Whether you are studying abroad or working over the summer in China’s capital, navigating around Beijing can be intimidating. Visiting Beijing with an organized Chinese learning group, such as Penn Abroad in Beijing, Princeton in Beijing, or Columbia in Beijing offers a more structured program with the camaraderie of fellow students, but many of the best opportunities are organized independently. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay at Beijing Normal University for a month this past summer while working on an independent research project, offering me direct access to one of the city’s arterial public transportation lines (Subway Line 2). Aside from visiting the tour guide’s musts, such as the Great Wall, Summer Palace, and Forbidden City (any tour guide can tell you that), here are my picks for great places to see and things to do in Beijing when you’re with a small group of people and want a true taste of the city. If you want a wholesome, comprehensive, bank-breaking trip through Beijing, feel free to consult another travel guide. This is for the little things that sometimes get overlooked.
Feast your eyes on Wangfujing’s Gourmet Street (王府井美食街)
If you’ve got any amount of foodie in your veins, you’ve probably seen a Food Channel feature on Beijing’s Dong Hua Men Night Market (东华门夜市) and some of the spectacularly creepy food items, like starfish, crickets, and the tentacles of various cephalopods. If you like eating that kind of stuff, more power to you, but I’m here to tell you about the street next to it. Before you make the turn down to the bustling night market, take the Subway Line 1 to Wangfujing and check out what modernization has done to the face of China. The luxury shopping in this area is highly upscale, with department stores and department store prices often going from 500 to 3000 RMB for designer clothing. Wangfujing also has one of Beijing’s best foreign language bookstores, which might actually have some of your Penn textbooks for a marginally smaller cost than the Penn Bookstore. (Hauling it back to America, however, is your call). Outside of the buildings in the market area, there will often be street merchants peddling their wares of varying levels of legitimacy. Wangfujing is one of the most obvious symbols of China’s dualistic modernization. The familiar curved cinnabar rooftops will sit atop sparkling new stores, featuring the best of eastern and western goods. Inside the Gourmet Street, however, is where the influence of two hemispheres really collides. The indoor “gourmet street” features delicious eastern and western delicacies, including various types of bubble tea drinks, green tea cakes, frozen yogurt, gelato, southern-style dim sum (called dianxin, or 点心 , in Mandarin), and various local Beijing treats. Only here will you see Ajisen, a famous Japanese noodle chain in China, sit adjacent to a store that sells Shanghai-style steamed soup buns, which sits adjacent to a classier version of KFC. Sitting down at a restaurant and going all out is almost a shame, because the colorful variety of sweet and savory treats is enough to make even the wariest of travelers want to pull an Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Before you end up binging and have to be rolled out of Wang Fu Jing, I recommend walking through the area and trying a little at each place. It’s cost effective, and gives you the best taste of what modern Beijing has to offer.
Polyglots and Violent Thoughts while Bargaining at the Silk Market (秀水节)
After the food feast at Gourmet Street, if you can still summon up the energy to shop, it’s worth taking a trip to the Silk Market on the eastern side of the Subway Line 2. Living at BNU, which is in the northwest corner of the Subway Line 2, allows easy access to many of the city’s popular modern destinations, which can all be accessed either on Subway Line 2 (the smallest loop around the city), Subway Line 1 (a straight line which runs through Tiananmen Square and Wangfujing, among other popular destinations), and Subway Line 10 (a newer vertical line on the north side of the 2nd loop). In terms of shopping destinations, the Silk Market is a little farther than other closer, cheaper alternatives, but as a tourist experience, it is a must. Any single merchant here would probably break the curve of an OPIM 291 Negotiations class, as their bargaining skill is unparalleled. Silk Market is a popular destination for foreign tourists, and as a result, the storeowners here have mastered basic bargaining phrases in at least seven or eight languages. In the process of attempting to buy a (probably fake) Adidas jacket, I heard one store owner run through Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, German, before even considering using English. Don’t expect real goods here, but for fake goods, their quality is substantially higher than anything you’ll find on the streets. Cultural clashes here are common: I saw firsthand a North African Muslim woman’s offense when a young girl attempted to sell her booty shorts. As you walk from stall to stall, capitalism reeks in every “I Love Beijing” tourist t-shirt. Adam Smith would be proud.
