and Breeding base, learn about the lives of pandas and what is being done to save this endearing and endangered species.

Lunch: Lunch at the Giant Panda Research Base.

Afternoon: Flight to China's capital, Beijing.

Dinner: Dinner is in a restaurant on the way to your hotel.

Evening: This evening is at your leisure.

Lodging: Crowne Plaza Hotel Beijing Chaoyang

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Tai ji/ Forbidden City/ Hutong Lunch/ Fly Kites at the Temple of Heaven/ The Legend of Kung Fu

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast in your hotel. Tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: Enter the Forbidden City. We will explore the most interesting parts of the world's largest palace compound which has 800 buildings and 9,000 rooms, once occupied by the Emperor, his wives, concubines, and attendants -- and forbidden to all others.

Lunch: Walk or pedicab in an old Beijing neighborhood of 'hutongs'- traditional residential lanes and alleys - to visit with local families in their courtyard homes. Join a local family for lunch and try your hand at making 'jiaozi' -- meat and vegetable filled dumplings that are a North Chinese favorite.

Afternoon: Return to your hotel for a rest or a swim. Later in the afternoon, we take kites to the park of the Temple of Heaven where children can learn to fly traditional Chinese kites. Adults can join the children or stroll on to the Temple itself, a 15th century architectural masterpiece.

Dinner: Dinner at a restaurant

Evening: In addition to strength of mind and body, kung fu, includes grace of movement. Marvel at the power and elegance of masters in a performance at Beijing's Red Theater.

Lodging: Crowne Plaza Hotel Beijing Chaoyang

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel. Optional tai ji is offered before breakfast.

Morning: Explore the exquisite Summer Palace, the resort of Qing Emperors. Boat on its jewel-like lake bordered by lily ponds and crossed with stone arched bridges.

Lunch: Lunch at a restaurant

Afternoon: Return to your hotel for some rest or swimming. Later, take the rest of the afternoon for free time or join your National Guide for a trip to Panjiayuan Flea Market which features small stalls offering just about everything - collectibles, curios, antiques. reproductions, furniture, fresh water pearls, amber, jade and a chance to learn to bargain Chinese-style -- a good chance to practice the Chinese you have learned, as well as using Chinese finger counting.

Dinner: This evening is free for you to explore local fare on your own. Your National Guide can give suggestions for destinations that you can walk to near your hotel.

Lodging: Crowne Plaza Hotel Beijing Chaoyang

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel.

Morning: Drive out to the Great Wall at Jin Shan Ling -- sometimes referred to as 'the Wild Great Wall' as it is not overly restored. Take a gondola lift to the upper part of the wall, then walk along its battlements and through watchtowers to experience magnificent views of the wall as it climbs and descends over the distant mountains.

Lunch: A picnic lunch is provided to enjoy in a spot of your choosing on the Wall.

Afternoon: Return to Beijing and view Tian'anmen Square, often referred to as 'the heart of Beijing'. If time permits, we'll take a short stroll in the square. Then return to your hotel nearby.

Dinner: Experience a Beijing specialty at a farewell dinner in a Peking Duck restaurant.

Lodging: Crowne Plaza Hotel Beijing Chaoyang

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: Buffet breakfast at your hotel.

Morning: Depart for Beijing International Airport for international departures.

Meals Included: Breakfast