Day 1: A Taste of Chinese History in the Present

Start your day with a dive into China’s ancient history. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasty (1368-1840). For nearly five hundred years, it served as the palace for emperors and their families, and was the political center of the Chinese government.  The Forbidden City is the world’s largest surviving palace complex and a UNESCO Heritage Site, consisting of over 900 surviving buildings with 8,000 rooms. Inside the Forbidden City visit the Palace Museum to witness China’s largest collection of ancient art works.

The Forbidden City, Beijing, China

Just north of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square, a large city square in the center of Beijing. At Tiananmen Square, you’ll see the gate to the Forbidden City along with the iconic Chairman Mao portrait. Tiananmen Square was the site of a number of political events and protests. Now, Chinese visitors from all over the country come to Tiananmen Square to visit Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum and pay their respects.

Go for a late lunch at Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant located south of the Forbidden City. Here you’ll take in Beijing’s local specialty dish. The Beijing duck is known for its thin, crispy skin and is usually wrapped up in a pancake with hoisin sauce and spring onions.

After finishing lunch, head to the Temple of Heaven. During the Ming Dynasty, the Emperor of China would come to the Temple of Heaven to make sacrifices to heaven and offer prayers for good harvest. The Temple of Heaven is an architectural masterpiece and the design of the temple halls in circles and squares reflects the ancient Chinese belief that heaven is round and the earth is square. Nowadays, you’ll find the park inhabited by retirees playing Chinese chess or practicing tai chi.

Chinese architectural masterpiece, Temple of Heaven in Beijing

Next, take a cab to the Drum and Bell Tower, then wander in the alleys (also known as hutongs) that run between compounds of housing built inside courtyards. These housing complexes are quickly disappearing as more and more high rises are being built. Lastly, climb aboard a rickshaw and visit Prince Gong’s Mansion, Beijing’s largest and best preserved Qing Dynasty royal mansion.

Near the Drum and Bell Tower, you’ll find Houhai (Back Lakes), where you can unwind after a long day with a classy meal and a glass of wine while enjoying a view of the night lights around the lake.

Day 2: From the Great Wall to Beijing Opera

No trip to Beijing is complete without a trip to the Great Wall. Get up early in the morning to beat the traffic and crowds at the Great Wall. There are several sections of the wall you can climb. Badaling is the most visited section of the wall and provides stunning scenery of the wall snaking into the distance. Mutianyu is a less commercial section of the Great Wall and is known for its guard towers and its awe-inspiring views.  If you like to climb steep hills, Simatai is the choice for you.

The Great Wall of China, stretching for 5,500.3 miles (8,851.8 km)

After a day of hiking, take a bus back into the city and visit the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was the vacation spot for the royal family. Inside the Summer Palace, you’ll find gardens, pavilions and lakes where Empress Dowager Cixi once frequented.

In the evening, take a seat at Lao She Teahouse and experience Beijing opera, a form of traditional Chinese theater, which includes cross-talk, music and acrobatics. Enjoy your show in a traditional teahouse and sip some green tea and enjoy light refreshments.

Day 3: Exploring (and Tasting) the Beijing of Today

Begin your morning at Panjiayuan, a lively weekend market selling a variety of antiques. This market is the best place to pick up art, crafts and antiques. You’ll find calligraphy, Tibetan beads, Cultural Revolution memorabilia, and a variety of knick knacks. Be prepared to bargain intensely before making a purchase.

After stepping through the history and culture of ancient China, soak yourself in Beijing’s modern architecture and art. First, visit the China Central Television Tower in Beijing, a 44-story skyscraper in Beijing’s Central Business District constructed in 2008. Then head over to 798 Art Zone to view artwork by up-and-coming local artists. Finally, take a trip out to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games site to view the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.

Stalls at Beijing’s Dong Hua Men night market, Wangfujing Snack Street

Finish your evening snacking your way through Wangfujing Snack Street. Food vendors and restaurants are lined up on Wangfujing Snack Street sell a variety of food including lamb kebabs,  fried pancakes, candied fruits and even fried insects!

