what to do in beijing in 12 hours
xv amazing things to do in Beijing, from helicopter rides to palace picnics
Thanks to the 24 emperors who take chosen Beijing home since the Ming Dynasty, there are more than things to practise in the capital than any other Chinese city. The Forbidden City, the globe's largest palace complex, is only the commencement. Throw in the Summer Palace, the cosmologically aligned Temple of Sky, the magisterial Drum and Bell Towers, the pleasure lakes of Beihai and Shichahai, and protecting it all from the barbarians beyond, the Great Wall snaking through the city'southward northern mountains. Since 1949 you lot can add Tiananmen Square, the Great Hall of the People, and umpteen other socialist monuments.
Dongcheng
Walk the walls of the Forbidden Metropolis
Since 2015, sections of the Forbidden Metropolis'southward eight-meter-high perimeter wall accept been open to the public, offering a panoramic perspective on the world'south largest palace complex. So big, in fact, that once off-limits sections are coming online every yr in a huge renovation drive, including a subterranean sleeping room used to store ice for the Regal family, which is now domicile to a café.
Insider tip: Yous can also climb the Tiananmen (Heavenly Peace) Gate itself for views due south over the square. You'll demand to buy a separate ticket from the northeast side of the gate.
Contact: 00 86 10 8500 7421; en.dpm.org.cn
Opening times: 8.30am-four.30pm
Nearest metro: Tiananmen Due east
Toll: £
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Mess around in boats
Rent a pedal boat to explore Beihai (literally "northern sea") Park, a royal lake and pleasure ground that dates back to the era of Kublai Khan and China's Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Paddle out to Jade Islet for photographs of the 36m high White Dagoba, congenital in the 17th century to honour a visit past the Dalai Lama, so crawl up the top of the hill for terrific views over the Forbidden Urban center's rooftops.
Insider tip: Don't miss the spectacular Nine Dragon Screen almost the northward gate, a 27m wide 'spirit wall' inlaid with colourful glazed tiles depicting writhing dragons.
Address: Di'anmen Wai Dajie
Opening times: 6.30am-8pm
Nearest metro: Beihai North
Price: £
Bow to the Maitreya Buddha
In the fifth hall of Beijing's near august and arresting temple, an 18m high statue of Maitreya Buddha, robed in yellow and said to be carved from a single piece of sandalwood, welcomes candle-wielding worshippers with a meditative grin. It's just one of many riches at China'due south most revered Tibetan temple, Lama Temple, originally an Majestic residence, and converted to a lamasery in 1744.
Insider tip: Shops lining the street beside the temple sell Buddha statues, incense, charms and talismans, while Wudaoying Hutong opposite is home to hip coffee roasters and local boutiques.
Address: 12 Yonghegong Dajie
Opening times: 9am-4.30pm
Nearest metro: Yonghegong – Lama Temple
Price: £
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Listen to the beat of Beijing
Time your visit to Beijing'due south gulou (Drum Tower) to coincide with ane of several daily drum performances, bashed out on effectually a dozen huge reproduction Ming Dynasty scout drums by a troupe of performers at the acme of this 47m high, Qing Dynasty-era belfry. And then skip beyond the square to its fourth dimension-keeping counterpart zhonglou (Bell Tower), for panoramic city views and a tea-tasting ceremony.
Insider tip: In the Drum Tower, expect for the battered Night Watchman's Pulsate which is an original, and would take been sounded here to signal the irresolute of the night watchmen'due south shift in old Beijing.
Address: Gulou Dong Dajie
Opening times: 9am-5pm
Nearest metro: Shichahai
Price: £
Wander the urban center's hutong alleyways
Beijing's hutongs contain a low-slung maze of historic inner-city architecture that survive in swathes of the old centre – the well-nigh extant and strollable chunks are to the north and west of the Forbidden City. Along these grey-brick lanes that divide the outer walls of courtyard homes, you'll glimpse vignettes of local life: locals playing xiangqi (Chinese chess), gossiping grannies catching rays – even the occasional cleaver sharpener doing his rounds by cycle.
