Construction of the SummerPalace started in 1750. The northern part of the SummerPalace is the 60-meter-tall Longevity Hill. Its southern part is a wide expanse of water called Kunming Lake. The whole garden covers 290 hectares, with the lake taking up four-fifths of its total area.

A cluster of grand buildings adorn the middle section of the Longevity Hill. On the slope from the lakeside to the hilltop stand a decorated archway called Jade-Like Firmament in Bright Colors, Cloud-Dispelling Hall, Hall of Virtuous Brilliance, Pavilion of Buddhist Incense and Temple of the Sea of Wisdom. Standing on the top of the hill, visitors command a spectacular view of buildings of different shapes and sizes below. Their golden roofs glittering under the sun; the placid, huge Kunming Lake dotted with rowing boats. A 17-arch bridge that connects an island with the lake’s southern bank. The long, winding west bank of the lake is joined by six bridges and the distant West Hills.

Along the northern bank of Kunming Lake runs the Long Corridor with a total length of 728 meters and 273 sections. It is like a necklace for Longevity Hill. Strolling in the corridor, a visitor sees an endless lineup of corridor stands stretching into the distance or curving away elegantly at soft angles as well as KunmingLake sparkling under the sun. The crossbeams of the Long Corridor are decorated with more than 8,000 color paintings with Chinese landscape and historical stories as their themes.

The 17-arch bridge on the southern bank of Kunming Lake is more than 150 meters long. Carved stone lions, of different sizes and postures, sit on top of the bridge’s stone columns. An octagonal pavilion stands at one end of the bridge and near the pavilion lies a bronze ox with its head raised toward the lake. On the back of the ox is engraved a line from Emperor Qianlong stating that the ox is used to control flooding of the lake.

A Ming-style street winds along a stretch of water on the back side of Longevity Hill.

The Suzhou Street, 300 meters long, is lined with more than 60 shops and decorated with archways and gateways. The shops with different shapes and sizes, are built with bluish gray tiles and bricks. The market place lends a folksy flavor to the imperial garden.

Detailed introduction to the Summer Palace, the second largest imperial garden in China.

Equally famous as the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace is called “Yiheyuan” (Garden of Nurtured Harmony) in Chinese. It is up to now the best preserved and the largest imperial gardens in China. You may regret it if you come to Beijing and miss visiting these gardens.

Transportation: If you take a taxi to the Summer Place from Beijing city centre, it generally costs 80RMB(about 10 USD). The round way will cost about 160RMB(about 20 USD).

Entrance Fee: 40RMB(about 5 USD) per person

In the central heart of Beijing, the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace) remained the residence of the emperors for nearly five hundred years, from the 15th century to the early 20th century, and was the actual and symbolic seat of imperial power. Popularly known as the Forbidden City, it was built in the Ming Dynasty between the 4th and the 18th years of the Yongle period (1406 - 1420 AD). Many of the buildings of the Palace have been repaired and rebuilt, but their basic style and layout remain in their original state.

                                       
This magnificent, palatial architectural complex covers an area of over 2,350,000 square feet and contains 9,999 rooms. It is surrounded by ten-foot-high walls which are crowned by four observation towers and flanked by a deep moat. The walls are pierced by four large gates, each with three openings and a broad crowning pavilion.

The layout of the Forbidden City is based on a Chinese cosmic diagram of the universe that clearly defines the north-south and east-west axes. The buildings represent the largest and best-preserved examples of Chinese traditional architecture found today. The overall layout is centered on the three primary Halls of State: The Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihedian), The Hall of Middle Harmony (Zhonghedian) and The Hall of Preserving Harmony (Baohedian). State ceremonies were held in the Outer Court (Wai Chao) of the Forbidden City. Here the emperors governed from their thrones, holding court sessions with their ministers, issuing imperial edicts and initiating military expeditions. The Outer Court was also the site for important ceremonies: the accession of a new emperor to the throne, birthdays and weddings. The Inner Court (Nei Ting) was the residential area of the emperor and the imperial household, as well as the place where the emperor dealt with routine state affairs.
                                               