- Amy Zeng

The Great Wall

Seeing some sections of The Great Wall is a must (to see it all takes years). It is located outside of the city and getting there can be costly. English language tours are costly. Chinese language tours? A tenth to a fifth of the cost. Chinese language tours in minibuses leave from the street just south of the Great Hall of the People off Tian’anmen Square every morning. Tickets can be purchased from the booth on the pavement before departure. We stopped at four different sections of the wall, Badaling the most popular, commercial and crowded, and three others where we were the only people we could see.

Note: Ensure that you get back to the minibus on time or the driver will leave you. Times will be shouted out in Chinese so clarify with the driver. One of the tricks I use while traveling in non-English speaking countries is to bring a pad of paper and a pen with me. I point at my digital travel watch and write a time that I think it is. The driver will usually take the pen and adjust to the correct time.

Donghua Men Night Market

One of the appeals of Beijing is the exotic food, even if it is to only watch the locals eat it. Anything and everything is available at the Donghua Men Night Market from snake to seahorse to anything you can possibly think of and more. The night markets are an ideal place to people watch and of course it is free.

Gardens Around The Temple Of Heaven

There is an entrance fee to the must see Temple Of Heaven but the beautifully kept gardens around it are free to wander in. Not only is the scenery beautiful but in the mornings, especially, the parks are full of locals doing their morning exercises (such as Tai Chi)

Tian’anmen Square

Located in the heart of Beijing, Tian’anmen Square is one of its symbols. The square itself is free to explore and is the surrounded by monuments and Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum. At sunrise and sunset, there is a rising and lowering of the flag ceremony.

But as I gaze out the window of the traditional Huxinting Teahouse, from where it sits in the middle of a lake in the Yuyuan gardens, I feel my body relax.

Tea Traditions and Fast Trains

There is a quartet of old men playing charming music in the room next door. When the tea is gone, I get in a taxi, head to the main train terminus and board the Maglev to head for the airport. Within a couple of minutes the world outside blurs past and with a big smile on my face I glance up at the speedometer above the door to the train – 431 km (267 mph) an hour.

At the Juyong Teahouse

Almost as soon as it reaches this speed it starts to slow down again, and after 7 minutes and 20 seconds we pull into our destination – Shanghai’s airport terminal. Now that is what I call an airport transfer! As Shanghai gears up for the 2010 World Expo and the tens of millions of expected visitors, this is a perfect parting example of the mix of old and new that I have so enjoyed in Shanghai.

A Walking tour of Old Shanghai

Old Shanghai city is a great area to explore on foot. I get off the subway at Laoximen station and walk a few blocks to the Confucius Temple on Wenmiao Lu. This temple and its predecessors have been here since 1294 with some reconstructions and renovations since, most recently in 1999 to repair the damage from the Cultural Revolution. It is a tranquil and calm spot to start the day amongst inspiring architecture.

From here I zig zag roughly north through the Shikumen laneways – the Shikumen houses developed in the last century as the city population explosion meant that groups of larger houses got subdivided again and again into many dwellings crammed around narrow laneways, with a style that almost seems to be a mix of Dutch and Chinese architecture. Later in the 20th century these became virtual slums in many places, now whole blocks have been demolished and are bare, while others are now renovated and trendy, and some are still worn and homely.

Shanghai’s Old City Market

The remaining inhabitants live as much in the communal alleyways as they do inside the buildings, and walking through these laneways it feels like I am in their laundry, their produce market, their bike repair shop, their corner café and their kids playground.

Towards the northern end I turn left onto Dajing Lu, the location of a famous outdoor market, a chaotic mix of people, vegetables and live chooks. At the end of the market I reach Henan Lu, do a quick dog-leg right and then left over this busy road, and pass under the big Chinese Gates into Old Street – an ironically named street lined with modern replicas of Ming buildings – a ‘theme mall’ if you like. But it is a pretty useful place for souvenir shopping, with all things Chinese old and new available to haggle over here.

A few blocks up this street and I arrive at Yuyuan Bazaar, a palatial Ming architecture mall for even more upmarket shopping. It is part of the Yuyuan Gardens, which also contain some real historic gardens and the Huxinting teahouse pagoda. Surrounded by a pond, it is only accessible via a feng shui designed zig zag bridge, and inspired the pagoda shape on traditional Chinese blue and white china.

Little mouthfuls of heaven

There is another good reason to come to Yuyuan gardens, it is also the location of reputedly the best xiaolongbao in Shanghai, at the Nan Xiang Steamed Bun Restaurant. I had been warned that I would have to queue, no matter what time of the day or day of the and so I do. I also discover that I can only order in minimums of six, but I want to try more than one flavor, so its looks like I am going to have to do some serious overeating.

