The Year of the Dragon is upon us – appropriately enough, as this is the most powerful sign of the Chinese zodiac in a year when the Chinese economy in overdrive. This energy and optimism is nowhere better expressed than in Beijing, the frenetic capital with a dizzying mix of history, urban regeneration (for good and ill) and retail-therapy opportunities.
Spend a full but relaxing day in and around Beijing
Here’s a suggested itinerary for a full but relaxing day in and around the city centre.
Start at Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall
It’s back to Tiananmen Square, I’m afraid, but this time we’re making for a little-visited museum near the square’s south-east corner, one with an off-puttingly boring name but a fascinating exhibit that will help visitors come to grips with the day ahead.
The exhibition hall has a model of Beijing as it will look in 2020, once the “Beijing Master Plan” is completed. On a scale of 1:750, the model occupies more than 915 square metres and is bathed in coloured lights, as if you’re seeing the city from an aircraft at different times of day. Suddenly the core of this sprawling metropolis comes into focus as a series of oblongs fitting neatly inside and alongside one another. Take a decent map with which to trace today’s route.
Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall (Chinese:北京市规划展览馆), 20 Qianmen Dong Dajie. Open Tues-Sun, 9am-4pm, admission 30 yuan ($4.50).
Stroll to Qianmen Dajie
See what changes – vandalism, some would say – the aforementioned master plan has wrought on one of the oldest shopping streets in China. Now pedestrianized, the old route from the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven was where ordinary folk shopped for food, clothes and snacks.
In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, the neighborhood received a “facelift”. Old buildings were replaced and most traditional businesses driven out by the usual suspects – Starbucks, Rolex and McDonald’s. However, vestiges of old Beijing remain, especially on Dashilan side street.
Here, the Tongrentang herbal drugstore, Ruifuxiang silk store and the heady scents of the traditional tea shop (where leaves are gathered in metal scoops, weighed and poured into golden paper packets) are redolent of Imperial China.
Take a taxi to Hongqiao Market
Also known as the Pearl Market, though it sells much else besides, this is a flea market reinvented as a department store where tourists and European expatriates clean up on pearls, clothes, handbags and silk.
The hassle factor is high but there are bargains if you haggle hard. You should be paying a fraction of the original asking price and if you make a pretence of walking away, stallholders will drop the price.
Shops on the top floor, dedicated to pearls and antiques – some of the latter may even be genuine – are upmarket and not so susceptible to bargaining. Watches and electronic goods are best avoided.
Expect to pay up to $45 for a string of freshwater pearls. The excellent Toy Market is next door. Afterwards, ignore the taxis outside as most drivers tend to overcharge foreigners. Instead, walk a block or two before hailing one.
Hongqiao Market（Chinese:北京红桥市场), 46 Tiantan Donglu, Chongwen District, open 8.30am-7pm.
Time for lunch
Head east to Chaoyang District and the ritzy central business district for a fine restaurant specializing in Beijing cuisine, Xiao Wang’s Home Restaurant.
If the weather is good, eat on the terrace where fashionable young Beijing women with thin legs and thin cigars knock back large beers. Peking duck and deep-fried spare ribs are recommended.
Xiao Wang’s Home Restaurant（Xiao Wang Fu, Chinese:北京小王府私家菜馆), No2 Building, Guanghua Dongli, Chaoyang.
Followed by . . . more shopping
Ten minutes’ walk from the restaurant, just off the main thoroughfare of Jianguomenwai Dajie, is Beijing’s other multi-storey flea market, known as the Silk Market.
There are thousands of stalls and the sales pitches are even more aggressive than those of the Pearl Market. The asking price for a tailor-made pure wool suit is $240-$300 but canny shoppers should get that down by 50 per cent.
Silk Market, Xiushui Dong Jie, Chaoyang District, 9.30am-9pm.
Head to the hutongs
Many old alleyways with warrens of one-storey courtyard houses have already been sacrificed to the master plan. One of the largest surviving concentrations is a taxi ride from the Silk Market, immediately to the north of the Forbidden City and in and around the area known as Houhai.
Probably the hippest street in Beijing is Nanluogu Xiang, in the heart of a heritage zone that claims to be “the only remaining traditional residential area in China that fully preserves the chessboard-style layout of hutongs typically found in the Yuan Dynasty”.
