Originally Posted by jiejie

I think your plan is fine. For individual city touring plans, do a little search through this forum to get some ideas for what has been previously recommended. If you need to make domestic air arrangements for this, hold off a bit until early March. April flights with discounts should be in the system then. Post #2 of our Master Transportation Thread has more on this, including links to online agents you should use for booking. You may also want to try a Sunday morning bullet train from Xi'an to Beijing. The journey won't take you that much longer than the overall airport sequence.