Beijing
Travel Guide, climate:
Best:
April - May [tho' dusty], Sept, October
OK: June-August [hot, up to 35C, wet and crowded]
Worst: Dec, Jan [extreme cold, down to 20C]; 1st week of May [Chinese
holidays so
sights are very crowded]; the Chinese New Year [February
sometime].
Tour operators offering travel to and around Beijing can be found
in our listings here: China
Tours
Length
of stay:
Minimum worthwhile stay, not incl. flights: at least four days to
see some of Beijing and take a trot along the Great Wall.
Recommended: One week plus.
Beijing
Festivals Information:
January/February, New Year Parade with many dragons and much dancing.
Feb/March, the Lantern Festival, lighting and carrying paper lamps,
some of strange design.
For
some precise dates, more suggestions and information see:
Exotic Festivals
Biking:
In spite of the criss-crossing freeways and dirty air biking is
still big here, particularly as a way to explore the remaining warren
of alleyways. Rentals easy to find.
Beijing
Cuisine Guide:
Some of the city's best food can be found in little local restaurants
or street stalls so don't hesitate to dive in where other tourists
fear to tread but locals are scoffing and slurping.
The day and night Wangfujing Food Market, for example, offers haut
cuisine at low prices.
Roast [Peking] duck is a speciality of course, though touristy
offerings are often poor quality so get a local recommendation before
splurging.
A terrific north China speciality is Hotpot, often including
lamb, tofu and cabbage among other ingredients.
For the adventurous eater there are lightly barbequed scorpions,
sea cucumber, silk worm kebabs, snake bladders, cockroach a la king
and more exotica available from market stalls.
Chinese wines can be excellent, especially the yellow wine [huang
jiu] and rice wine [mi jiu].
And for those dependant on western food, no problem, KFC rules Beijing.
Beijing
Nightlife Guide:
Traditional tourist entertainments such as the Beijing Opera and
Chinese acrobats are still popular and recommended but live music
bars patronised by locals are the new wave, offering everything
from heavy metal to zither music.
Wild nightclub scenes, often DJ'd by foreigners, are commonplace.
That's Beijing ex pat listings paper is the best source of
what's on information.
Short
Trips out of the City:
The
18thC Summer Palace, aka Yiheyuan,
across a huge lake from Beijing's centre, is a wonderfully classic
piece of royal Chinese architecture and park with fantastically
ornate roofs, colourful temples, dragon tiles and splendid gardens.
Yiheyuan is where emperors and their courts retreated for almost
1,000 years [this palace is relatively new] when summer oppression
kicked in and consequently it's where any sane traveller should
go when the metropolis gets too much.
Rowing boat rental is available and lake skating in winter.
Access: other than taking taxis or buses you can now get to the
Summer
Palace more
dramatically by ferry from behind the Exhibition Centre.
The
Great Wall of China.
A simply staggering sight an hour or so out of the city, Badalang
is the traditional target for a half day trip [70km/ 45 miles NW
of the city], offering a picture of the Chinese countryside as well
as being en route for the Ming Tombs,
otherwise known as Shisan Ling [40km NW], a group of lavish
resting places for 13 emperors, though this is more attractive for
its hilly, wooded surroundings than for the tombs intrinsic interest.
The Great Wall Museum is educational.
However, Badalang is unfortunately a favoured destination for zillions
of Chinese tourists too, so if you have more time and prefer a spectacular
and less peopled view of the wall head for Mutianyu,
take the cable car halfway up and start walking.
Travellers with even more time and need for solitude could target
beautiful Simatai or Jinshanling
sections.
Getting to Badalang/Ming Tombs: avoid
tours which tend to arrive at the busiest times and not stay long
enough.
Public buses known as tourist buses with numbers written
in green are low cost and run regularly on this route. e.g. #1,
#2, #4, #5.
Beijing
Transport:
Taxi travel is well metered and not expensive, including the airport
run, while most drivers have heeded the authorities' demands to
learn some English. Pedicabs are more amusing but less price
controlled.
Accommodation:
Pleasant little hotels in the city centre with good atmosphere cost
around $100 per night for a double.
Shopping
Guide:
The
Dashanzi
district is Beijing's art area and packed with all sorts of creations,
old, new, cheap and priceless.
Curio City or the Friendship Store
for odd little goodies and gifts.
Panjiayuan
Dirt Market
is a lively place for travellers looking for cheap and cheerful
arts and crafts souvenirs.
Pictures
by: Martyn Unsworth [Tiananmen] and Xin Zhu [National Theatre]. |
|
Why
Travel to Beijing,
China?
August
8, 2008 sees the start of the Olympic Games in this monstrous, historic
city, centre of the universe [apparently] and heart of China - one
of the world's greatest countries in the distant past and now on
a steep development curve again after Chairman Mao's great leap
backward in the 60's.
