Originally Posted by
jiejie
--Cost: 5000 GBP?!? Jeez, I could do 30 days for this itinerary in half of that amount or less, flying everywhere, paying lots of high entry fees, and staying in very comfortable places. But without knowing your travel style particularly for accommodations, not easy to advise you on this. Accommodation cost will be the biggest single variable.
By my math, we're looking at $1500-$2000 for air fares on his desired legs, and $4000 on hotels if he lives pretty large, though falls short of being excessive... less than 3800 GBP, all in. That having said, the current order of flights has not been optimized to minimize costs, and most of us get shave $1000 off that hotel budget without missing a lot. For example, in places like Lijiang, some of the smaller guest houses are a lot more engaging than their more upscale counterparts.
In any event, I would axe Huangshan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and probably Sanya in order spend more time in the west/southwest.