Beijing is the capital city of China and is a must-visit on your China trip! Chances are you will fly in either to Beijing or Shanghai. Beijing is also a great base from which to visit the Great Wall, but more on that next week. Today, I will be sharing the ultimate Beijing city guide! It includes my top 5 things to do, where to stay, and tips for getting around. My family and I visited Beijing in 2019 as part of our Peregrine Adventures Best of China tour. We also spent two free days here on our own.
Top five things to do in Beijing
1. Explore the Lama Temple
Much to my eternal disappointment, there were no llamas at this temple. But despite the lack of llamas, the Lama Temple was absolutely the highlight of Beijing for me. It was just so peaceful and it was interesting to explore a Tibetan style Buddhist temple, which we hadn’t seen before. Like seemingly all the historical buildings in China, the buildings of the temple were painted beautifully and featured amazing carvings and intricate rooves. The Buddha statues were also impressive, as always. The Lama Temple is actually home to an 18m tall Buddha statue which was carved out of one SINGLE sandalwood tree. We weren’t allowed to take photos so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was pretty amazing.
When you arrive at the temple, you are able to collect a bundle of incense to burn. The bundle was so huge that my mum gave a handful to all of us! Even I had to take some and I’m scared of fire… However, as we walked through the temple, we realised you weren’t supposed to burn all the incense at once; you should burn 3-5 sticks in front of each different building.
Overall, I highly recommend you visit the Lama Temple. Entry is 25 Yuan and it’s very easy to get to on the subway.
2. Visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square
The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square have got to be the most famous attractions in Beijing so are definitely worth a trip. If you visit in summer like we did, be prepared for it to be EXTREMELY HOT. It was seriously boiling. Bring lots of water and put on sunscreen. I also recommend taking a break in any shade you can find!
Tiananmen Square
I don’t have much to say about Tiananmen Square because its name pretty much sums it up. It’s a big square of concrete outside the Forbidden City. It gets its name from the Gate of Heavenly Peace to the North. This is the gate you walk through to get into the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is also the largest city square in the world. If you have more time to explore, Tiananmen Square is also home to the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China and Mao’s Mausoleum.
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City was the Emperor’s Palace in the Ming and Qing dynasties and it was seriously huge. There were at least three open squares surrounded by buildings. Honestly, they seemed unnecessarily big and all looked the same to me! However, as we walked through, I always enjoyed admiring the colours of the buildings and the carvings on each roof.
We didn’t have a heap of time at the Forbidden City because we had come from the Great Wall earlier that day. This meant we didn’t check out any of the museums or many of the buildings. We did, however, spend a bit of time in the garden at the back. As someone who likes nature (and shade!) this was my favourite part of the Forbidden City. It was actually quite pretty and would be peaceful if it weren’t for all the other people.
Some fun facts about the rooves!
Throughout our China trip, we noticed that all of the roof overhangs had figures on them. At the Forbidden City, we finally learnt what each of those figures was! At the start of the overhang, is a dragon. This dragon is followed by any given number of the 9 sons of dragons. The more sons of dragon depicted, the more important the building. At the very end of the overhang, is a fairy riding a phoenix. I must admit, I thought it was the emperor riding a chicken at first. But a fairy riding a phoenix is much more regal!
The Forbidden City is home to a very interesting building which has 10 figures between the dragon and phoenix. That’s right, ten! Apparently one of the emperors wanted his throne room to be the most important building EVER so he added an extra figure. Seems a little extra but makes an interesting story now!
3. Visit the Summer Palace and see pandas on a day tour
On our final day in Beijing, we chose to take a tour that included the Summer Palace, Beijing Zoo Panda House and a trip to a silk factory. We went with Buffalo Tours and had a great guide named Jeffrey who was super informative. I’ve written about the Summer Palace and Panda house below.
Exploring the Summer Palace
The Summer Palace is where the emperor lived during the summer due to it being so hot in the Forbidden City. That was certainly true: the Summer Palace was much cooler than the Forbidden City! On our tour, we didn’t spend much time exploring the various buildings of the palace, but rather admired the lake and walked along a hallway covered in a variety of different paintings. The hallway is 750m long so we didn’t walk the whole length, but what we did see was very beautiful!
