If this is Tuesday it must be Xian

We got our itinerary. I had put down a laundry list of possible sight seeing destinations - Holy Cow! They've got us booked for everything. We get the afternoon off the day we arrive in Beijing, then we hit the ground running. The Great Wall and Ming tombs - with lunch. Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City - with lunch. Then on to the Beijing Opera and Acrobat Show that evening. The Hutong (old Beijing) and Temple of Heaven - with lunch. Then we take the luxury overnight sleeper train to Xian on Saturday night and get Lian a day earlier than we thought - on Sunday. A day of paperwork, the registrar, notary, and passport application. Then back to the races, the Wild Goose Pagoda and Muslim Quarter. The famous Terracotta Warriors. The Bell and Drum Tower. The next day we get Lian's Chinese passport and fly to Guangzhou that evening. She has her medical appointment on Saturday, and we revisit the Chen Clan Temple that afternoon. Next day the Sun Yat-sen memorial which we somehow missed the first time we were in Guangzhou - it's set in a lovely park. The next day we make a trip to Lela's SWI to visit. It's about 3 hours north of Guangzhou. The 25th is our visa appointment, the 26th we get our visa and take an evening train to Hong Kong. We get in late, about 9pm, but still time to walk around the harbor area a bit. Next am we are winging our way back to Newark on Continental, a direct flight -only 15.5 hours. Due to changing time zones we get the oddity of leaving Hong Kong at 10am - flying 15 hours and getting in at 2 pm the same day- the longest 4 hours of our life. I bet I'll never have been so glad to see NJ before - Look! It's Ikea! And then we spend the weekend passed out at odd times due to 13 hours of jet lag. So that's the plan - we'll actually play it by ear with Lela and Lian's tolerance being the guiding factor.