Beijing

Overview

Beijing is China’s capital, and the imperial city plan is still the map you navigate by: a 7.8 km north to south axis from the Drum and Bell Towers down to Yongdingmen Gate, with the Forbidden City at its centre. The axis was laid out when the Yuan dynasty made the city its capital, refined under the Ming and Qing, and inscribed by UNESCO in 2024 as a single World Heritage ensemble. Everything a first-time visitor wants is strung along it or a short ride away: Tian’anmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the lakes at Shichahai, and the hutong lanes that fill the gaps between them.

The hutong are the reason to spend time in the centre rather than just tick off palaces. They are alleys formed by rows of siheyuan courtyard houses, first laid out under the Yuan in the 13th century, and they survive in quantity only inside the Second Ring Road, which runs along the line of the demolished Ming inner-city wall. Outside that ring the city changes character fast: Chaoyang to the east holds the embassies, the Sanlitun bar district and the 798 art zone; Haidian to the northwest has the universities and the Summer Palace.

The big sights each have their own page: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the National Museum of China, the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. This page covers the city around them: where to base yourself, what to eat, how to move, and the neighbourhoods where the capital actually lives. You will eat Peking duck, but the everyday food is wheat, not rice: noodles, breakfast pancakes, lamb skewers, mutton hotpot. The China guide covers VPNs, Alipay and visas once so this page does not have to.

Neighbourhoods

The old walled city is split down the Central Axis into Dongcheng on the east and Xicheng on the west, and the Second Ring Road (with subway Line 2 beneath it) follows the old Ming inner-city wall around both. Everything below is inside that ring except Sanlitun, 798 and Haidian.

Gulou and Nanluoguxiang

The lanes around the Drum Tower are the best-preserved hutong in the city and the easiest to wander. The alleys between the Bell Tower and the Lama Temple mostly run east to west, so you can walk from one to the other through the lanes in about half an hour. Nanluoguxiang, the alley most people start with, is a Yuan-dynasty lane about 800 metres long from Gulou East Street south to Di’anmen East Street, named in the Qing around 1750 and now packed with snack shops, bubble tea and souvenir stalls; its subway station on Lines 6 and 8 opened at the south end in 2012. It gets very crowded, but the side alleys are quiet within fifty metres, and Beiluoguxiang, its continuation north of Gulou East Street, has the same courtyard geography with a fraction of the foot traffic.

Houhai and Shichahai

Shichahai is the chain of three lakes, Qianhai, Houhai and Xihai, northwest of the Forbidden City and a ten-minute walk west of the Drum Tower. From the Yuan onward this was the northern terminus of the Grand Canal from Hangzhou, and so the city’s commercial heart. Prince Gong Mansion and the former residence of Soong Ching-ling are both on the Houhai side; in summer people rent boats and in winter the lakes freeze and locals skate. The south shore of Houhai is a bar strip (see nightlife); the lanes a few blocks back from the water are residential and far better for a walk. By subway, Beihai North on Line 6 is about half a kilometre west of Qianhai, and you walk north along the shore from there.

Yonghegong and Wudaoying

The northeast corner of Dongcheng, around the Lama Temple, is the calmer version of Gulou. Wudaoying Hutong runs west from directly opposite the temple as a narrow lane of small coffee and pastry shops, terrace cafés, clothing and craft boutiques and a couple of bars, with a local weekend crowd rather than tour groups. Yonghegong station on Lines 2 and 5 puts you at the temple gate.

Qianmen and Dashilan

South of Tian’anmen Square, Zhengyangmen (everyone says Qianmen, “Front Gate”) was built in 1419 and at 42 metres is still the tallest gate in the old wall; Line 2’s Qianmen station sits between the gatehouse and the archery tower where the barbican used to be. Qianmen Dajie runs south from it as a wide pedestrian street of rebuilt shopfronts for traditional brands. Off its west side is Dashilan, a 275-metre commercial street that has been a shopping district since the Ming; the name comes from the large wooden fence merchants paid for at its entrance in the late 15th century, burnt in 1899 and rebuilt in iron in 2000.