I order the Spicy & Peppery Crab meat dumplings, the Fresh Pork meat dumplings, and the Prawn dumplings. With my chopsticks I raise a slippery transparent dumpling to my lips, and try to hold it still while I take a tiny bite out of the side, quickly suck out the hot broth and then bite into the perfect pork morsel in the middle. The first one worked perfectly but not all attempts went so well, sometimes spraying hot broth onto my face or shooting the slippery dumpling off the chopsticks and onto the floor before I got to it- lucky I had a good supply of paper towels.

The Bund, the Huangpu and Pudong

On one riverbank, the modern skyscrapers, all glass and metal shaped like bottle openers and balls on spikes, glowing a rainbow of neon and lights (Pudong). On the other riverbank, the impressive colonial architecture with its eclectic mix of roman arches, baroque pillars, Victorian gothic, and Ionic columns (Bund).

Fifteen years ago Pudong was still rice paddies, now it seems like 100 skyscrapers have been built since and it has taken over from the Bund as the Financial Centre. In the meantime the Bund has become mainly top notch bars, restaurants and luxury stores. To my mind, there are three ways to enjoy this area, and all are best done at night.

First I take a cruise on the Huangpu, where for a couple of hours I have a perfect view of both sides of the river as I float up and down – the Bund side artfully bathed in white light, the Pudong buildings a riot of color. I book a tour for the river cruise, which also picks me up from my hotel, and I am grateful for the organization. On a Saturday night the ferry terminal has about a thousand people queuing to board a range of ferries, and hundreds of booths to buy tickets from – but with no English spoken I am not sure how I would’ve picked a ferry or known which ferry I had purchased a ticket for. Or when it was boarding.

The skyskrapers of Pudong

This is a good time to not be too independent. The second method is to then visit one or more of the bars atop the Pudong skyscrapers, and with my cocktail of choice in hand, I sit back in luxury and enjoy the view. And then for a twist, for the third method I cross to the Bund and visit more bars (on this side they are just 3 or 4 floors off the ground, not 30 or 40,) and gaze back in the other direction.

This can take more than one evening of course. An alternative is try one of the world-class restaurants along the Bund, but remember that some of them are more focused on the food than the view. Continuing my resolve to sample all styles of local shanghai food, I dine at the Whampoa Club, which has a luxurious old boys club meets classy boudoir fit out. From an adventurous menu I have glutinous dates with fried foie gras, followed by Sichuan beef. But perhaps the most unusual (and delicious) choice is the dessert, two flavors of icecream – coriander and roasted sweet potato. And I swear roast sweet potato ice cream may well be the best ice cream flavor I will ever have.

The French Concession

This is where I really fall in love with Shanghai. The French concession feels different to every other part of Shanghai, and the name explains why – the impact of the colonial French expats remains today. Wide sweeping streets lined with canopies of trees and impressive old villas. And amongst all this old colonial charm beats a heart of the young, trendy and arty.

Another great walking area, and at every turn I find arts, crafts, shops, boutiques, cafes and bars, so hip that it hurts. A fun place to start is the Arts and Crafts Museum, the displays are interesting but the real charm is that it is housed in one of the few French Concession villas open to the public, and it is not busy, so I waltz around imagining what it would’ve been like living in this. After a few more hours of walking, shopping and sipping, I stopped in at one of the ubiquitous spas for a well-earned foot reflexology massage.

Hidden secrets of Taikang Lu

And then on the edge of the French Concession I find the epicenter of Shanghai cool – Taikang Lu. This is a series of narrow laneways and alleyways, old Shikumen, that have been converted into art studios, wine bars, musician’s hangouts and a whole range of unique shops and boutiques.

On a Sunday afternoon it is packed with locals, relaxing, catching up with friends and families, chilling out. The entrances to the laneways look like, and are, narrow alleyways between buildings, and you have to walk down them and around the corner before all the secrets of Taikang Lu are laid out in front of you.

