DAY    1            DEPARTURE FROM NORTH AMERICA
Enjoy full meal service on your scheduled wide-bodied flight to Beijing.

DAY    2            ARRIVE BEIJING (7 NIGHTS)
Our English-speaking guide will meet us at the airport and accompany us on our transfer by private coach to our hotel in central Beijing. We will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

DAY    3            BEIJING (THE FORBIDDEN CITY & TEMPLE OF HEAVEN)
Our morning commences in Tian'an Men Square, the world's largest public square (the size of 90 American football fields). In the center of the square stands the Monument to the People's Heroes (Renmin Yingxiong Jinian Bei), a 124-ft.granite obelisk erected in 1958, engraved with scenes from famous uprisings. We will visit the massive Great Hall of the People, one of the world's architectural marvels, where the thousands of representatives that make up China's governing body, the People's Congress, meet for most of the year. We continue with a visit to the Forbidden City, a massive complex of red-walled buildings and pavilions topped by a sea of glazed vermilion tile. It is by far the largest and most intricate imperial palace in China and receives more visitors than any other attraction in the country. Our visit will include the Inner Court, where only the emperor, his family, his concubines, and the palace eunuchs were allowed; the Hall of Mental Cultivation, where emperors lived after Yongzheng moved out of the Qianqing Gong; the Nine Dragon Screen, an 11 1/2-ft-high wall covered in striking glazed-tile dragons depicted frolicking above a frothing sea, built to protect the Qianlong emperor from prying eyes and malevolent spirits; the Hall of Jewelry, with all 25 of the Qing imperial seals, ornate swords, and bejeweled mini-pagodas; Cixi's Theater, an elaborate green-tiled three-tiered structure with trap doors and hidden passageways to allow movement between stages; and the Hall of Clocks, a collection of elaborate timepieces, many of them gifts to the emperors from European envoys. Our afternoon concludes with a visit to the Temple of Heaven, an enormous park and altar to Heaven directly to the south of the Forbidden City. Each winter solstice, the Ming and Qing emperors would lead a procession here to perform rites and make sacrifices designed to promote the next year's crops and curry favor with Heaven for the general health of the empire. This evening we will enjoy a Peking Duck Dinner.

DAY    4            THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA & MING TOMBS
This morning we will journey outside of the city for a visit to the Great Wall of China, one of the world's most awesome and impressive sights. The Great Wall snakes its way from east to west for nearly 4,000 miles, and has been in existence for over 2,600 years. This afternoon we visit the Ming Tombs, where 13 of the 16 emperors who ruled China during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) are buried in a box canyon at the southern foot of Tianshou Shan. This is the most extensive burial complex of any Chinese dynasty and the tombs are constructed in conventional fashion, with memorial halls at the front and burial chambers to the rear. This evening we will enjoy an Acrobat Show.

DAY    5            BEIJING (THE SUMMER PALACE & THE HUTONG)
This morning we visit the Summer Palace, the grandest imperial playground in China. The compound is an expanse of elaborate Qing-style pavilions, bridges, walkways, and gardens, scattered along the shores of the immense Kunming Lake. We will enjoy a tour of the park, which covers roughly 716 acres, with Kunming Lake in the south and Longevity Hill in the north. We will also have the opportunity to take slow electric-powered Boats on the Lake and stroll along Suzhou Street, which is filled with interesting shops. This afternoon we will enjoy a Beijing Hutong Tour. A hutong is a unique form of community with a small street or a lane between two courtyards. There are thousands of hutongs in Beijing, most of which were built in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. We will enjoy a fascinating tour by Rickshaw, which will include visits with local families, as well as a magnificent glance into residential Chinese life. After dinner this evening we can explore Lotus Lane.

DAY    6            BEIJING (BEIJING'S ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE)
This morning we begin with a visit to Qinian Dian (Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests), which is one of the most stunning buildings in Beijing. This circular wooden hall, with its triple-eaved cylindrical blue-tiled roof, is perhaps the most recognizable emblem of Chinese imperial architecture outside of the Forbidden City. Completed in 1420, the original hall was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 1889 (not a good omen for the dynasty), but a near-perfect replica was built the following year. Measuring 125 ft. high and 98 ft. in diameter, it was constructed without a single nail. The 28 massive pillars inside, made of fir imported from Oregon, are arranged to symbolize divisions of time. The central four represent the seasons, the next 12 represent the months of the year, and the outer 12 represent traditional divisions of a single day. The hall's most striking feature is its ceiling, a kaleidoscope of painted brackets and gilded panels as intricate as anything in the country. We will also visit the Imperial Hall of Heaven (Huangqian Dian), a smaller building to the north where the emperor would pray before the wooden tablets of his ancestors. Our day continues with a visit to the Gudai Jianzhu Bowuguan (Museum of Ancient Architecture), an exhibition featuring a mixture of models of China's most famous architecture and fragments of buildings long disappeared. It is housed in halls as dramatic as those on the central axis of the Forbidden City, which were once part of the Xian Nong Tan, or Altar of Agriculture. The exhibition in the surviving halls is striking in its extensive English explanations of everything from the construction of the complicated bracket sets, which support temple roofs, to the role of geomancy in Chinese architectural thinking. Our afternoon concludes with a stroll along Wangfujing Dajie, the grandest shopping area in Beijing. The street was overhauled in 1999, and the south section was turned into a pedestrian-only commercial avenue lined with clothing outlets, souvenir shops, portrait studios, fast-food restaurants, and the city's top two malls, the Sun (Xin) Dong An Plaza and Oriental Plaza (Dongfang Guangchang).