The street itself is a strip of bars – including the backpacker hangout the Pass By Bar and shops selling tapas and churros, handmade notebooks and “thousand-layer cotton shoes”. The hutongs were home to the royal family, high-ranking officials and rich merchants. If you wish to see an interior, visit the home of the revolutionary novelist Mao Dun (1896-1981) at No.13 Houyuan’ensi hutong.
More strolling, shopping … and hutongs
The gentrified neighborhoods blur north and west from Nanluogo Xiang into areas surrounding the Bell and Drum Towers (climb for bird’s-eye views of the city) and Shichahai Lakes.
One notable street is the pedestrianized Yandai Xie Jie, literally Tobacco-pipe Street, with its Daoist temple and plenty of souvenir stalls. Outside one, an imitation warrior of the Terracotta Army wears John Lennon specs.
From the artificial lakes, where tourists and locals mingle, you can take another hutong crawl down Xiaojinsi hutong, the site of Ming Dynasty silk workshops, or stay by the water and enjoy the more contemporary pleasures of the Lotus Market. Here the bars include the Thai-themed Lotus Blue, with rooftop terrace, and Sex and Da City – though it may be too early in the day for the pole dancers.
Night Market and Snack Street
As the light fades, head back to the centre for Beijing’s most irresistible tourist attraction: Donghuamen Night Market, immediately to the east of the Forbidden City.
This “pavement skewer eatery”, which dates from 1984, claims to sell 60 speciality snacks from around China. But it’s also just an excuse to surprise squeamish Westerners. Dishes include fried silkworms and centipedes, vile-smelling sea horses and “sheep penis”.
At its eastern end, the market runs into Wangfujing Dajie, a part-pedestrianied equivalent of London’s Oxford Street (Cartier, Gucci, Armani, etc). Wangfujing has a night market known as Snack Street, where crowds, both locals and tourists, throng to feast on bugs including live beetles wriggling on skewers as they await their fate.
Street-wise
This itinerary can be done by hiring taxis as you go (make sure you have the names of the places you want to visit written in Chinese characters), or you can hire one taxi for the day (about $45).
A better option, less open to misunderstanding and scams, is to hire a vehicle and driver for the day through a travel agency, with pre-agreed itinerary: it costs about $95. With an English-speaking guide thrown in (highly recommended), it’s about $140.
Beijing
Planning Exhibition Hall - Get an overview of Beijing’s extraordinary
transformation from walled city to modern metropolis
It’s back to Tiananmen Square, I’m afraid, but this time we’re making for a little-visited museum near the square’s south-east corner, one with an off-puttingly boring name but a fascinating exhibit that will help visitors come to grips with the day ahead.
The exhibition hall has a model of Beijing as it will look in 2020, once the “Beijing Master Plan” is completed. On a scale of 1:750, the model occupies more than 915 square metres and is bathed in coloured lights, as if you’re seeing the city from an aircraft at different times of day. Suddenly the core of this sprawling metropolis comes into focus as a series of oblongs fitting neatly inside and alongside one another. Take a decent map with which to trace today’s route.
Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall (Chinese:北京市规划展览馆), 20 Qianmen Dong Dajie. Open Tues-Sun, 9am-4pm, admission 30 yuan ($4.50).
Qianmen Dajie is pedestrianized and renovated to resemble a late-Qing-dynasty street scene
Stroll to Qianmen Dajie
See what changes – vandalism, some would say – the aforementioned master plan has wrought on one of the oldest shopping streets in China. Now pedestrianized, the old route from the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven was where ordinary folk shopped for food, clothes and snacks.
In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, the neighborhood received a “facelift”. Old buildings were replaced and most traditional businesses driven out by the usual suspects – Starbucks, Rolex and McDonald’s. However, vestiges of old Beijing remain, especially on Dashilan side street.
Here, the Tongrentang herbal drugstore, Ruifuxiang silk store and the heady scents of the traditional tea shop (where leaves are gathered in metal scoops, weighed and poured into golden paper packets) are redolent of Imperial China.
Hongqiao Pearl Market
Also known as the Pearl Market, though it sells much else besides, this is a flea market reinvented as a department store where tourists and European expatriates clean up on pearls, clothes, handbags and silk.
The hassle factor is high but there are bargains if you haggle hard. You should be paying a fraction of the original asking price and if you make a pretence of walking away, stallholders will drop the price.
Shops on the top floor, dedicated to pearls and antiques – some of the latter may even be genuine – are upmarket and not so susceptible to bargaining. Watches and electronic goods are best avoided.
