Most first-time itineraries from India look identical: Beijing, Shanghai, home. Nothing wrong with it — but China is roughly the size of Europe, and treating it as a two-city country is like flying into Delhi and Mumbai and telling people you have seen India.

With direct flights from Kolkata running again — daily to Guangzhou since late October 2025, and to Shanghai since the end of March 2026 — there is finally room to plan something more interesting.

Here are ten places worth the flight, and what each one is actually for.

1. The Great Wall at Mutianyu

Everyone goes to the Wall. Fewer people choose the right section. Badaling is closest to Beijing and correspondingly crowded; Mutianyu is a little further, better restored, greener, and has a cable car up and a toboggan down that children love. Give it a full day, wear proper shoes, and go early. The steps are steeper than the photographs suggest.

2. The Forbidden City, Beijing

Nearly 1,000 buildings, six centuries of imperial history, and a scale that does not translate on screen. Book tickets in advance — entry is capped daily and passport details are required. Pair it with Tiananmen Square next door and the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon if you still have legs.

3. The Terracotta Warriors, Xi'an

Thousands of individually sculpted soldiers, buried for two thousand years, found by farmers digging a well in 1974. It genuinely lives up to the reputation. Xi'an also has the best-preserved city wall in China — rentable bicycles on top — and a Muslim Quarter whose street food is, for many Indian travellers, the most familiar and most enjoyable eating of the whole trip.

4. The Bund and Pudong, Shanghai

Stand on the Bund at dusk with the old colonial waterfront behind you and Pudong's skyline lighting up across the water. It is the postcard shot of modern China and it deserves to be. Add the Shanghai Tower observation deck, Yu Garden, and an evening walking through the old French Concession.

5. Zhangjiajie, Hunan

The sandstone pillars that inspired the floating mountains in Avatar. Glass skywalks, the world's tallest outdoor lift, and a national forest park that looks unreal in morning mist. This has become hugely popular with Indian travellers over the last few years, and rightly so — it is the most visually spectacular place on this list. Budget three days.

6. Guilin and Yangshuo

Karst hills, the Li River, bamboo rafts and rice terraces. Slower and softer than Zhangjiajie, and better if you want scenery you can cycle through rather than climb. The river cruise between Guilin and Yangshuo is the single best half-day in southern China.

7. Chengdu

Go for the pandas at the Research Base — arrive at opening, when they are actually active — and stay for the food, which is fiery in a way Indian palates take to immediately. The Leshan Giant Buddha, a 71-metre statue carved into a cliff face, is a comfortable day trip and considerably more impressive in person than in pictures.

8. Hangzhou

An hour from Shanghai by high-speed rail. West Lake, causeways, pagodas, and the Longjing tea plantations in the hills above the city. If your family has any interest in tea — and in Kolkata, many do — a morning at a working plantation is a lovely, unhurried break from monument-counting. Suzhou, with its classical gardens and canals, sits on the same rail line and pairs well.

9. Guangzhou

Kolkata's oldest link with China. For traders it is the Canton Fair city, but even on a leisure trip it earns its place: morning dim sum here is a proper institution, and Shamian Island, Canton Tower and the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall fill a comfortable day and a half. It is also the shortest direct flight from Kolkata, which makes it an easy first taste of the country.

10. Harbin, in winter

The Ice and Snow Festival, roughly January into February, builds an entire illuminated city out of ice blocks cut from the Songhua River. It is astonishing, and it is also brutally cold — regularly well below freezing. Not a trip for everyone, and absolutely not one to attempt without proper clothing. But if you go, you will not stop talking about it.

How to sequence a realistic trip

You are not doing all ten. Sensible combinations:

• First trip, 8 to 9 days — Beijing and Shanghai, connected by high-speed rail

• First trip with better scenery, 10 to 11 days — Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai

• Nature-led, 10 days — Shanghai, Zhangjiajie, Guilin

• Second trip — Chengdu, Guilin, Hangzhou, skipping the headline monuments entirely

Use the high-speed rail wherever you can. It is fast, punctual and genuinely pleasant, and it shows you more of the country than another domestic flight will.

When to go

Spring, roughly April to May, and autumn, September to October, are the comfortable windows — mild weather, clear skies, and correspondingly higher prices. Summer is hot and humid across most of the east. Winter is cold in the north but quiet and cheap, and it is the only time Harbin makes sense.

Avoid the first week of October, when the national holiday puts what feels like the entire country on the move at once.

Sort the visa before you book anything

Indian passport holders need a visa in advance — there is no visa on arrival and no e-visa. Applicants from West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh apply through the visa centre in Kolkata, and the tourist category is the L visa.

Give yourself six to eight weeks. The counter turnaround is short, but the paperwork, appointment slots and any document that gets sent back for correction all eat time you will not have if you have already paid for flights.

Most travellers find it simpler to let a China visa consultant in Kolkata or an operator that bundles China visa services with the itinerary handle it, particularly on a first trip.

Then pick three of the ten and go properly, rather than all ten badly.