DAY    7            BEIJING (A TASTE OF LOCAL LIFE)
Our day commences with a visit to a Local School to meet Chinese students and compare the school system in China with our own. This afternoon we will take a guided visit of Bei Hai Gongyuan (Beihai Park), an imperial playground dating back to the Tartar Jin dynasty (1115-1234). Entering from the south, we will come to Tuan Cheng (Round City), a small citadel on a raised platform whose most notable structure, Chengguang Dian, houses a 5-ft. tall statue of a feminine-looking Buddha, crafted from Burmese white jade. Next we cross the Yong'an Bridge to Qiong Dao (Qiong Islet) to view Yong'an Si, a white pagoda dedicated to the founder of the prominent Geluk sect, Tsongkapa. Next we view the renowned imperial restaurant, Fang Shan Fanzhuang, before boarding a Boat to the north side of the park. We will arrive to the east of Wu Long Ting (Five Dragon Pavilion), where aspiring singers treat the public to revolutionary airs popular in the 1950s. Next we view an impressive green-tiled pailou (memorial arch) and the square-shaped Jile Shijie Dian, encircled by a dry moat. Built by the Qianlong emperor to honor his mother, the sandalwood structure is exquisite, topped with a priceless gold dome. During our tour we will also view an impressive Nine Dragon Screen, which guarded the entrance of a now-vanished temple, and the striking Daci Zhenru Bao Dian, an atmospheric Buddhist hall built during the late Ming dynasty from unpainted cedar.

DAY    8            BEIJING (EXPLORING BEIJING'S GREAT TEMPLES)
We begin the day with a visit to the Baiyun Guan, a sprawling complex built in 739. Today it is the most active of Beijing's Daoist temples and blue-frocked monks wear their hair in the rarely seen traditional manner, long and tied in a bun at the top of the head. The temple acts as headquarters for the Chinese Daoist Association. One of the most interesting structures is the Laolu Tang, a large cushion-filled hall in the third courtyard originally built in 1228, and now used for teaching and ceremonies. Next we visit Dong Yue Miao, one of Beijing's most captivating Daoist temples. Founded in 1322 by the devotees of the Zhengyi sect, the temple is dedicated to the god Dong Yue, who resides in the sacred mountain of Tai Shan and is charged with supervising the 18 layers of Hell and the 76 departments (si). The garishly represented emissaries of these departments are found in the 72 halls that ring the main courtyard of the temple. Worshippers present themselves at the relevant hall, with offerings of money, incense, and red tokens inscribed with their names (fupai). A glassed-in stele at the northeast corner of the courtyard is written in the fine hand of Zhao Mengfu, recording the building of the temple and the life of its founder, Zhang Liusun, who died soon after purchasing the land. At the north of the complex we will visit the two-story Minsu Bowuguan (Folk Museum), which hosts exhibitions on Beijing's marvelous but largely forgotten traditions. Our afternoon concludes with a visit to the Yonghe Gong (Lama Temple), a complex of progressively larger buildings topped with ornate yellow-tiled roofs built in 1694 and originally belonging to the Qing prince who would become the Yongzheng emperor. As was the custom, the complex was converted to a temple after Yongzheng's move to the Forbidden City in 1744. The temple is home to several rather beautiful incense burners, including a particularly ornate one in the second courtyard that dates back to 1746. The Falun Dian (Hall of the Wheel of Law) contains a 20-ft. bronze statue of Tsongkapa, the founder of the reformist Yellow Hat (Geluk) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, which is now the dominant school of Tibetan Buddhism. The last of the five central halls, the Wanfu Ge (Tower of Ten Thousand Happinesses), houses the temple's prize possession -- an ominous Tibetan-style statue of Maitreya (the future Buddha), 60 ft. tall, and carved from a single piece of white sandalwood. This evening we will enjoy either a Gala Dinner or the Beijing Opera.

DAY    9            DEPARTURE FROM BEIJING
Our enjoyable and rewarding tour will come to an end as our guide accompanies us to the airport for the return flight home.