Wangfujing

The main shopping street, pedestrianised in 1999 and 2000, with around 280 shops in malls; one stop east of Tian’anmen on Line 1 and mostly useful as a hotel base.

Sanlitun and Chaoyang

Chaoyang is the large district east of the Second Ring, with the business district around Guomao, almost all the embassies, and Sanlitun. The embassies were moved out here in the late 1950s and the bars followed once reform and opening began; the name means “three li village”, roughly 1.5 km from Dongzhimen gate. The centre of it now is Taikoo Li Sanlitun, an open-air mall of 19 buildings on two sites that opened in July 2008 as Sanlitun Village and was renamed in 2013, its layout modelled on hutong and courtyards. Tuanjiehu on Line 10 is a ten-minute walk; Dongsi Shitiao on Line 2 about twenty.

798 Art Zone

Northeast of Sanlitun in Dashanzi, 798 is a complex of decommissioned military-electronics factories, originally Joint Factory 718, designed by East German engineers in a Bauhaus-influenced style with sawtooth roofs and begun in 1954; since the early 2000s it has been the city’s contemporary art district, anchored by the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Many pioneering galleries have moved on as rents rose, but it still has the city’s largest concentration of art venues, with Mao-era slogans on the walls. Gaojiayuan on Line 12 is outside the main entrance; Jiangtai on Line 14 is walkable; weekends are crowded.

Haidian

The northwest is the university and tech district, with Peking and Tsinghua universities, the Zhongguancun cluster and the Summer Palace, all strung along Line 4. Few visitors stay here; a half day by subway covers it.

See & do

The simplest plan is to walk the Central Axis from north to south: Drum and Bell Towers, Jingshan, the Forbidden City, Tian’anmen Square, Qianmen, then the Temple of Heaven. The UNESCO listing covers all of them plus Wanning Bridge, the Altar of Land and Grain, the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the Altar of the God of Agriculture.

The Forbidden City

The 72-hectare palace at the centre of the axis housed Ming and Qing emperors from 1420 until Puyi’s abdication in 1912 and holds around 980 buildings. Tickets are timed, capped at 80,000 a day and sold through the Palace Museum’s official site; walk-ups no longer work. It opens 08:30 to 17:00 from April to October and 08:30 to 16:30 from November to March, closed Mondays except public holidays; adult admission is ¥60. Enter from the south at the Meridian Gate and allow half a day; the Forbidden City page has the route.

Tian’anmen Square and the National Museum

The square south of the palace measures 765 by 282 metres, enlarged fourfold in the 1950s; the flag is raised at sunrise and lowered at sunset at its northern end. Entry requires registration the day before and a passport check at the security cordon, and taxis cannot stop on the square. On the east side, the National Museum of China holds more than 1.4 million items in 48 halls in a 1959 building. It opens 09:00 to 17:00 (to 17:30 from June to October), closed Mondays except national holidays; prioritise the Ancient China galleries downstairs.

Jingshan and Beihai

Jingshan Park, across the moat north of the palace, is a 45.7-metre artificial hill built in the Yongle era from the spoil of the palace moats; the top pavilion gives the only elevated view straight down the axis over the yellow roofs, and the last Ming emperor hanged himself from a tree here in 1644. Beihai Park, to the west, is a 71-hectare imperial garden first laid out in the 12th century, more than half lake, open to the public since 1925; entry is ¥15.

Temple of Heaven

The 267-hectare walled park in the south of Dongcheng is where Ming and Qing emperors prayed each year for good harvests; the triple-eaved Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests on its marble terrace is the building on the postcards. The park opens 06:00 to 22:00, the halls Tuesday to Sunday 08:00 to 18:00, adult admission ¥34. Come around 07:00 for the tai chi and water calligraphy, then the buildings when they open. Details on the Temple of Heaven page.

