Beijing

Beijing: What Two Days Actually Gets You

China extended visa-free access to citizens of around 50 countries through the end of 2026, which removes the single biggest practical obstacle to visiting. If you are from the UK, US, most of Western Europe, Australia, or a handful of other nations, you can enter for up to 30 days without advance paperwork. This matters because Beijing is the kind of city that rewards being there rather than planning to be there – and a lot of people who should be visiting still aren’t because they assume the visa is harder than it is.

The city is enormous, layered with history at a scale that takes multiple visits to absorb, and completely uninterested in making things comfortable for you. The Forbidden City alone covers 178 acres. The Great Wall has sections within 70 kilometres that are almost nothing alike. Getting to the interesting places requires navigating a metro system that is excellent but requires Chinese-character literacy to use confidently. None of these are reasons not to go. They are reasons to plan two days at minimum and to have some idea of what you actually want to see before you arrive.

The Forbidden City

Entry requires online booking in advance. The palace complex housed 24 emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties and contains close to 1,000 buildings arranged across a precise north-south axis reflecting Confucian cosmological order. The outer courts are large, formal, and crowded. Push through to the inner palaces where the emperors actually lived and the scale becomes more human and the crowds thinner. Allow three to four hours. A single visit gives you the architecture; multiple visits would give you the objects in the Palace Museum collections, which are genuinely significant.

Tiananmen Square

At 440,000 square metres it is the world’s largest public square. The political associations are unavoidable and you should let them be. The portrait of Mao facing the Forbidden City gate is on the south side; the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the centre. It is more interesting to stand there and think about what it represents than to photograph it quickly and leave.

The Great Wall at Mutianyu

Most guides send you to Badaling, which is the closest and most restored section. Mutianyu, about 90 minutes from the city, is better. It has watchtowers in good condition, dramatic ridge-top terrain, and a fraction of Badaling’s crowds outside summer weekends. You can descend by toboggan, which is either undignified or the best possible way to leave a UNESCO site, depending on your perspective.

The Muslim Quarter and Street Food

The Niujie area near Xuanwumen is Beijing’s authentic Muslim Quarter, less visited than Xi’an’s but genuinely interesting: mosques built in Chinese architectural styles rather than Middle Eastern ones, halal food markets, and a community that has been in Beijing since the Tang dynasty. The lamb skewers and bing (flatbreads) here are better and cheaper than anything in the tourist district.

For Peking duck, Quanjude and Da Dong are the famous names. Da Dong is better food; Quanjude is older tradition. Both require a reservation.

The 798 Art District

A former military electronics complex repurposed as galleries, studios, and cafes in the northeast of the city. The quality of what is shown varies enormously, but the architecture – Bauhaus industrial design built in the 1950s by East German engineers – is genuinely distinctive, and the contrast between the building style and the contemporary art inside creates something you don’t encounter elsewhere in Beijing.

Hutongs

The traditional courtyard neighbourhoods north and east of the Forbidden City are the part of old Beijing that survived the 20th century’s redevelopment, barely. Walking through Nanluoguxiang or the alleys around Houhai lake gives you the neighbourhood fabric – narrow lanes, courtyard gates, small restaurants, bicycle repair shops – that the imperial monuments don’t. The tourist pressure on the main hutong streets has made some of them feel performative; turn off them at random and you find the real thing within a block.

Practical Notes

The metro is cheap and efficient but requires Chinese literacy for the station signs; download a navigation app (Baidu Maps or Gaode) before you arrive. VPN access to Google services is inconsistent in China; prepare offline maps. The Navigo Easy equivalent for Beijing transit is the T-Money card, which you load at machines. Tipping is not expected or common. Basic Mandarin – hello (ni hao), thank you (xie xie), and numbers – will be appreciated out of proportion to their communicative usefulness.

Staying

The Peninsula Beijing near the Forbidden City is the safe luxury option. The Rosewood Beijing is newer and arguably better. Mid-range travellers use the Novotel Beijing Peace or the Park Hyatt. Budget hostels cluster in the hutong areas near Nanluoguxiang, where the neighbourhood itself compensates for the simpler facilities.