The kids (ages 5 and 8) had a great time overall, but the highlight for them was unquestionably the Great Wall at Mutinayu. On someone’s recommendation, we took the cable car up and the toboggan down, which worked well as it let the kids save their energy to walk the wall itself. They really enjoyed climbing higher and higher until we reached one end of that section, and were also pleased to have their parents buy them little souvenirs in the shopping area at the bottom.
Their next favorite was probably the grounds around the Temple of Heaven, where they had fun watching people play various games and practice various sports/exercises. We had actually hired a guide for the first day and a half of our trip since my wife was worried about language/getting around, and the guide was very valuable here as she engaged various locals in conversation and got them to teach our children some of the local games, and play with them. That is something I never would have done myself, even had I been able to speak the language, and it definitely enhanced the visit.
The kids also enjoyed an acrobat show, and still talk about some of the acts that they saw. We also visited the Forbidden City and Lama Temple; both held their interest for about half an hour, after which the kids were ready to move on.
We did take the trains back and forth to Xi’an as recommended. The overnight train was great – the kids enjoyed the concept of sleeping on a train, and I enjoyed not having to spend on a hotel for that night I think we all liked the high-speed train back even better—the kids liked going “superfast,” and I was amazed at how comfortable a travelling experience it was. Had Jiejie not advised against flying back, I would have taken the plane—now that I’ve both seen how nice the train is, and seen how delayed the local flights get, I’m very glad we took the train instead.
Food was more of a challenge than we anticipated, due to our not speaking the language, and my lack of preparation in not taking a simple dictionary. I had figured we’d be able to point at the pictures on various menus; this worked with two notable exceptions. We had anticipated being able to find steamed white rice fairly easily (something my daughter will happily eat in absurd quantities at any time); it was not on any picture menu (or on any of the English menus we saw), and we had great difficulty trying to communicate to our servers what we wanted (even when we pointed at someone else’s bowl of rice) until someone eventually taught us how to ask for it in Mandarin. Also, with regards to ordering vegetables, even when we pointed at the item we wanted, often there were several different preparations listed in the local language, and the server would point at these asking us which we wanted. This too required guesswork on our part. Again, I could have precluded this issue by bringing a dictionary or translated app or some such, but…
After the first day, the kids decided to gorge themselves on breakfast (we were staying at hotels that offered a free breakfast buffet), and then to pick and choose the items that looked good to them at lunch (they ate, but didn't need a full meal). They’d have some snacks in the afternoon, and then pick and choose again from what my wife and I ordered at dinner. We tried to find them things that looked like the food they get at Chinese restaurants here in the States (dumplings, noodles); of course our restaurants tend to be Americanized Sichuan, so the preparations were different and often spicier, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Sadly enough, we did have to resort to fast food once or twice just to make sure no one went hungry.
As for restaurants, we enjoyed the duck at Da Dong, though the service was terrible (we went to the “new” Wangfujing location). Our favorite meal was at South Beauty, which someone on this board recommended to me—everything we had there was amazing (the kids loved it too).