hi sonata,
no problem, glad to share my china travel experiences.
may/june r good times to visit beijing. i went in dec n it was really cold at tiananmen.
if u r going to take a tour fr sg, try to extend a few more days to explore on ur own. tours tend to bring u through forbidden palace n other sights quite quickly. u can use the extended stay to linger in those sights.
xian is read xi(1)-an(1) in chinese. it's the former chang-an n its geographical location is in the middle of china. it's where the terracota warriors by qin-shi-huang r located. i like xi-an for lots of history. when we were there, we had a terrific guide who could recite the 3000 yrs of history that occured n point out the little traces of those events. n he could describe to us the uniqueness of xi-an.
i had friends who spent 13 days in xi-an alone n loved every mintues of it. they also hv dumplings or jiao-zhi, which tastes really gd. but these come in huge proportions that non-locals like me couldn't finish. imagine, when waitresses take orders, they ask how many "jin" u want.
never been to yunnan, juizhaigou n harbin. my friends who visited hv great praises for these places too! i've only been through the guangzhou-guilin-xian-beijing route, the shanghai-suzhou-hangzhou-wuxi route, n the chang jiang route.
china offers plenty of history (fr b.c. to a.d.), famous dishes (wuxi ribs, peking duck, xi-an dumplings etc), quaint cities (e.g. suzhou), lovely mountains (guilin, huangshan etc) n rugged scenery (jiuzhaigou, silk route). different regions of china offer vastly different experiences. there's lots of culture to be seen. i remember seeing narrow roads, rivers with drooping willows n small bridges in suzhou, n mi(2)-mi(2)-meng(2)-meng(2) scenery in guilin. it was v. pretty. it's also a country that's not stagnant. u also get the feeling that the place is being developed. n if u visit some of the most vibrant cities, e.g. shanghai, a few yrs is all it takes for the city to change significantly.
my wedding n honeymoon is already over. we went to tunisia, which is a northern african country, n stopped by london for a few days. we chose tunisia for a different experience. our next destination is going to be china.