The Forbidden City was the scene of many significant events affecting the course of Chinese history. Secret World of the Forbidden City: Splendors from China’s Imperial Palace explores the objects housed in this important complex, lending insight into the mysteries of the imperial court under the Qing Dynasty, from the entry into the city of Manchurian troops led by Li Sicheng to the pinnacle of artistic creativity under Qianlong to the decline of the dynasty and the abdication of the last Emperor Xuantong in 1912.
                                           

Today, the Forbidden City is one of the world’s foremost museums of Chinese art. Its palaces and halls are filled with innumerable works of art and cultural artifacts, including gifts of state, military campaign loot and furnishings and possessions of members of the imperial households. A great number of these treasures represent the peak of artistic and inventive genius exhibited by the countless artisans who worked exclusively for the imperial court.
Nine Dragon Screen

It was originally built as the fortification for the ancient empires. Up to now, large parts of the wall are in ruins or have disappeared, however, good view points can be reached near Beijing, like Badaling Section, Simatai, Jinshanling and Gubeikou etc.

The northern part of the Great Wall in Beijing becomes the tourist spot today which was reconstructed. No one can tell when the ancient Great Wall started, It is said that the oldest ones are fortification walls of China erected between the kingdoms of the Warring States period from the 5th to the 3rd century BC: the walls of Qi  (Shandong Province), Chu (Hubei Province), Qin(Shanxi Province), Yan ( Hebei Province), Zhao (Shanxi Province), and Wei( Henan Province).

Badaling Great Wall  is located more than 70 kilometers northwest from the center of Beijing City, occupies a commanding and strategic position. Badaling is the best-preserved section of the Great Wall. It was built in the 18th year of the Ming Hong Zhi reign (1505). The wall was built with high stone slabs outside, it is 7.8 meters high on average, some even reaches 8.4meters. The base of the wall was built with more than 2000 large rectangular slabs of granite stones. It is about 6.5 meters wide and 5.7 meters wide on average on the ramparts. The wall is wide enough for five horses to gallop abreast and ten people to advance shoulder by shoulder. The outside of the wall is called rampart wall. The rampart wall was built with bricks as 1.7 meters high. For the purpose of defense, there are holes on the tip of the wall called watch-hole, and peepholes under the wall called embrasures. Inside the wall, there are low walls with one meter high called parapets, which can be used as railings. There is a scroll door not far from the inside wall, with is a stone ladder for climbing up and down. The wall is narrow on the top and broad on the bottom forming an adder-shape structure. This made the wall stands firmly on the rise and fall ridges. The wall was built with 10-14 rectangular slabs of stones surround its outside, filled with soilsand stones in the middle, and paved with square bricks on the top between the bricks were stuck with lime stones. This makes the wall tidy, beautiful, and firm. There are gutters with gargoyles to drain rain-water off the parapet wall.

The landscape of Badaling Great Wall changes every season, with numerous scenery to catch your attention. A sunlit and enchanting scene of spring,  the valley covers with greens. When the rain comes, the vista will look vast and hazy. The sky in autumn is high with unsoiled stratosphere, while the maple forest is dyed in golden colour. White snow covers the whole scene in winter.

Transportation: If you take a taxi to get to the Great Wall from Beijing city centre, it generally costs 400RMB(about 50USD), the round way will cost 800RMB(about 100USD).

Entrance Fee: 45RMB(about 6USD)

Mutianyu Great Wall is located in Huairou County, Beijing. Northern Qi (550-577) started to construct a wall here. During the Ming Hong Wu reign (1368-1398), General Xu Da built the Great Wall on its foundation. The Mutianyu Pass was erected in 1404 (the 2nd year of the Ming Yong Le reign). Construction continued when General Qi Jiguang was transferrel to Jizhou to command the garrison area in 1568 (the 2nd year of the Long Qing reign).

The fortifications and the Great Wall here are characterized by many watchtowers on overlapping mountain ranges. The wall was built with slabs of stones, is crenellated on both sides with bricks. Horsetrapping snares outside the wall offer better protection and ward off attacks. With Juyongguan in the west and Gubeikou in the east.

Mutianyu serves as the northern barrier defending the capital and the imperial tombs. With vegetation, green pines and cypresses covering 90 percent of the area, the sceneries here are beautiful all the year round.

Simatai Great Wall is located at GubeikouTown in the northeast of Miyun County, Beijing, 120 kilometers from the city center. Its construction started in the early Hongwu years (1368-1398) of the Ming Dynasty. Like most sections of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall often visited today, this section was also built under the supervision of General Qi Jiguang.

