Insight Guides: Beijing City Guide

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight CityGuide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Beijing, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editors Choice categories of activies and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Beijing. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, hotels, activities from to culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in Beijing are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Beijing. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.

Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.

2013 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

Table of Contents

Introduction

History

Features

Places

Travel Tips

Introduction: Chinas Ancient Capital

Laid out according to ancient geomantic principles, modern Beijing is a dynamic and increasingly sophisticated city.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven.

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Beijing is a city of opposites and extremes it captivates and confuses, excites and exasperates, all in equal measure. As the capital of the Peoples Republic, it is both the seat of the worlds largest communist bureaucracy and the source of the policy changes that have turned China into an economic powerhouse. Its walled compounds and towering ministries are full of bureaucrats who technically legislate in the name of Marx and Mao, while the streets outside are a riot of speeding cars, flashing neon and cellphone-wielding citizens whose aspirations and lifestyles are increasingly akin to those of London or New York. Beijing may lack the futuristic glow of Shanghai it remains altogether a grittier place than its southern rival but nonetheless the changes in the past few years are remarkable.

Tiananmen Gate.

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Repression and freedom exist side by side in this vast city. Open political dissent is not tolerated. But politics is a favourite subject of Beijingers, who like nothing better than a witty joke at the expense of their leaders or the Communist system. Barely veiled political critiques abound on the capitals stages and in its growing number of art galleries.

The Olympic Games in 2008 prompted a rapid and exhaustive makeover. Ancient buildings were ruthlessly torn down before plans for their replacements had even been drawn up, new subway lines snaked and bifurcated into the citys furthest suburbs, and the skyline became a playground for the whim of foreign architects. But for the thousands of migrants from home and abroad who pour into the capital each week, and the emerging urban middle class struggling to carve out a life and identity, this is only the beginning. The dusty old city of bicycles, Mao suits and political slogans seems a distant memory. The new Beijing has well and truly arrived.

Beijing Opera.

Lee Hin Mun/Apa Publications

Beijings Top 10 Attractions

From the Forbidden City to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven, Beijing has no lack of magnificent sights. Here are 10 of the best.

Top Attraction 1

Imperial Palace Museum (Forbidden City) . One of the few remaining parts of the ancient capital and centre of the city. For more information, .

Fotolia

Top Attraction 2

The Back Lakes area . For all the neon-lit bar action, the few remaining hutong and locals outdoor activity makes the area around Houhai perhaps the most picturesque part of the city, particularly on summer evenings. For more information, .

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 3

Great Wall . Though Badaling is most popular with domestic tourists, the crowds make it less appealing to foreign visitors. Mutianyu is better. For more information, .

Lee Hin Mun/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 4