Drum and Bell Towers

At the north end of the axis, the Drum Tower was first built in 1272 when the city was Khanbaliq, rebuilt east of its original site in 1420, and with the Bell Tower behind it kept official time for Beijing until 1924. Both climb for the view over the grey hutong roofs.

Lama Temple and the Confucius Temple

Yonghe Temple, the palace of Prince Yong (the future Yongzheng Emperor) from 1702, was converted by the Qianlong Emperor into a Gelug Tibetan Buddhist monastery in 1744; the 18-metre Maitreya in the Wanfu Pavilion, carved from a single sandalwood trunk, is the piece to see. Next door on Guozijian Street, the Temple of Confucius, founded in 1302, is the second largest in China after Qufu and much quieter.

Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace

About 15 km northwest of the centre, the Summer Palace was the Qing court’s hot-weather retreat, rebuilt by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888 with money meant for the navy; three quarters of its 290 hectares is Kunming Lake and the Long Corridor runs 728 metres along the north shore. Gates open 06:00 to 19:00 in summer and 06:30 to 18:00 in winter, adult admission ¥30; Beigongmen on Line 4 is at the north gate, and the Summer Palace page has the walking route. Two stops south, the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) is the ruin of the Qianlong Emperor’s main residence, looted and burnt by British and French troops in October 1860.

The Great Wall

Which section is the only real question. Badaling, about 80 km northwest in Yanqing, was the first stretch opened to tourists in 1957, is fully restored and the most visited; the 877 bus runs from Deshengmen bus station by Jishuitan subway, and high-speed trains from Beijing North stop at the underground Badaling Great Wall station. Mutianyu, 70 km northeast in Huairou, is Ming work rebuilt in 1569 and restored from 1983, with the same finish and fewer people; it opens 07:30 to 18:00 in season and 08:00 to 17:30 in winter, adult admission ¥40. Jinshanling and Huanghuacheng are harder to reach but far emptier. The Great Wall page compares them properly.

Ming Tombs

The Thirteen Tombs sit 42 km north-northwest of the centre in Changping, in a valley the Yongle Emperor chose for himself after finishing the Forbidden City in 1420; every Ming emperor after him but two was buried here. Opening is 08:30 to 17:30 in peak season and 08:30 to 16:30 off season, adult admission ¥60; most people pair it with Badaling. The Ming Tombs page says which tombs are open.

Food & drink

Beijing cooking leans on Shandong technique, on dark soy paste, sesame paste, sesame oil and spring onions, and on wheat rather than rice, because the dry climate never grew much of the latter; the dishes that are truly local tend to be snacks rather than banquet courses. Halal lamb and beef cooking, brought in when the Yuan made the city its capital, is the other pillar.

Peking duck

The dish is a specific preparation: ducks bred for it are slaughtered at 65 days, air is pumped under the skin, and the bird is roasted in a closed or hung oven until the skin is glass-thin; the cook slices it at the table and you roll skin and meat in pancakes with spring onion, cucumber and sweet bean sauce. The two institutions are Bianyifang, founded in 1416 in Xianyukou near Qianmen and still using the older closed-oven method, and Quanjude, founded in 1864, whose founder Yang Quanren developed the hung oven. Dadong is the modern name most locals put alongside Quanjude. Reserve, and order a whole bird between two.

Noodles, pancakes and skewers

Zhajiangmian is thick wheat noodles under a fried fermented-soybean sauce with pork and raw vegetables; the dish is Shandong in origin, but the Beijing version is the one counted among China’s Ten Great Noodles. Breakfast is jianbing from a cart: batter spread on a hotplate, an egg cracked over it, a crisp baocui cracker folded inside, brushed with sauce and chilli. Carts work the morning commute and reopen at night for the after-bar crowd; lamb skewers (yangrou chuan’r) are grilled on makeshift stands from late afternoon until late, and in winter tanghulu, hawthorn berries on a stick dipped in sugar that hardens in the cold, appears on every corner.

