Comparison
Beijing or Xi'an
Both are history cities. Beijing is the larger, harder, more famous one. Xi'an is the tighter trip if the Terracotta Army and a city wall are the reason you came.
Choose Beijing
- You want the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the capital's museums on one trip.
- You can give it five days. Less than that is a rush between very large sites.
- You accept a northern winter: cold, and air that is often worse than on the coast.
Choose Xi'an
- The Terracotta Army is the thing you would be sorry to miss.
- You want a city wall and a Muslim quarter you can walk, not a capital spread across ring roads.
- Three or four days is a real visit, not a tease.
A useful way to combine them
On a longer first trip, Beijing first or last matches the international flights, and Xi'an sits in the middle by train. On a short trip, pick one. Running both in five days makes both of them into taxi rides.
Questions
Which is easier with no Chinese?
Beijing's famous sites are used to foreign visitors. Xi'an is manageable and simply smaller. Payment and maps are the same problem in both; set those up before you compare the cities.