The Simatai Great Wall is 5.4 km long with 35 watchtowers. As the east section of the Gubeikou defense line, this magnificent section features great strategic significance. Built hundreds of years ago, the Simatai Great Wall still retains all its original appearance. It not only incorporates a variety of styles of other parts of the 10, 000-li-long wall, but also displays some unique characteristics. This section of the Great Wall is often described with the following five words: perilous, dense, diverse, ingenuous, and peculiar.

With its fantastic scenery and precipitous topography, the Simatai Great Wall is a remarkable place for sightseeing, hiking and exploration.

Snacks and Cheap Eats

Off the main roads and in Beijing’s alleyways is a world teeming with food stalls and small eateries. Breakfast can be easily catered for with a youtiao (deep-fried dough stick) and a bowl of porridge (zhou). Other snacks include the pancake-like and filling jianbing, and the heavy meat filled roubing, cooked bread filled with finely chopped pork. Dabing can be found everywhere—a chunk of round, unleavened bread sprinkled with sesame seeds—and of course there’s mantou (steamed bread). Also look out for roujiamo, a scrumptious open-your-mouth-wide bun filled with diced lamb, chili and garlic shoots.

Worth checking out is the food mall in the basement of the Oriental Plaza on Wangfujing. It’s a squeaky-clean fast food emporium of Cantonese, Yunnan, Sichuan, teppanyaki, clay pot and porridge outlets plus loads of other types of Asian cuisine.

Markets

A sight in itself, the bustling Donghuamen Yeshi night market at the northern end of Wangfujing near Sundonggan Plaza is a veritable food zoo: lamb kebabs, beef and chicken skewers, corn on the cob, smelly tofu, cicadas grasshoppers, kidneys, quail’s eggs, squid, fruit, porridge, fried pancakes, chicken hearts, pita bread stuffed with meat, shrimps…and that’s just the start. Foreigners go all slack jawed at the marvels on view. The market is open every day of the year apart from the Spring Festival; 5:30pm to 10:00pm.

Another fascinating spectacle is the Wangfujing Xiaochijie (Wangfujing Snack Street) south of the night market. Fronted by an ornate pailou, the quadrant is a bright and cheery corner of restaurants and stalls overhung with colorful flags and bursting with character and flavor.

Beijing Duck

The capital’s most famous invention is now a production line of sorts. Your meal starts at one of the farms around Beijing, where the duck is fattened with grain and soybean paste. The duck carcass is lacquered with molasses, pumped with air, filled with boiling water, dried, and then roasted over a fruitwood fire. The result is delicious. The duck is served in stages. First comes boneless meat and crispy skin with a side dish of shallots, plum sauce and crepes, then duck soup made of bones and all the other parts of the duck except the quack..

Qianmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant

Known as the “Old Duck”, this is one of oldest restaurant in the capital, dating back to 1864. It remains one of the city’s best places for roast duck..

32 Qianmen Dajie

9 Shuaifuyuan Hutong (nearby Wangfujing)

Tianwaitian

Tianwaitian is a reliable chain of Beijing Duck specialists dotted around town. The chefs do a fine job on the tasty morsels, served up alongside a thick wad of pancakes. Order beer by the pint; the meicai kou rou is a delicious dish of melt-in-mouth strips of fatty pork atop a small mound of meicai cabbage.

Dumplings

When in Beijing , do as Beijingers do: gobble down dumplings (jiaozi) by the bowl. Small steamed or boiled bite-size parcels of meat and vegetables in pastry envelopes, jiaozi arrive scalding at the table, to be doused in a small dish of soy sauce and vinegar and chomped.

Golden Cat Dumpling City

Open 24 hours. Come here whenever the unpredictable mood for dumplings grabs you, day or night. This courtyard eatery, near the east gate of Tuanjiehu Gongyuan, serves over 20 varieties of dumplings: from the standard pork-filled, through to pumpkin, aubergine, donkey-meat and beyond. Order dumplings by the liang (about ￥3.5 for five dumplings)

Wangfujing

  Wangfujing intersects with East Chang’an Avenue. It has a history of more than 100 years. The street, which is less than one kilometer long, is lined with shops. The best-known shop is the Beijing Department Store. To the north of the department Store is the One World Department Store, hosting a collection of Chinese and foreign name brands and fine quality products.La Fayette presents French features, namely fashions and name brands. The newly-opened Sun Dong’an Market is the largest supermarket in Beijing. It covers a business floor space of 100,000 aquare meters and sells more than 200,000 kinds of goods. The Oriental Plaza, which is considered another miracle in Chinese architectural history, is scheduled for comp;etion soon. It stands just by the south entrance of Wangfujing.