Historic water towns

The countryside around Shanghai is dotted with water towns – historic old towns and villages that are located on canals, like tiny Chinese versions of Venice. I chose to visit Zhujiajiao as it is one of the closer ones, about an hour out of central shanghai as long as you are not travelling in the rush hour (although one local tells me the traffic rush hour is 24 hours a day and he may be right). Perhaps because it is so close to the city and therefore attracts many tourists, Zhujiajiao feels almost like a film set.

This is partly because the only employment in the village seems to be tourism, and every front room of every house seems to be selling souvenirs, and partly because the village buildings on the canals look like a Hollywood backdrop to a kung fu blockbuster set a couple of thousand years ago. Actually given how many movies have been filmed here, I shouldn’t be surprised.

In spite of those reservations, it is a delight to visit, a visual feast, particularly when I rent one of the little wooden canal boats and tour the village by water, ducking under stone bridges and peering in the windows of mahjong dens. I take a break from picturing myself as the victor of a spectacular sword fight, and buy a zhong from a street-side stall – glutenious rice stuffed with roast pork and wrapped in bamboo leaves, steamed for hours. Deliciously, messily, finger sticking good.

1. Grab a Drink at a Rooftop Bar Overlooking the Forbidden City
A full exploration of the Imperial Palace and Forbidden City, a complex sprawled over nearly eight million square feet, takes the better part of a day. When you’re done, order a cocktail and rest your legs at Yin, the rooftop bar at the Emperor Hotel.

You’ll find the building near the east gate, and Yin is reached via an ascending series of terraces from the boutique hotel. Views take in a panorama of the royal grounds, and the menu is stocked with innovative concoctions — many made with the evil Chinese liquor baijiu, so it’s drinker beware.

2. Ride a Tandem Bike around Houhai Lake
Houhai Lake is one of the hippest spots in Beijing. It’s also known as the “back lake” and is surrounded by restaurants, bars, coffee houses, and boutiques set along cobblestone lanes.

To save on rickshaw fees, hit up one of the bicycle rental stands, which rent by the hour and day, and pedal yourself around the lake district. You can even pick up a three-person tandem. I’m happy to say it’s a whole lot of fun to wobble down the narrow streets with the locals cheering you on.

3. Cook Dumplings in a Local’s Kitchen
Tour operator East Tours runs a gig where you can take dumpling making lessons at the home of a local. She’ll show you how to put together the filling and roll out the dough — harder than it sounds, believe me.

Stuffing the dumplings requires even more practice; don’t lose heart if your first half dozen look pathetically deformed.

The beauty of this tour is not only in getting a look at traditional Chinese cuisine but also at the homes and lives of everyday citizens in a real neighborhood — probably not an opportunity you’d have otherwise.And of course, you get to eat what you cook.

4. Go Karaoke
Karaoke is a staple of the social fabric in China, just like in other East Asian nations. Don’t miss out. Venues can be found in most hotels and seemingly along every major street. They’re sometimes called KTV, so watch for that on signs.

Protocol: Check in and pay for a specified amount of time at the front desk, after which you’ll be escorted to a private room with audio-visual equipment, microphones, a TV, and couches. You can order drinks and sometimes food.

5. Crunch into a Scorpion or Seahorse on a Stick
The Donghuamen Night Market, near the Forbidden City, is the place for street food.

You can find more sedate offerings such as dim sum, soup, and fresh veggies, but don’t bypass the bamboo skewers of silkworms, scorpions, seahorse, snake, and starfish. I also discovered a caramelized lotus root I couldn’t get enough of.

You don’t have to eat to enjoy yourself — half the fun is in gawking at the food and talking with vendors and other patrons.

6. Walk an Unrestored Section of the Great Wall
The Great Wall is long. Busloads of tourists get dropped off at the famous sections near Beijing every morning, but at other places unmarked by restoration or tourism, there are surprisingly few people. The experience of discovering the “wild wall” is powerful.

The Simatai-Jinshanling section allows you to do this. At the Xiangshui Lake scenic area there are another two, as well as a restored section. To get there, instead of walking ahead to the main gate, turn right or left; both directions lead farther into the village and towards original stretches of wall.

For more, consider a horseback tour along the wild wall, or a stay at one of the two hotels that have private access. Red Capital Ranch, Beijing’s first eco-tourism resort, owns ten restored villas set on 50 acres, while Commune by the Great Wall is another recommended resort, with villas surrounding a path that leads to part of the wall available only to guests.