Chongqing or Xi'an?

Both cities lie deep in China's interior, so a beach is simply not part of either trip. In Chongqing the Yangtze and Jialing are fast, muddy working rivers. Its long, sticky summers make the hotel pools, hot-spring resorts and the odd river-shore wading spot more welcome. In Xi'an, a swim means a hotel pool or the hot-spring resorts at Lintong, which are close to the Terracotta Army.

Chongqing is the bigger eating destination, and many visitors come for the food alone. Its hotpot of beef tallow, chillies and numbing Sichuan pepper is the defining meal. Around it come xiaomian noodles at breakfast, chicken buried in dried chillies, grilled fish and chuanchuan skewers, served in hillside kitchens that cook far into the night. The catch is the heat: anyone who avoids spice will need to ask for split pots and milder broths.

Xi'an offers a different kitchen rather than a lesser one. It is wheat country, with hand-pulled and biangbiang noodles, roujiamo buns and yangrou paomo, a mutton soup with flatbread you crumble into it yourself. Most of the eating centres on the Muslim Quarter's lamb skewers and sweet stalls. In both cities wine, international cooking and fine dining are thin.

Xi'an is far ahead for history. As the capital of thirteen dynasties and the starting point of the Silk Road, it still has a complete 14km Ming wall you can cycle along, the Bell and Drum Towers, the Tang-era Wild Goose Pagodas and the Daming Palace site. Inside, the Shaanxi History Museum and the Forest of Steles hold collections that justify a full day each.

Chongqing's appeal is the cityscape rather than its monuments: the stacked skyline, the monorail through buildings and the crowded stilt houses of Hongyadong. The Three Gorges Museum and the wartime-capital sites such as the Stilwell Museum are worth seeing, but most of the old city has been replaced.

Chongqing is the late-night city of the two. A typical evening moves from the river views and the cable car to hotpot and skewers that run past 2am. The glossy, table-service clubs of the Jiujie street in Jiangbei carry on later still, almost entirely among locals.

Xi'an's nights are lively but early and mostly outdoors, with families and couples walking the floodlit boulevard below the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and eating through the Muslim Quarter. The bars around Defu Xiang near the South Gate are good for a beer, though few visitors go to Xi'an for its nightlife.

Both have good landscapes within reach, but they are arranged differently. Chongqing is built on its mountains: Nanshan's forest paths and lookouts are just across the Yangtze from the centre, and further out lie Wulong's natural bridges and sinkholes and the start of the Three Gorges cruises.

Xi'an sits on a flat, often hazy plain with little green inside the city beyond the moat gardens. The Qinling range rises an hour south, with the Taoist valleys of Zhongnan, and Mount Hua's granite ridges and cliff paths offer a tougher, more dramatic climb than anything near Chongqing.

Xi'an has the stronger list of excursions, led by one of the world's great archaeological sites. The Terracotta Army and Huaqing Palace combine easily in a day. The Hanyangling and Qianling tombs and Famen Temple reward further trips, and a fast train reaches Luoyang's Longmen Grottoes in about an hour and a half.

From Chongqing, Chengdu and its pandas and teahouses are an hour away by high-speed train. The cliff carvings at Dazu are a worthy rival to anything near Xi'an, and old stilt-house towns such as Songji and Laitan make quieter outings. Beyond these, most longer trips from Chongqing are for scenery rather than history.

Chongqing gives children slightly more to do. It has pandas at the zoo, a big science museum in Jiangbei, theme parks on the edge of town, and the river cable car and monorail as rides in their own right. Against that, it is a city of stairs and steep lanes where a pushchair is a burden, and much of the food is too spicy unless ordered mild.

In Xi'an, cycling on top of the wall is the highlight for children, and the wildlife park in the Qinling foothills has pandas and golden monkeys. The flat centre is easier on small legs, but most of the sights are museums and tombs that hold a child's attention only briefly.

Both cities have large metros with English signs and cheap taxis, so the difference is the shape of the ground. Chongqing's network adds monorails, river cable cars and long escalators, but the hills make short walks hard work, and street levels that do not line up can confuse map apps.

Xi'an's walled centre is a flat grid where the towers, the Muslim Quarter and the Forest of Steles are an easy walk apart. Line 9 takes you most of the way to the Terracotta Army. Rush-hour traffic and Chinese-only signs away from the metro are its weak points.

Chongqing is better for large-scale shopping, with department stores and luxury labels around Jiefangbei and a second mall district at Guanyinqiao. The best thing to take home is edible, a pack of hotpot base and Sichuan pepper.

Xi'an has malls near the Bell Tower too, but its real strength is traditional craft. Shuyuanmen, inside the South Gate, sells brushes, ink stones, seals and paper, making it the better place for a lasting souvenir, as long as you look past the countless replica warriors.

Both are cheap by Chinese and Western standards, with low-cost noodles, inexpensive metro rides and good-value mid-range hotels. Where the money goes is what differs. In Xi'an, ticketed sites such as the Terracotta Army, the wall and the big tomb complexes add up over a few days. In Chongqing the extras are the Yangtze cruises, cable cars and paid viewpoints.

Neither city is a destination for the stage, and each has a grand theatre and a symphony orchestra. Chongqing's signature show is Sichuan opera, with its face-changing and fire-spitting routines. Xi'an offers Tang-style dinner shows, large outdoor spectacles at Huaqing Palace, and Qinqiang, the loud, raw Shaanxi opera, which you can sometimes catch in small theatres and parks.

Chongqing is the better place to unwind, mainly because of its old hot-spring tradition. Resorts such as Beiwenquan near Jinyun Mountain and Nanwenquan have outdoor pools in wooded valleys, and a late foot massage after hotpot is a local habit. The centre itself is noisy, steep and humid, so rest means a trip out to the edges.

Xi'an has Lintong's springs, once used by Tang emperors, and cheap bathhouses with saunas. Here the calm is more often found in temple courtyards or on the wall early in the morning, between days of sightseeing.