Sightseeing in Beijing China

Beijing should not be missed out! Most international flights - the least expensive ones fly in here, so it should be worked into your itinerary if time allows. It is a busy, but at the same time spacious city, with beautiful parks and in winter, crisp days with light blue skies. If you are lucky enough to be in China over the Chinese Spring Festival, or indeed the run up to it, it is festooned with beautiful red lanterns and on the eve of the Chinese New Year, drowned in the cacophony of millions of fireworks blasting up into and illuminating the sky, making glass in the window frames shudder and filling the air with cordite! There are about two weeks of this in the lead up and afterwards - though nothing as mind blowing as New Years Eve!

Beijing restaurants are busy in the weeks run up to the Spring Festival - Chinese New Year.

Shopping for sweets in Beijing to take home as gifts before the Spring Festival.

If you have not visited Beijing before, then there are certain 'musts'. The vast Tiananmen square, over looked by Chairman Mao�s picture on the Gate of Heavenly Peace - (and adjoined on the far side of the square by his Memorial Hall where he lies in state). - makes you feel dwarfed. To pass under Chairman Mao�s picture and into the Forbidden City is another �must�. The Forbidden City is surprisingly cold at this time of year! The wind seems to funnel through the arch ways and whisk around the squares where these stunning buildings frame them - so wrap up as if you were on the ski slopes. There is so much written about the Forbidden City, but a personal thought that carries with you is how daunting it must have been when it was the focal point of the Empire and you were sent there on imperial business - the gates and arches you pass through, to even get just to the Outer Court for official functions are designed to awe you. As you ascend the marble and stone steps to each palace your eyes are drawn up the red pillars supporting them to the beautiful ceramic tiled roofs with dragons embossed in the metal work and intricate paintings on the surrounds. As an official up until 1913 this is as far as you would have got - now it is all open in a magnificent museum that draws you through from the South Gate in Tiananmen Square to the North Gate - passing through the imperial gardens with their ancient twisted juniper trees, to the exit where as you look to each side you see the moat that surrounds the Forbidden City - frozen in the winter chill.

Tiananmen Square and the Gate of Heavenly Peace with the picture of Chairman Mao so familiar from news bulletins.	View through the gate of Heavenly Peace across Tiananmen square showing the Monument to the Peoples Heros and behind it, Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall.
Standing guard by the flagstaff in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace - Beijing.	Tiananmen Square - The Monument to the People's Hero's with the Great Hall of the people's parliamentary building behind.
The Focus of the Imperial Empire in the Forbidden City.	In the more intimate Imperial Gardens of the Forbidden City.

A fun diversion at this point is to jump in a taxi (20 RMB - �2.00) and go and warm up at the Lotus Lake ( Qianhai lake at Di'anmen Xi Dajie - literally Di�anmen West Street) - also even more stunning at night time, where little lights and pretty shops and cafes line the lake shore. This is an old part of Beijing and is a pleasurable contrast to so much open space and grandeur. - Also good shopping! Another distraction is to cross the bridge across the two lakes (more shopping! - and visit the Drum Tower. This is marked in all the guide books. You are very much among the Hutongs here (Beijings old houses). Famous also at this lake side is the best Beijing Duck restaurant in town - the Quanjude Duck Restaurant that was founded in 1864 shown below and is easy to find on the lake shore. - you will be directed to a lift that you take down to it.

Quanjude (Peking roast duck) restaurant down by the Lotus Lake.

A small back street in the Beijing city's heart. These are some of the remaining old Hutongs - old houses of Beijing.

The Temple of Heaven and Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (Qinindian) should also be on your list. It is a stunning temple where the Emperor used to come to pray for a good harvests during the first lunar month of each year and is built without a single nail. More fascinating to us, was the understanding of ecoustics when the Temple of Heaven�s structures were built in 1420 - (though the Qinindian was re-built after being struck by lightening in 1889). The Echo wall is a must! We happened to be there on Valentines Day - coincidently the Chinese New Year - so sweet nothings could be whispered to one part of the wall and would carry around to the person at the other side of the circle and still be heard, despite the melee of people visiting. The weirdest experience was at the Imperial Alter, where you stand on the central rounded marble flagstone and speak - say anything and your voice resonates deep in your rib cage and it feels as if it is projecting miles - (in fact I was assured by those around us, that I sounded no different - however you feel a confidence that your voice is carrying and you really feel empowered by it!).

The Hall of Prayer for good Harvests (Qiniandian) at the Temple of Heaven Park (Tiantan Park).	Echo Wall in Tiantan Park.
Picture to come..... The Imperial Alter of Heaven. When you stand on the raised stone in the centre of the flagstones and speak your voice is amplified to yourself and sounds very sonorous!.	Looking along from the outer gate of the Qinindian towards the Echo Wall.

There is also the Great Wall and the Ming tombs. As a youngster I saw these and did not revisit on this trip. Personally these wonderful sights can wait until the weather is warmer! Then you can really enjoy walking sections of the Great Wall. That said if you wrap up very warm and you think your opportunities to revisit China are limited, then you really should pack in as much as possible and see them.

There is so much to do in the city though - where winter warm ups are around every corner - famous Mongolian hot pot restaurants like the Dong Lai Shun restaurant now re-located on the ground floor of the Jianguo Garden Hotel - off the main road up to Tiananmen Square (Jianguo Men Nei Dajie). To get here you can be brave and take a bus from Tiananmen square for the princely sum of 1 RMB (�0.10) as they all head down this way - so you can�t go far wrong and you certainly can�t miss the Jianguo Garden Hotel as it is so enormous!) There are also the more modern sites - art galleries and theatre, so that once in the city there is a reluctance to head out! The metro is a fabulous system that is very easy to negotiate and you can go anywhere in the city for 20 RMB. This is about what it costs to jump in a taxi, but if the traffic is bad a two minute journey can take a lot longer, wasting your money, but more importantly your precious time.

All though we are a ski and sightsee site, the agents you are passed on to organise trips throughout China - they are specialists in organising the skiing which is a relatively new phenomena in China - but their experience goes back 25 years and they can assist with the guiding, transportation and other logistics through out China. Just ask them to quote on the amount of guiding that you feel is relevant to the type of holiday you wish to enjoy. Pottery shop Beijing

Christmas stocking shopping - Beijing