China now looks like a serious contender for the 21st century's
next supermodern superpower title and Beijing is in the thick of
it, with forests of glassy buildings and rivers of steaming asphalt
demonstrating its new millennium credentials.
Due to the massive rebuilding and rebranding revolution ongoing
this could be a tricky time to visit with some tourist sites closed
for upgrade, construction work disturbing the peace and a pall of
dust hovering around the city, but if you must go before the Olympics
there will still be plenty of old customs and ancient magnificence
to see and an endless list of things to do, whether your taste is
walking, shopping, eating, drinking, t'ai chi with the locals
or dancing like a fool, Beijing has it.
Downside:
- The city pollution can be breathtaking, literally. Authorities
are experimenting with cures [traffic reduction etc.] but there's
no end in sight while building booms.
- Ubiquitous construction sites are both visually and audibly unpleasant.
- Major sights are overrun with tourists, Chinese tourists.
- Some sights are out of action due to renovation.
- Don't be surprised to see rampant western consumerism at work,
this is not old China.
Beijing's
main attractions:
Dawn is a great time to start sightseeing with just about any park
hosting groups of t'ai
chi
devotees; or wander the winding hutongs in search of Chinese
oddities such as little old men with their caged birds.
The
15thC Forbidden City aka Palace Museum [picture top left],
and possibly Mao's Mausoleum [Great
Hall of the People] in Tiananmen Square.
A natural starting point for any Beijing traveller is Tiananmen
from where Mao launched the the 60's revolution and confirmed China's
full- throttle communism.
The 800 building Palace Museum is a must and requires at least a
day of attention as it was home to 24 Ming and Qing emperors and
China's imperial core for 500 years so it's stuffed with treasures.
Buy the full-complex ticket if possible to get complete access,
you don't have to visit every place!
A shuffling glance at Mao's embalmed body is a definite maybe too.
And
by
the way, the city 's new architecture
is as eye-popping as the old stuff, led by the amazing Duck Egg
National Opera House [picture top right] and the latticed National
Stadium.
Beijing
is oriented on a 'Dragon's Vein' north to south axis, so
following this line is a natural tourist route.
North
of Tiananmen:
Coal
Hill Park.
Just north of the Forbidden City is this peaceful park where the
last Ming emperor hanged himself as Manchus successfully invaded
the city.
Shichai
Lake.
Bordered by ancient alleyways [hutongs] and village-style suburbs
that are sadly being overrun by Beijing's building boom, the lakeshore
is the place to get an idea of old Peking's community lifestyle.
Wander alone or easily find a pedicab driver to give you a tour
in some kind of English, including home visits.
Two other highlights of Shichai Lake are the magnificent Drum
and Bell Towers, visible from all around the area and Lotus
Lane's cluster of watering holes for parched tourist throats.
South
of Tiananmen:
Qianmen,
just south of Tiananmen Square, is another fascinating little labyrinth
of hutongs crammed with odd little shops, traditional eateries
and most bizarrely a bomb-proof undergound city.
The
Temple of Heaven,
2km south of Tiananmen, is one of Beijing's greatest hits, a stunning
piece of multi-coloured Ming design and wood workmanship finished
in 1420 AD, the temple sits on the spot where Heaven meets Earth
and the emperor [aka the Son of Heaven] consequently conducted
many ceremonies.
The main building, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests,
is built entirely of wood without use of nails and is the structure
that appears in most pictures.
Functioning
Beijing Temples:
The
Baiyun Guan or White Cloud Temple is
a tranquil, non-touristy and fully functioning Taoist temple west
of Tiananmen.
The nearby 400m high TV Tower offers
an incredible view over Beijing at a high price.
Yonghe
Gong,
a Tibetan Lama temple [Buddhist] built in the 17thC is popular with
tourists and contains many gorgeous mandalas, statues and gardens,
though the temple's authenticity as a real place of worship is questionable
- it makes a convenient political statement.
It's conveniently located next to the Yonghe Gong metro stop.
100m away down the street west of Yonghe Gong is the cool but somewhat
confused Kong Miao Confucius Temple
and museum.
Art
Galleries:
The Red Gate gallery in Jianguomen Beidajie features brilliant avant-garde
art while the Wan Fung Art Gallery in a part of the imperial palace
offers less dramatic but still contemporary work, Nanchizi Dajie.
The
Beijing 'burbs:
For a look at how the other half lives ride the metro out to Pinguoyuan
and take a walk.
If
you plan to travel to Beijing you may also be interested in:
Laos
Travel Guide | Vietnam
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Japan
Travel Guide | Russia
Travel Guide
India
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