Shopping at Subway Stations (like Market East without the ghetto)
If you haven’t been to The Gallery at Philly’s Market East station, you’re either lying or have never taken Septa in your life. But for Penn kids, whether you take the Gallery seriously is another matter. Shopping at a subway station malls in Philly may not even be an option, but Beijing’s subway stations are a different matter. In Beijing, commercial activity follows the people, so business is automatically attracted to transportation hubs. Though it’s easy to spend hours sucked into exploring what the many street merchants have to offer near major subway stations, the established stores in the area are also a lower-priced alternative to high end department stores. The clothing styles you find here is completely hit or miss: foreign shoppers may find great deals, but many of the styles may be impossible to wear in America. Either way, when these destinations are at every subway station instead of an hour away from home like King of Prussia, it’s still worth a visit. Nearly every station on the Subway 2 line is in close proximity to a shopping area, so give yourself ample time to browse if you’re going somewhere on a schedule.
Beijing Foods You Can’t Miss Out On
So, I will admit that I wasn’t adventurous enough to try the starfish at Dong Hua Men. (Nor do I have a stomach lined in steel. Not a fan of the echinoderms.) But, many of the local foods that make Beijing’s cuisine famous are worth trying. At the top of my list is Peking duck, which can sometimes go to outrageous prices at the city’s famous restaurants, such as Quanjude (全聚德). Barbeque pork, beef, and lamp kebobs are also quite popular, along with a type of Chinese yogurt that comes in a little ceramic pot. Northern Chinese food is famous for its grain-based food while southern Chinese is famous for rice-based food, so the noodles and baked goods you’ll see in Beijing are radically different from Southern hotspots such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. Beef noodle soup is common here, but Beijing is better known for its zhajiangmian (炸酱面), a thicker noodle with black bean sauce. Because of the city’s historical significance, many restaurants will boast about their several hundred years of service. For those restaurants, plan to make a reservation in order to secure one of those highly coveted spots.
When the Western Food Craving Kicks In
It’s hard to miss Crown Fried Chicken when you’re in Beijing, but there were times when I just craved a good ol’ Philly cheese steak. On the BNU campus, Hollywood was a popular fast food restaurant frequented by many foreign exchange students. As a fusion East-West fast food chain, it served everything from rice combo platters to tuna salads to cheese steaks (score!). In China as a whole, global fast food chains have taken a unique approach to presentation. Rather than being the scum of low-end American cuisine, Chinese branches of McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and KFC are not only high-end, but their prices are also several times more expensive than local options. Of the three listed, McDonalds is closest to preserving the plastic ambiance of its American counterparts, and serves a mostly similar menu with a few localized options. Pizza Hut, which suffered when it first opened in China, has since then entirely revamped its menu, offering classy Western pasta dishes, rice combo platters, and smoothie drinks. It’s entirely possible to eat at Pizza Hut for a week without ever ordering pizza, but the prices do add up.
The Giant Gundam at Zhongguancun (中关村)
I didn’t go to Zhongguancun, the self-dubbed “silicon valley” high-tech central of Beijing, just for the gundam, but it was pretty cool. For anyone looking to buy computers, mp3 players, cameras, or other electronic goods and would like for them to actually work after purchase, this area is probably your safest bet. All of the stores around here are catered toward tech-savvy customers, and due to its proximity to Beijing’s prestigious Peking and Tsinghua Universities, the government is hopeful for its technological and economic development in coming years. Though it is an important hub for the city and may appear on many other tourist guides, Zhongguancun’s significance mostly lies on the companies that operate here, and less so on what it can offer to visitors. There are, however, several parks scattered throughout the Zhongguancun Technology Zone.
The Famous Hu Tongs (胡同) of Beijing (Hu tong? What the heck is a hu tong?)
