OK, we booked our flights and the itinerary is as such now (pushed back by a week and we also inserted yantai in between xi'an and shanghai for logistics since China Airlines doesn't fly out of Yantai... I suppose we could have considered taking a train from Yantai to Qingdao but didn't think about that until now. My wife didn't want to trouble her relatives with driving us to Qingdao - I guess taxi could have been another option. At this point though, since we already booked tickets, I think we'll just deal with it. Hopefully PVG isn't a crazy airport to fly out of :T):

3/31/24 Sunday lax to pek
4/1/24 Monday arrive in beijing (arrives at PEK at 10:55am)
4/2/24 Tuesday beijing
4/3/24 Wednesday beijing
4/4/24 Thursday beijing
4/5/24 Friday beijing to xi'an
4/6/24 Saturday xi'an
4/7/24 Sunday xi'an to yantai
4/8/24 Monday yantai
4/9/24 Tuesday yantai
4/10/24 Wednesday yantai to shanghai
4/11/24 Thursday shanghai
4/12/24 Friday shanghai to lax (flight departs PVG at 20:50)

The only thing about the # of days in Beijing is that our hotel rate skyrockets with the current # of nights (4 nights). If we cut one day there, it'll reduce our cost at least for Beijing (3 nights is just under $670~ and 4 nights pushes it to over $1000). Would you guys suggest removing a day from Beijing and re-allocating that day to Shanghai given the itinerary?