Insider tip:Beijing-based Bespoke Travel Visitor offers an immersive hutong bout, which includes visiting the Drum Tower, a private folk museum, and the habitation of a champion trainer of fighting crickets.
Accost: Xicheng district
Nearest metro: Xisi
Get upward shut and personal with priceless Chinese art
Halfway upwardly a drinking glass skyscraper is the last identify you'd expect to find such a treasure trove of ancient Chinese artefacts. The Poly Art Museum is pocket-size but perfectly formed, inviting the few visitors who track information technology down to gaze unimpeded at priceless bronzeware, porcelain and Buddhist sculptures, displayed on artfully lit plinths.
Insider tip: Seek out half dozen of the dozen 'zodiac sculptures' (modelled on the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac) that once adorned a fountain in the Old Summer Palace. The museum is still trying to round upward the rest.
Address: New Poly Plaza Edifice, 14 Dongzhimen Nandajie
Contact: 00 86 10 6500 8117
Opening times: Mon-Sat, ix.30am-5pm
Nearest metro: Dongsishitiao
Price: £
See the flag rise (or set) over the Center Kingdom
Every day at dawn and dusk, soldiers from the People's Liberation Army heighten and lower the Five-starred Red Flag on Tiananmen Foursquare, watched by a patriotic oversupply of Chinese people. Information technology was on this spot that the masses gathered in 1949 to hear Chairman Mao proclaim the founding of the People'southward Republic of Red china. Today, Mao's portrait hangs from the gate where he made the pronouncement. To the southward, he lies embalmed in his mausoleum on the foursquare, which you can also visit.
Insider tip:Aim to arrive at Tiananmen Square one-half an hour before sunrise or sunset to let for security admission on to the square.
Address: Chang'an Jie
Nearest metro: Tiananmen West
Price: Free
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Changping
Take the train to the Great Wall
Most visitors attain the Great Wall by route, only a more breathtaking pick is to go by rail, riding the 'S' railroad train from Huangtudian Station out to Yanqing County. The route follows the onetime Majestic Peking to Zhangjiakou railway, the showtime railway designed and built by the Chinese towards the end of the Qing Dynasty, and passes crumbling battlements in the hills before climbing a switchback to Badaling, China'south most famous stretch of Great Wall.
Insider tip: Y'all can apply a Beijing subway card to ride the Great Wall train, which avoids having to queue up for a train ticket at the station.
Address: Yanqing County
Opening times: 7am-6pm (Badaling Great Wall)
Nearest metro: Huoying (for Huangtudian Station)
Cost: £
Tour the wild Ming Dynasty Slap-up Wall with a history proficient
A weekend at the 'wild wall' with William Lindesay OBE and his family unit is a bucket-list essential for history buffs. Hiking remote, unrestored stretches of battlements at sunrise, learning its story as y'all go, then returning to 'The Barracks' (their countryside home in Beijing'south mountainous Huairou commune) for hearty bacon and eggs, before doing it all over again, is an feel you won't before long forget. Englishman Lindesay, hospitable host, guide, conservationist and author of five books on the Great Wall, has lived abreast it and studied information technology for iii decades.
Insider tip: Come well-armed with camera equipment; the views of the crumbling Smashing Wall snaking across the ridgeline of distant mountains are sensational.
Contact: wildwall.com; 00 86 185 1025 4530
Cost: £££
Pass through the Spirit Way to the Ming Tombs
Earthly portal to the divine resting place of thirteen Ming emperors, the seven-kilometre-long 'spirit way' in the hills north of Beijing starts with an ornate stone archway, passing through a pavilion containing a fifty-ton bixi (mythical tortoise) carrying an inscribed stele, before stretching into a long march between eighteen pairs of carved stone guardians leading up to the tombs.
Insider tip: You don't need to join a tour to visit the Ming Tombs; they are accessible by subway station on the new Changping line. But note that it is a forty-infinitesimal schlep from the station to the Spirit Style.