Mutton hotpot

Shuan yangrou is the Beijing hotpot: a Manchu-origin dish of thinly sliced mutton swished in a clear, unspiced broth and dipped in sesame sauce, which you doctor with chilli, garlic and coriander. Ask for a yuanyang pot, split down the middle, if half the table wants the Sichuan red broth. Ingredients come by the plate, so a vegetarian hotpot is easy.

Where to eat by area

Guijie (“Ghost Street”) is Dongzhimen Inner Street in the northeast of Dongcheng: over a kilometre long, more than 150 eateries, spicy crayfish the house speciality, and the city’s default for a big loud late dinner. For halal food, the streets around Niujie Mosque in southern Xicheng are the Hui neighbourhood, with butchers and restaurants. International cooking is in Chaoyang: Xingfucun Zhonglu near Sanlitun for steak, craft beer and bakeries, and Shenlu Jie north of Ritan Park for Central Asian and Caucasus cooking under Cyrillic signs. Wangfujing Snack Street, in the alley west of the pedestrian street, does chuan’r and tanghulu at tourist prices.

Nightlife

Sanlitun has been the bar district since the first standalone bars opened for expats in the early 1990s, and it now holds roughly 70 per cent of the bars in Beijing. It is also the hub of the city’s LGBT scene, with the largest concentration of gay bars. The big clubs, with high-capacity floors and international DJ bookings, line the west side of Workers’ Stadium (Gongti) just to the south, which has its own stop on Line 3; between the two, Heaven Supermarket is a cheap beer hall with hundreds of bottles and a mixed crowd.

The hutong scene around Nanluoguxiang and the Drum Tower is the opposite in scale: a bar cluster that formed around 2006 in small courtyard rooms, where drinking starts in the afternoon at places with outdoor space and finding the bar is half the evening. Great Leap Brewing opened here in 2010 as the first Beijing microbrewery built on craft beer with Chinese ingredients (Sichuan pepper, Tieguanyin oolong), in a former siheyuan still described as one of the hardest bars in the city to find; it now runs four brewpubs. Slowboat is the other local brewery name to look for, and a half-litre of Tsingtao in a hutong bar is around ¥20.

Houhai, the lake strip west of the Drum Tower, was the trendy address in the 2000s and has faded: the bars around the small bridge between Houhai and Qianhai are mostly similar karaoke lounges. Walk it on a summer evening for the lights on the water, then drink elsewhere. The subway closes around 22:45, so any late night ends in a DiDi.

When to go

Beijing has a humid continental climate with a monsoon summer and a Siberian winter: the January mean is minus 2.7°C, July’s is 27.2°C, and close to three quarters of the 528 mm of annual rain falls between June and August. By the Chinese seasonal standard the city enters spring on 26 March, summer on 20 May, autumn on 13 September and winter on 31 October, and autumn has been getting shorter.

September and October

The “Golden Autumn” is the best window: dry, clear, average highs around 26°C in September falling to 19°C in October, and the parks turning colour. The catch is National Day on 1 October, the anniversary of Mao’s 1949 proclamation on Tian’anmen Square, which starts a week-long national holiday; the Forbidden City sells out and hotel prices jump. Mid-October to early November is the sweet spot.

April and May

The second-best window, with highs climbing from about 21°C in April to 27°C in May and almost no rain. Spring is also when sandstorms blow in from the Gobi across the Mongolian steppe; on a bad day the sky goes yellow and a mask is sensible. The May Day holiday at the start of the month is a smaller version of October’s crowd surge.

June to August

Hot and humid, with highs around 31°C and the year’s rain arriving in short violent storms; July has the least sunshine of the year. Domestic crowds are at their largest through the school holiday. The Great Wall is punishing at midday; go at opening.

November to March

Cold and bone-dry, with January highs around 2°C and lows near minus 7°C; snow is infrequent. The upside is empty palaces and low hotel rates, and once the Shichahai lakes freeze, locals skate on them. Chinese New Year (late January or February) empties the city of Beijingers for a week and closes many small restaurants; the compensation is the 15-day folk fair at Liulichang.

Visa-free transit of up to 240 hours exists for 54 nationalities; the China guide has the rules.