Qianmen

  Qianmen street was a commercial center of Beijing more than 500 years ago. Its old shops and small stalls are preferred by Beijingers. Not far from Tian’anmen Square is Xidan, which is regarded as the second Wangfujing. The street is lined with shopping centers, food bazaars and garment markets.

Silver Street

  Silver street is in the Dongdan Beidajie. It is where all the franchised foreign name-brand shops are concentrated.

  Jianguomenwai Dajie is famous for its colorful metropolitan scenes. The street is lined with star-rated hotels, office buildings, fancy restaurants, beauty salons and shopping centers. The well-known shopping centers are Friendship Store, SCITECH Plaza, Guiyou Department store and the China World Shopping Mall.

The Silk Market

  Despite its name, the Silk Market has much more than just silk. The silk products here are cheap, and therefore popular, but there are also a lot of cashmere garments, down jackets, leather goods, shoes, hats, watches and some handicrafts and trinkets.  One of the main things about the Silk Market is the fact that none of the prices are set. This can work for or against you. It all depends on your bargaining skills. If you on your bargaining skills. If you are a proficient (i.e.stubborn) bargainer, then you can get great deals on all kinds of clothing, but if you are soft -hearted and don’t like confrontation, then you may get taken for a ride. It is ofen helpful to bring along a Chinese friend who can help you bargain. The way to do it is, look around at all of the stuff and point out to your friend which item you like, without letting the seller know. Then let the Chinese person go back and bargain for you. Of cours not all Chinese people are good bargainers, but at least if they go, the starting price is the same, but the lowest the seller will go will be lower for the Chinese person.

  If you are a tall person (6′ and up ) the Silk Market is the best place for you to buy clothes and shoes. Usually the shopping plazas and super-stores do not have really large sizes. If you are size 12 shoe size or larger, then the only place to really go is to the Silk Market.

  You will notice quite a few famous name-brand items there, and you may wonder how a Timberland down jacket can be sold for US$20 or $30. The answer is not clear. Sometimes the goods are counterfeit, but more often the merchant has a relative in a clothing factory who can get excess products or slightly imperfect products for super cheap prices. At least that is one theory. No matter what the case may be, it is a place for bargain shopping.

  The silk and cashmere goods are also much cheaper than they would be in other stores or in other countries. These items make great gifts for friends back home, especially the silk Mickey Mouse boxer shorts which you can’t get away from. Most of the sellers speak a little English, at least they know how to say “you say how much!”, “I give you good price.” And of course numbers are their specialty. There is also a large selection of fake Rolex, Omega and other wristwatches, rivaled only by the street hawkers of New York City.

  Note :it is very crowded in the alleyway, and people will be constantly brushing up against you. It is a good idea to keep a close eye on your bag or wallet while you are in there. If you are wearing a backpack, put it on backwards so the pack is in front of you. If you don’t, you may find that there is a slit in the bottom of your pack and all the good stuff is gone!

Sanlitun Market

  Besides being famous for its Bar street, Sanlitun is also well-known for its free market. During the daytime, the side of the street across from all of the bars is lined with stalls selling mostly clothing. The good thing about this market as compared to department stores is that you can bargain for prices, and they have larger sizes.

Tourism-administration-designated-stores

  Century-old stores, like those in Beijing’s hutongs(alleys) and siheyuan (courtyards), have become part of the city’s history. Their fame and location in some of the most bustling downtown areas keep them busy but, at the same time, the stores are small and offer a relatively poor shopping environment. And competition is rising from the rubble of modern construction. In recent years, most traditional stores have made changes to keep up with their rivals, including renovating their rivals, including renovating their facades and interior decorations, and upagrading services. Shopping in some of the best of the stores can be a unique Chinese experience.