Instead of walking the whole way back to the entrance, we took a cruise across the lake. This also allowed us a different view of the palace and the 17-arches bridge. This bridge is super interesting and has over 500 lion carvings on it! In Chinese culture, lions are mythical creature and are believed to ward off evil. Even though we didn’t get to see the whole site, I thought the Summer Palace was very beautiful overall and would recommend a visit.
Beijing Zoo Panda House
To be honest with you, I would have preferred to visit Chengdu to see the pandas in one of the conservation breeding centres. Especially after some of our tour-mates visited the Beijing Zoo the previous day and said it was depressing. I might be a trained zookeeper and generally pro-zoo, but I also believe that you need to do your research and only visit zoos that are accredited by an organisation such as the World Zoo and Aquarium Association (WAZA) or the Zoo and Aquarium Association in Australasia (ZAA). Members of these organisations must exceed industry standards for animal care and are almost always involved in conservation projects in the wild.
Anyway, I digress. We only visited the Panda House in Beijing Zoo, which was not as bad as I thought. Whilst the pandas were not living in old fashioned cages, the enclosures were not very naturalistic, were full of weeds and seemed quite small. The pandas did seem to be in good condition, though, with most of them eating or even playing.
A final note on the tour
My parents wanted to book a tour to the Summer Palace, but the only ones available also included the silk factory and panda house. Whilst it was good to have a guide at the Summer Palace to tell us about the history of the place, if you don’t want to visit the Panda House or Silk Factory, the Summer Palace would be doable on your own. Beijing was very easy to get around (more on that below) and there was heaps to see at the Summer Palace so if you went on your own, you could take more time to explore.
4. Admire ancient fossils at the Beijing Natural History Museum
If you’re into history and science, especially dinosaurs, you should consider visiting the Beijing Natural History Museum. Entry is free (though you will have to show your passport as ID) and there are some pretty amazing fossils in there! We got to see real fossils of dinosaurs with the feathers preserved, so it was pretty amazing. These dinosaur fossils were found in Liaoning, China, where fine-grained ash from volcanic eruptions allowed very detailed preservation. Other fossils found in this area include the oldest recorded angiosperms (plants with flowers), insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. There was also an interesting exhibit all about plants where we learnt about intermediate groups of plants. Ginkophytes are a good example, appearing to link gymnosperms and angiosperms.
Unfortunately, hardly any of the signs in the museum were written in English. I’m not usually one to read all the signs at museums anyway, but it would have been nice to have a bit more information on the dinosaur fossils. The information above is from Wikipedia so who knows if it’s even accurate! Still an interesting place to visit if you have a free morning and want to see something a bit different from the usual temples and historical buildings.
5. Be amazed by acrobats in an afternoon show!
If you have a bit of spare time in the afternoon, it’s worth checking out the acrobat show at Chaoyang Theatre. The show is on twice a day and is very popular so it is worth booking in advance. It’s nice to sit in the aircon after a long afternoon exploring Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City! The show itself was quite impressive, with lots of different acts. The scariest was the final act where eight motorbikes drove around within a round metal cage. Mildly terrifying, but impressive. Check out their website for more information.
Where to stay in Beijing
While in Beijing, we stayed at the Dong Fang Hotel. This was quite a nice place to stay, though my parents had issues with their aircon and had to move rooms. It was in a good location (more on that below) and had a restaurant and cafe, both of which had great food. Again, breakfast was included in our stay at this hotel and it had a good range of options.
Getting around Beijing
Getting around Beijing was super easy, actually! Whilst we had transfers to the Forbidden City, Summer Palace and Beijing Zoo, we either walked or took public transport to all other attractions. To get to the Lama Temple, we used the Beijing Subway system. Tickets were only 4 yuan and the subway was super easy to use! The trains arrived regularly and even when we had to transfer it was relatively straight forward to find out where we needed to go. When we transferred on the way there we ran into an ID checkpoint but when they saw us getting out our passports they waved us through without checking.
The Dong Fang Hotel is within walking distance to the Natural History Museum, as well as other attractions we didn’t make it to such as the Temple of Heaven and Taoranting Park. The hotel is also only a short walk to a subway station. It was also interesting to walk around the local streets in this area to see how people live and it was a short walk to a large shopping street where we bought lots of cute souvenirs one afternoon.
Don’t forget to check out my YouTube video for more inspiration!
So there you have it: the ultimate Beijing city guide! I hope you have found this guide helpful and will visit some of these places in Beijing one day. If you’re wanting more inspiration for your China trip, check out my YouTube video (embedded below) and China Destination page.
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