Expect to pay up to $45 for a string of freshwater pearls. The excellent Toy Market is next door. Afterwards, ignore the taxis outside as most drivers tend to overcharge foreigners. Instead, walk a block or two before hailing one.
Hongqiao Market（Chinese:北京红桥市场), 46 Tiantan Donglu, Chongwen District, open 8.30am-7pm.
A favorite among local expats, Xiao Wang Fu serves homestyle fare
Time for lunch
Head east to Chaoyang District and the ritzy central business district for a fine restaurant specializing in Beijing cuisine, Xiao Wang’s Home Restaurant.
If the weather is good, eat on the terrace where fashionable young Beijing women with thin legs and thin cigars knock back large beers. Peking duck and deep-fried spare ribs are recommended.
Xiao Wang’s Home Restaurant（Xiao Wang Fu, Chinese:北京小王府私家菜馆), No2 Building, Guanghua Dongli, Chaoyang.
Silk Market - Xishui Market
Followed by . . . more shopping
Ten minutes’ walk from the restaurant, just off the main thoroughfare of Jianguomenwai Dajie, is Beijing’s other multi-storey flea market, known as the Silk Market.
There are thousands of stalls and the sales pitches are even more aggressive than those of the Pearl Market. The asking price for a tailor-made pure wool suit is $240-$300 but canny shoppers should get that down by 50 per cent.
Silk Market, Xiushui Dong Jie, Chaoyang District, 9.30am-9pm.
The hippest street in Beijing is Nanluoguxiang
Head to the hutongs
Many old alleyways with warrens of one-storey courtyard houses have already been sacrificed to the master plan. One of the largest surviving concentrations is a taxi ride from the Silk Market, immediately to the north of the Forbidden City and in and around the area known as Houhai.
Probably the hippest street in Beijing is Nanluogu Xiang, in the heart of a heritage zone that claims to be “the only remaining traditional residential area in China that fully preserves the chessboard-style layout of hutongs typically found in the Yuan Dynasty”.
The street itself is a strip of bars – including the backpacker hangout the Pass By Bar and shops selling tapas and churros, handmade notebooks and “thousand-layer cotton shoes”. The hutongs were home to the royal family, high-ranking officials and rich merchants. If you wish to see an interior, visit the home of the revolutionary novelist Mao Dun (1896-1981) at No.13 Houyuan’ensi hutong.
Shichahai Lakes
The gentrified neighborhoods blur north and west from Nanluogo Xiang into areas surrounding the Bell and Drum Towers (climb for bird’s-eye views of the city) and Shichahai Lakes.
One notable street is the pedestrianized Yandai Xie Jie, literally Tobacco-pipe Street, with its Daoist temple and plenty of souvenir stalls. Outside one, an imitation warrior of the Terracotta Army wears John Lennon specs.
From the artificial lakes, where tourists and locals mingle, you can take another hutong crawl down Xiaojinsi hutong, the site of Ming Dynasty silk workshops, or stay by the water and enjoy the more contemporary pleasures of the Lotus Market. Here the bars include the Thai-themed Lotus Blue, with rooftop terrace, and Sex and Da City – though it may be too early in the day for the pole dancers.
Wangfujing Dajie - Beijing's Most Famous Shopping Street
As the light fades, head back to the centre for Beijing’s most irresistible tourist attraction: Donghuamen Night Market, immediately to the east of the Forbidden City.
This “pavement skewer eatery”, which dates from 1984, claims to sell 60 speciality snacks from around China. But it’s also just an excuse to surprise squeamish Westerners. Dishes include fried silkworms and centipedes, vile-smelling sea horses and “sheep penis”.
At its eastern end, the market runs into Wangfujing Dajie, a part-pedestrianied equivalent of London’s Oxford Street (Cartier, Gucci, Armani, etc). Wangfujing has a night market known as Snack Street, where crowds, both locals and tourists, throng to feast on bugs including live beetles wriggling on skewers as they await their fate.
Street-wise
This itinerary can be done by hiring taxis as you go (make sure you have the names of the places you want to visit written in Chinese characters), or you can hire one taxi for the day (about $45).
A better option, less open to misunderstanding and scams, is to hire a vehicle and driver for the day through a travel agency, with pre-agreed itinerary: it costs about $95. With an English-speaking guide thrown in (highly recommended), it’s about $140.
24 hrs in Beijing
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