Getting there

By air

Beijing Capital (PEK), 32 km northeast of the centre, opened in 1958 and is the busier of the two airports, the Air China and Star Alliance hub, with most long-haul in Terminal 3, built for the 2008 Olympics. The Capital Airport Express costs ¥25, runs every 10 to 15 minutes from 06:30 to 23:00, and reaches Sanyuanqiao (Line 10), Dongzhimen (Line 2) and Beixinqiao (Line 5) in about 25 minutes, after which you buy a separate subway ticket.

Beijing Daxing (PKX), 46 km south on the Hebei border, opened on 26 September 2019 under a single starfish-shaped terminal and is the SkyTeam hub with some Oneworld carriers; the two airports are 65 km apart, so check which one your ticket says. The Daxing Airport Express runs to Caoqiao on Line 10 in about 22 minutes for ¥35 in ordinary class (¥50 business); the ticket machines reject foreign passports, so buy from the staffed counter. The Beijing to Xiong’an intercity railway also links Daxing to Beijing West station, and a metered taxi to the centre is roughly ¥200 including the toll, 60 to 90 minutes.

By rail

Beijing South, 7.5 km south of the centre in Fengtai and opened in 2008, is the high-speed terminus for Tianjin (30 minutes) and Shanghai, on Lines 4 and 14. The Beijing to Shanghai line covers 1,318 km in around four and a half hours with several departures an hour. Beijing West (Lines 7 and 9), opened in 1996, handles high-speed trains to Xi’an, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guilin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong West Kowloon, plus the long conventional runs to Lhasa and Urumqi; expect a ten-minute taxi queue underground and ignore the touts offering to skip it. Beijing railway station, opened in 1959 and the only one inside the old walled city, on Line 2, sends high-speed trains to the northeast and the conventional services to Ulaanbaatar, Moscow and Pyongyang.

Beijing North, beside Xizhimen, starts the high-speed line to Zhangjiakou, Hohhot and Datong. Whatever the station, you need your passport at the gate; booking channels are covered in the China guide.

By bus and car

Nine long-distance bus stations serve the provinces, with Liuliqiao the main hub, but with high-speed rail covering nearly every destination you are unlikely to need them except for places without a station, such as the Eastern Qing Tombs from Sihui. Driving in is not worth it: cars without Beijing plates need a permit, valid for at most seven days, to enter anywhere inside the Sixth Ring Road, and foreigners need a Chinese licence.

Getting around

Subway

The Beijing Subway has 30 lines, 541 stations and 909 km of track, and became the world’s longest metro by route length in December 2023. Fares start at ¥3 for the first 6 km and rise with distance; a 40 km trip costs ¥7. Trains run from about 05:15 to 22:45, signage is bilingual, and every entrance X-rays bags, which adds a couple of minutes a trip. The lines you will use: 1 along Chang’an Avenue past Tian’anmen; 2 looping the old wall; 4 for the Summer Palace and Beijing South; 5 from Yonghegong to the Temple of Heaven; 8 for the Drum Tower, Nanluoguxiang, Qianmen and the Olympic park. Lines 1, 4, 10 and 13 are the crush at rush hour.

Bus and bicycle

Buses start at ¥2, half price with a Yikatong, and fill the gaps when the nearest subway stop is a kilometre away; night buses run roughly 23:20 to 04:50, and the operator’s helpline on 96166 has English-speaking staff. Dockless share bikes wait outside every subway exit, the city is flat, every major street has a bike lane, and cycling is often faster than a car in traffic; it is the best way to cover the hutong. Cars turn right across bike lanes without slowing, so make left turns in two stages like a pedestrian.

Taxi and DiDi

Metered fares are ¥13 for the first 3 km and ¥2.30 per kilometre after that, with a 20 per cent surcharge after 22:00; legal cabs are yellow-and-black or all black with permits on the dashboard. Most people use the DiDi mini-app inside Alipay, which takes the destination in English and pays automatically; you will only need a street cab at airport and station ranks. Hiring a taxi for a whole day, for the wall and tombs, runs about ¥400 to ¥600 through a hotel.

