Beijing, China

Updated 2026-08-28 · 11 min read · Written by the PoppaTrip editors

Book before you fly, or you will not get in

This is the single fact that shapes a Beijing trip, and it is not a formality. The city's biggest sights run on real-name online reservations tied to your passport number, with hard daily caps and, at the largest ones, no walk-up tickets at all. Forbidden City slots are released exactly seven days ahead and the daily cap is 40,000; in peak season they go in minutes. A traveller who lands without a booking can be shut out of the Forbidden City for an entire stay.

Tiananmen Square is free, but since the current security regime, entering the open square also needs a free advance reservation made with passport details, bookable up to seven days out. The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall is a third, separate system — three days ahead, 2,000 people a day — and you need both it and the square booking to visit. The National Museum releases its free slots seven days ahead at about 17:00 Beijing time. Temple of Heaven sells foreign passport holders nothing at the gate: QR entry only, one to seven days ahead.

Practically, that means one evening of admin about a week before you travel, in this order: set an alarm for the Forbidden City release, then Tiananmen, then the National Museum, then Temple of Heaven and the rest. Book on the passport you will actually carry, screenshot every confirmation, and bring the original passport — it is the ticket, and photos and copies are routinely refused at reserved-entry gates. The English and foreign-passport booking flows exist but are reported to be flaky, so start early in the window rather than at the end of it.

One more scheduling rule sits on top of all this: the Forbidden City and the National Museum both close Monday. If your day one is a Monday, the whole imperial day moves and Monday becomes a hutong, park and 798 day instead.

Day one: the imperial axis, south to north

Start at Tiananmen Square at or near opening, on the reservation you booked, and take the Mao Memorial Hall first if it interests you — it is mornings only and the line moves fast and silently. Then go north through the Meridian Gate into the Forbidden City. Give it half a day at minimum: ¥60 in the April-October peak, ¥40 from November to March, three to four hours of walking, and the sensible route is in at the south and out at the north.

Come out of the north gate and cross straight into Jingshan Park. The fifteen-minute climb to the hilltop pavilion gives the view down the palace's roof axis that the whole day has been building to, and late afternoon light is the right time for it. Then drop west into Beihai Park — the imperial lake garden with the White Dagoba on its island, pedal boats, and locals singing and dancing on the paths. After four hours of palace courtyards, that hour is not filler.

Finish at Qianmen and Dashilar, the pedestrianised old shopping quarter south of the square, and eat Peking duck there. The main street is heavily restored, but century-old tea, cloth-shoe and pickle shops survive on it and the food lanes just off it are livelier than the main drag.

Day two: the Great Wall, and which section to pick

There is no single Great Wall stop, and choosing the section is the actual decision. For most international visitors the answer is Mutianyu: 73km northeast, fully restored, running along a forested ridgeline, and carrying roughly a third of Badaling's crowds. Entry is ¥45, the park shuttle ¥20 return, the cable car or chairlift ¥100 one way or ¥140 return, and the toboggan down ¥100 — about ¥185 all in before transport, and the toboggan closes in rain or snow.

Getting there, cheapest first: subway to Dongzhimen, the 916 Express bus to Huairou, then a minibus for about ¥10 or a taxi for ¥30-50, which takes around two and a half hours; a direct tourist shuttle at roughly ¥80-140 return in one and a half to two hours; a group tour at ¥350-500 with pickup; or a private car at ¥800-1,500 for the day. Leave Beijing by 7:30, budget six hours door to door, and carry your passport for the gate.

The alternatives, honestly: Badaling is closest and cheapest to reach, from ¥40, and its trump card is the high-speed train from Qinghe that gets there in 20-30 minutes — but it is the section every domestic tour uses, and weekends and holidays are shoulder to shoulder. Jinshanling, ¥65 and about two and a half hours each way, is the hiker's and photographer's pick, part-restored and part-wild with thin public transport, so realistically a tour or a private car. Simatai, ¥40 plus a ¥40 night supplement, is the only major section open after dark, next to the Gubei Water Town resort — a niche choice with more logistics around it.

If you take the Badaling corridor, the Ming Tombs pair naturally with it on the way back: ¥45 for Changling or ¥98 for the combined ticket, with the tree-lined Sacred Way and its stone animals the part worth the stop. It is a good add-on and a poor day of its own. Back in the city, an evening at Laoshe Teahouse — tea with acrobatics, opera excerpts and shadow puppetry — is the low-effort end to a long day.

Day three: temples, hutongs and the city people actually live in

Go to the Temple of Heaven early, and go for the park rather than the monuments. It opens at 6:00, and before nine the grounds fill with tai chi, jianzi circles, choirs and dance groups — that is half the attraction, and it is gone by mid-morning. ¥15 for the park, ¥34 for the combined ticket that includes the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests; QR entry only for foreign passports, booked one to seven days ahead.

