Beijing 北京

Beijing is where the scale of Chinese history stops being an abstraction. This has been the seat of power for most of the last 800 years — Yuan, Ming, Qing, and now the People’s Republic — and it shows: an imperial palace of 9,000 rooms, a wall you can walk for a day, ritual temples built to an exact cosmic geometry, and neighbourhoods of one-storey courtyard houses still lived in. It is also a working megacity of 21 million with the country’s best museums, a serious restaurant scene, and a subway that costs ¥3–7 a ride. Three days is the honest minimum; four is comfortable.

• Region North China
• Suggested stay 3–4 days
• Best season April–May and September–October
• Getting there Two international airports (PEK, PKX) + high-speed rail from Shanghai (4.5 h) and Xi’an (4.5 h)

Beijing sits at the north-west corner of the North China Plain, ringed by mountains on three sides and about 150 km from the Bohai Sea. The mountains are why the Great Wall is here — the passes through them were the only ways north.Getting there: Beijing Capital (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX) both take international flights; the Airport Express and subway lines connect them to the centre in 30–50 minutes. High-speed rail arrives at Beijing South (from Shanghai, 4.5 h) and Beijing West (from Xi’an, 4.5 h; from Guangzhou, 8 h). Beijing is a valid entry and exit port for the 240-hour visa-free transit.

• The Forbidden City — 9,000 rooms, one axis, six hours if you do it properly. Book online 7 days ahead; it sells out and does not sell tickets at the gate.
• The Great Wall — Mutianyu for a restored, cable-car-friendly section; Jinshanling or Jiankou for hiking and emptiness. Badaling is the closest and the most crowded.
• Temple of Heaven — the altar complex where emperors prayed for harvests, set in a park full of retired people doing tai chi at 7 am.
• The Summer Palace — lakes, covered corridors and a marble boat, built by the empress dowager with navy funds.
• Hutong — the grey-brick alley neighbourhoods. Nanluoguxiang is commercial; Wudaoying, Baochao and Fangjia are quieter and still lived in.
• National Museum of China andthe 798 art district — free, world-class, and air-conditioned on a smoggy day.

Beijing became a national capital under the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 13th century (Marco Polo’s “Cambaluc”), though the site had been a city for a millennium before that. The Ming moved the capital here from Nanjing in 1421 and built the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven; the Qing inherited both and added the Summer Palace. In 1912 the last emperor abdicated and the palace became a museum. Most of the city wall was demolished in the 1950s–60s to make room for roads and the second ring road — two gates and a few fragments survive. What remains is still laid out on a strict north–south axis, and the basic street plan you walk today is the Ming one.

Beijing social life happens outdoors and early. At dawn, parks fill with people doing tai chi, sword dance, water calligraphy and — from about 7 pm — square dancing to amplified pop. Teahouses and courtyard cafés are the local equivalent of the pub. The Beijing dialect is the basis of standard Mandarin but locals add a heavyerhua rhotic suffix and a distinctive swagger; the alley culture of the hutong produced a very direct, joking, argumentative conversational style. In summer, men of a certain age sit outside in vests and sandals — it is a running joke and completely normal. Winters are dry, hard and heated; summers are hot, humid and sudden.

Beijing food is wheat, not rice, and it is hearty:Peking duck (the crisp-skin version at Quanjude, the roast version at Bianyifang),zhajiangmian (noodles with fermented soybean paste),jianbing (breakfast crêpe on the street),copper-pot mutton hotpot in winter,lu zhu (stewed offal) for the brave, anddouzhi (fermented mung-bean milk), which most visitors genuinely cannot finish — trying it is the point. Sweets:lvdagun (glutinous rice rolls) andtanghulu (candied hawthorn on a stick). Take-home specialities:cloisonné enamel,Beijing silk figurines, and tea from Maliandao tea street.

Allow 3–4 days. Day 1: Forbidden City, Tiananmen, Temple of Heaven. Day 2: a full day on the Wall (Mutianyu or Jinshanling). Day 3: Summer Palace, hutongs, dinner. Day 4: museums or 798.Timing: April–May and September–October are the windows. Avoid 1–7 October (National Day) entirely, and July–August if you dislike heat.Mistakes: not booking Forbidden City tickets in advance; visiting the Wall as a half-day squeeze; assuming the subway closes early (it runs to about 23:00); and staying near the train station instead of inside the second ring road.