Walking works inside the Second Ring in chunks; beyond it the boulevards are hostile on foot, and at any crossing assume nobody yields: cars turn right on red without stopping, and crossing with a knot of locals is safer than alone.

Where to stay

Budget rooms start under ¥300, four-star hotels from around ¥500, and five-star from roughly ¥1,200 to ¥2,100, with a top tier (Rosewood, Peninsula, Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing, Bulgari) well above that; the expensive hotels cluster in Dongcheng and along the eastern Third Ring Road in Chaoyang. Beijing is neither compact nor quick to cross, so the district matters.

Hutong courtyards around Gulou and Houhai

The most atmospheric choice is a small inn in a converted siheyuan in the lanes near the Drum Tower, Nanluoguxiang or the Shichahai lakes; one typical courtyard guesthouse near Houhai is a five-minute walk from the lake and twenty from the subway, which is the trade-off in a sentence. Rooms are small, ceilings low, and you step out into a working lane. Best for a first visit if the sights matter more than nightlife.

Wangfujing and central Dongcheng

Chain hotels and a few courtyard hotels in the streets east of the Forbidden City, with Wangfujing on Line 1 and Dengshikou on Line 5; several mid-range places are a ten-minute walk from the palace gate. The practical choice for a short trip focused on the axis.

Sanlitun and eastern Chaoyang

Large international hotels around the embassies, Liangmaqiao and Taikoo Li; convenient for bars, brunch and the airport express, less so for the palaces.

Qianmen and the Temple of Heaven

Two- and three-star Chinese hotels and budget chains south of Tian’anmen and around the Temple of Heaven, at the lower end of the range; check how far the nearest metro is.

Whatever you book, carry your passport: every hotel registers foreign guests at check-in.

Practical info

Beijing is a safe city by any measure, with violent crime rare, a heavy police presence in the centre and no particular problem walking alone at night; the risks are scams and, in crowds, pickpockets. Emergency numbers are 110 for police, 119 for fire and 120 for an ambulance.

Scams

The classic is the friendly “student” or “artist” near Tian’anmen or Wangfujing who invites you to a tea tasting or an exhibition, ending in pressure to pay a large bill; decline any invitation to go somewhere unplanned. Taxi-related: drivers who hand back counterfeit ¥50 or ¥100 notes as change; “meter broken” quotes; and the scooter-taxis with a seat bolted on the back that demand ¥300 for a two-minute ride if no fare was agreed. Unofficial cabs wait outside the Great Wall and the Summer Palace and charge whatever they can.

Health

Public hospitals rarely have English-speaking staff. Beijing United Family Hospital and Raffles Medical Beijing are private and expensive with English-speaking doctors; Peking Union Medical College Hospital and the China-Japan Friendship Hospital are the public options with good language resources. For bad-air days, a surgical mask does nothing against fine particles; an N95 or KN95 does.

Everything that is true of the whole country, the Great Firewall and VPNs, Alipay and WeChat Pay, visas, tap water and tipping, is on the China page and not repeated here.

Places to visit

Monument

• Ming tombs — Burial valley of thirteen Ming emperors north of Beijing, with the Yongle Emperor’s Changling and the excavated Dingling underground palace
• Temple of Heaven — Beijing’s imperial altar to heaven, a 267-hectare walled park around the blue-roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Museum

• National Museum of China — China’s state history museum on the east side of Tiananmen Square, free but reservation-only, home of the 832 kg Houmuwu Ding

Palace

• Forbidden City — The Ming and Qing imperial palace at the heart of Beijing, home to 24 emperors and now the Palace Museum
• Summer Palace — Cixi’s rebuilt Qing garden in northwest Beijing: Kunming Lake, Longevity Hill and the 728 metre painted Long Corridor

Walls

• Great Wall of China — Ming brick fortifications on the ridges north of Beijing, walkable at Badaling, Mutianyu, Jinshanling or Jiankou