I had no idea what a hu tong was going into Beijing, and even after I’ve left, I’m not quite sure how they became so famous. Hu tongs are the small, narrow alleyways sprinkled throughout old Beijing. Certain alleyways have more significant histories than others, but for tourists, it is always a pleasure to rent a bike and navigate through the winding streets. In a city that has been so heavily consumed by consumption and modernization, these alleyways are a quaint reminder of Old Beijing. In some hu tongs around the lakes of central Beijing, merchants have opened small shops with a variety of amusing baubles to browse through at highly affordable prices.
Feeling Hip at Hou Hai (后海)
Known for its popular bars, the experience of Hou Hai is entirely different from what you would expect from a western bar. Hou Hai is one of a series of lakes around central Beijing that features a chain of small lounges and bars. Though there may be a few dance clubs around the area, Hou Hai emits a more sophisticated, classy appeal to people in their twenties, particularly expats. On breezy summer nights, the experience is unparalleled. The menu at each bar along Hou Hai is almost exactly the same, with anything except for beer going at rather marked up prices. In this astonishingly accurate depiction of a real life perfectly competitive market, the only differentiation from lounge to lounge is the musicians that they offer to accompany your Tsingtao. (Legal drinking age in China is eighteen, folks.) On nice nights, the owners bring large, over-stuffed couches outside so you can enjoy the breeze and colorful lights reflecting in the lake, as a variety of up-and-coming singers sing everything from smooth melodies to Western pop hits. I also heard many of Jay Chou’s ballads while wandering through this area. The calming atmosphere of an otherwise bustling nightlife scene is almost worth the scores of young men each bar hires to hover outside and harass anyone walking by, trying to bring in potential customers.
Mu Tian Yu, the Other Great Wall (慕田峪)
As touristy as it is, it’s a shame for visitors not to visit the Great Wall, China’s long-time historical and national symbol. Unfortunately, popular Great Wall destinations like Badaling (八达岭) are overflowing with people, so that more of the experience is spent getting your heels stepped on by the guy behind you rather than enjoying one of the great wonders of the world. For the adventurous, there are some ruins along the Great Wall (野长城) that are technically accessible (though perhaps not legally permitted), but a more reasonable alternative is Mu Tian Yu. There’s much less tourist traffic, and the view is incredible. Almost as thrilling as the climb up, however, is the descent down, where droves of shopkeepers scream and accost you to buy their Great Wall paraphernalia. The amount of selective targeting towards non-Chinese guests is incredible, and anyone that doesn’t look like they speak Chinese is deluged with cries of “Mao Zedong shirt! Very cheap! One dollah!” like something out of a Russell Peters sketch.
Fighting for Your Life at the Beijing Train Station (北京站)
Though Beijing is enough to spend years exploring and never reach the end, the eighteen hour flight to the other side of the world is worth spending a few extra bucks to visit other cities in the area. A train ride to Shanghai takes about twelve hours and is best done on an overnight train or by plane, while a trek to western parts of China could take much longer. Plane tickets are the most expensive by far, and a train ride to another city is not only cheaper, but can also be an experience in itself. Overnight rides offer sleeper cars in comfortable four-bed compartments, but cheaper tickets for as little as 60 RMB (approximately $9) can get you a comfy airplane-like seat for the ride. The ease of city-to-city transportation is slightly dampened by the unruly conglomeration of people that is the Beijing Train Station. The station is like Grand Central and Septa combined, with Grand Central’s proportions and Septa’s surliness. Many of the workers here are from other parts of China, and speak with local dialects unintelligible to even fluent Mandarin speakers. Trying to catch a cab out of the station requires a substantial wait, so the subway to the station is probably most convenient if you don’t have much luggage. Even if you do have luggage, you’re likely to get pushed and tossed around by the crowds if you arrive in peak hours, so the maxim of “pack lightly” could not apply more.
The ten places I noted were destinations I highly enjoyed during my stay, but for the nation’s capital, there is an endless amount of things to do in Beijing. Of course, I also paid my dues and traveled to must see destinations – Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong’s mausoleum, my great grand-uncle’s house, and the like. Your trip to Beijing is going to be what you make of it, so make public transportation your best friend (those RFID cards are da shiz) and explore! But don’t get into one of those black taxis with no labeling on it. That’s just asking for trouble.