The four seasons in Beijing are distinct. It is dry, windy and sandy in spring and hot and rainy in summer. Autumn is the best season in a year when the sky is blue; the air is crisp, mild and humid. However, winter is cold and dry with little snow. The average temperature throughout a year is 11.7℃. The average temperatures of the hottest month, July and the coldest month January range from 27℃ and -4.6℃. The shorter seasons, spring (usually from February to April) and autumn (usually from August to October) are better seasons for visiting Beijing when it is sunny and warm with few tourists crowding in the attractions.

If you come to Beijing in spring, you could wear a thin sweater, a pair of sweat pants, and a coat. But sometimes it may be a good idea to bring a warm cap because it is windy and sandy during this period though it is not cold. In summer the temperature could reach as high as 30C. When you go out, you could take an umbrella along with you if it doesn’t bother you much, because a downpour may come unexpectedly at evenings from July to August. Autumn is the most beautiful season, but after October you may feel the constant changes of the weather and you may encounter light rains at any moment. So it is better to bring some heavy clothes with you. In winter, you need a heavy woolen sweater, and a long wind coat or a down jacket. Generally there will be two or three heavy snowfalls each winter, so it is always wise for you to have anti-skidding shoes with you when you come. Lastly, don’t wear light-color clothes in winter.

Bilingual weather information can be obtained if you dial 121 in Beijing.

Today more than two hundred and sixty places of interest have been opened to the public with new ones under building and planning. Besides these places of interest, the natural scenery of Beijing’s suburbs also attracts great many visitors with its charms, hills, lakes, hot springs, karst caves and so forth.

In 1986 sixteen famous scenic spots of Beijing were picked from forty spots and were named “the Sixteen Sights of Beijing”. They are Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Badaling Great Wall, Beihai Park, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Fragrant Hill, Shidu Scenic Spot, Relics of Primitive at Zhoukoudian, Longqing Gorge, Big Bell Temple, White Dragon Pond, Ming Tombs, Lugou Bridge, Mutianyu Great Wall and Grand View Garden.

The Capital Airport, the largest and most advanced one in China, has more than twenty international airlines connecting countries in Asia, Africa, America, Europe and Oceania. It has over thirty airlines connecting about eighty big cities within the country. Meanwhile, it is the center of highway-net and communication.

There are more than two hundred star hotels in the city supplying more than fifty two thousand rooms. There are about three hundred travel agencies around here.

Beijing is not only a world-famous city for its tourism but also a good medium for you to know more about China, a time-honored country, and the Chinese, a diligent and wise nation.

Some four to five thousand years ago, settlements to the southwest of Beijing were thriving on basic agriculture and animal husbandry. Story has it that the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) battled against the tribal leader Chiyou in the “wilderness of the prefecture of Zhuo.”Zhuolu, a town west of present-day Beijing, is perhaps the site of the first metropolis in the area. Yellow Emperor’s successor, Emperor Yao, was said to have established a legendary capital Youdu (City of Quietude) that was where the city of Ji was actually built.

During the Warring States Period (475-221BC), the Marquis of Yan annexed the territory of the Marquis of Ji, making the city of Ji his new capital. The approximate location was north of Guang?anmen Gate in present–day Beijing near the WhiteCloudTemple (Baiyunguan). Early in the third century BC, the first Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huang) set about conquering six states and unifying China. The city of Ji was named administrative center of Guangyang Commandery, one of 36 prefectures in China’s first feudal empire. For 10 centuries, through to the end of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Ji remained a strategic trading and military center and the object of frequent power struggles.

wo emperors during that period — Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty (581-618) and Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty — left their mark on the city. Emperor Yang amassed troops and supplies at Ji for expeditions against Korea. Emperor Taizong also used the city for military training. He built the Temple for Compassion for the Loyal (Minzhongsi), which is dedicated to troops who died in battle. This temple was the precursor of the Temple of the Origin of the Dharma (Fayuansi) located outside the old walls of the city.

At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Ji was little different from any other large feudal cities. Several centuries later, however, when the Tang was nearing a state of collapse, the Qidans (Khitans) came from the upper reaches of the LiaoheRiver and moved south to occupy Ji and make it their second capital. They called the city Nanjing (Southern Capital) or Yanjing. Emperor Taizong of the Liao Dynasty (916-1125) carried out reconstruction projects and built palaces, which were used as strongholds from which the Qidans set out to conquer the central plains of China.