Been seeing a lot of China trip plans lately and honestly the biggest mistake is trying to cram too many cities in.
It’s not like Europe where you can hop around easily. Distances are huge and every city takes way more time than you expect.
Stuff like Beijing alone can eat 4–5 days without even trying, same with places like Xi’an or Shanghai if you actually want to enjoy them.
The trips that seem to work best are the ones that do fewer places properly instead of rushing through everything.