Address: Changping District
Contact: 00 86 10 6076 1422
Opening times: 8am-5.30pm
Nearest metro: Ming Tombs Scenic Area
Cost: £
Sojourn to Empress Cixi's pleasure garden
A regal retreat of pagodas, temples, bridges and causeways enclosing an artificial lake, the Summer Palace was the preferred playground of Cixi, a concubine who became the Dowager Empress (1835-1908). Although the magnificent gardens have been awarded Unesco World Heritage status, this Summertime Palace is in fact an inferior reboot of the original, razed to the footing by British and French troops in 1860 during the 2d Opium War.
Insider tip:Take plenty cash (at least RMB 400/£45) to pay for a deposit on a pedal boat, which can exist rented past the hour for jaunts across Kunming Lake.
Address: Haidian District
Opening times: vi.30am-6pm
Nearest metro: W Gate of Summer Palace
Cost: £
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Huairou
Take a helicopter flight over the Mutianyu Great Wall
A bona fide bucket list splurge, China Helicopter Tours (a local operator) offers thirty-infinitesimal flights over the Mutianyu section of the Corking Wall, a rambling stretch of Ming-era brick and stone about 55km from Beijing, famous for its vertiginous dips and ascents, and lush mount setting. The trip includes city transfers and lunch.
Insider tip: Although you can practise it earlier in the twelvemonth, flight from late May onwards will reveal the mountains at their greenest and nearly beautiful.
Contact: 00 86 xviii 6009 51266; chinahelicoptertours.com
Price: £££
Haidian
Picnic among the ruins of the old Summer Palace
Abandoned later it was trashed by Anglo-French soldiers in 1860, and merely reopened as a park of remembrance in the 1980s, Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfect Brightness) was in one case the gold retreat of the Qianlong Emperor. Rambling and romantic, a few shattered lumps of rock are all that remain. Fix yourself a picnic and notice a quiet corner within its wooded pathways and lotus-filled pools.
Insider tip: Yuanmingyuan is big (860 acres), and the nearly extensive ruins, known as the Western Mansions, are in the far north of the park, furthest from the entrance – but it's worth the trek.
Accost: Changping District
Contact: 00 86 10 6262 8501
Opening times: 7am-6pm
Nearest metro: Yuanmingyuan Nanmen
Cost: £
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Xicheng
Get acquainted with 'jingju' at Beijing'due south oldest opera theatre
The 2-storey, forest-panelled Zhengyici Theatre is i of the oldest in China, originally built in 1668 on the site of a Buddhist temple. With around 100 seats, it'south an intimate setting to observe Peking opera (jingju), a mode that came about after troupes from the south travelled to Beijing in 1790 to perform for Emperor Qianlong's 80th birthday party. Peking opera great Mei Lanfang performed there.
Insider tip: Theatre Beijing is a reputable agent that tin assistance with ticket purchases via electronic mail (in English) and evangelize them to your hotel.
Address: 220 Qianmen Xi Heyan Jie
Contact: 00 86 10 6303 3104
Opening times: 7:30pm-9pm
Nearest metro: Hepingmen
Toll: £££
Chaoyang
See world class art in a Communist manufacturing plant circuitous
When the product lines of Joint Manufacturing plant 718 juddered to a halt in the 1990s, China'south ascension art stars moved in, converting the Bauhaus workshops designed in the 1950s by Due east Germans into edgy studio space. Today, the 798 Art Commune has gentrified into an enclave of international galleries hosting must-meet exhibitions from Cathay and overseas. Thankfully, much of the industrial compages – in one case the PRC's model communist factory zone – has been preserved.
Insider tip:Fuel upwardly in between galleries with a meal at Fodder Mill, a nostalgic shrine to Mainland china in the 1970s and 1980s serving spicy Sichuan and Hunan stir-chips.
Address: Jiuxianqiao Lu
Opening times: 9am-6pm (most galleries airtight Mon)
Nearest metro: Wangjing Due south
Price: £
Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/china/beijing/articles/things-to-do-in-beijing/
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