Then the Lama Temple, ¥25, straight off its own metro stop: a working Tibetan-Buddhist temple thick with incense, with a free bundle handed out at entry and an eighteen-metre sandalwood Maitreya in the final hall. Give it an hour.

Spend the afternoon in the hutong belt. Nanluoguxiang's main lane is commercial and packed; the quiet parallel alleys two turns off it are the real thing. Walk it up to the Drum and Bell Towers — ¥30 combined, steep stairs, and a balcony view straight down over the grey rooftops — then out along the Shichahai lakes. Eat as you go, in snack stops rather than a sit-down lunch.

If you have appetite for one more anchor, the Summer Palace is the strongest, but it is a genuine half-day 45-60 minutes northwest, so give it a morning and drop a temple rather than sprinting all four. For a fourth day, 798 Art District is the change of pace, and Olympic Park is best as a free evening walk with the Bird's Nest lit up rather than a paid interior visit.

Set up your phone before you land

China is effectively cashless, and this is the prep item that most changes how the trip feels. Alipay and WeChat Pay have both accepted foreign Visa and Mastercard directly since 2023-24 — set at least one up before you travel, with your passport, card and home phone number, in about twenty to thirty minutes. Alipay is the better documented path for foreigners and also carries the Beijing metro QR code. Foreign cards almost never work at ordinary point-of-sale terminals outside international hotels, and street food vendors are QR-only in practice. Carry about ¥200 in cash as a backup; it is legal tender, though small vendors may struggle for change.

Google, Instagram, WhatsApp and most Western sites are blocked on local networks. The two workable options are installing a reputable VPN before arrival — you cannot download one inside China — or using an international eSIM or roaming, where the data routes outside the firewall. Tourist VPN use for mail and maps is not enforced against in practice, but it sits in a legal grey zone; that is the whole honest picture. For navigation, use Apple Maps or Amap: Google Maps data in China is unreliable regardless of whether you can reach it.

The metro is vast, cheap and signed in English, at ¥3-7 a ride by distance, ¥25 flat on the Capital Airport Express and ¥10-35 on the Daxing one. Pay with the Alipay transport QR or buy a physical Yikatong card at a service desk with a ¥20 deposit and your passport. Every station has airport-style bag X-ray screening, so add five to ten minutes at busy interchanges; Tiananmen-area stations queue worst and close intermittently around state events. For everything the metro does not reach, DiDi's English app works for tourists, takes an overseas number and a foreign card, and auto-translates driver messages — it is more practical than flagging a street taxi, where drivers speak little English.

Three smaller things. Carry the physical passport every single day: it is checked at hotel check-in, at attraction gates where it is the ticket, and at random security points around Tiananmen. Do not tip — it is not practised in restaurants, taxis or hotels anywhere here, and it causes confusion. And on visas, many nationalities now enter visa-free and a 240-hour visa-free transit covers a long list of countries with an onward ticket to a third country, but the rules are nationality-specific and moving — check the current list for your own passport rather than trusting a guide.

Eating: duck, jianbing, and the tea house evening

Peking duck is the one non-negotiable meal. A whole duck runs ¥160-400 and serves two to four, plus ¥30-60 a head for pancakes, sides and tea, and the carving cart and the wrapping lesson are as much of the experience as the food. Siji Minfu is the value pick with several branches — expect a queue, so go early or take a lunch slot; the branch near the Forbidden City's east gate is the convenient one. Bianyifang, at ¥258-328 a duck, is the heritage choice, and Quanjude the famous but touristy one at around ¥230 for a duck set.

The best cheap food line in this guide is jianbing, the breakfast crepe, at ¥8-15 from a morning street cart with another ¥2-3 for extra egg or sausage. The version from a cart in a hutong is half the price of the snack-street one and better. Beyond that: zhajiangmian at a noodle house, Qing-Feng steamed buns, tanghulu candied hawthorn in winter, and hot pot as the cold-weather group meal.

For evening eating, the hierarchy is straightforward. The lanes off Nanluoguxiang and the Qianmen and Xianyukou food streets beat Wangfujing's snack alley, which is tourist-priced — fine for the stroll, and you can skip the scorpions-on-sticks photo bait. Most night-market snacks run ¥10-50, and ¥50-100 fills one person up.

The evening out this guide points at is a tea house. Laoshe Teahouse near Qianmen does the show-with-tea format — acrobatics, Peking-opera excerpts, shadow puppetry and a tea ceremony — and quieter traditional tasting rooms cluster around Qianmen and Dashilar, where Zhangyiyuan is the century-old name to look for. All of it, street carts included, runs on the payment apps you set up before flying.

The other half of the trip: the Shanghai city guide →
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Written by hand and fact-checked on 2026-08-28. Opening hours, ticketing and prices change — check them before you rely on them.