Beijing Tours & Travel Guide

Beijing is where most first journeys to China begin, and for good reason: no other city holds six centuries of imperial architecture in one walkable core. The Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace sit inside a ring road that also contains the old hutong lanes, where people still live the way the city lived before it grew to 22 million.

It is also the easiest place in China to see the Great Wall properly. Most visitors are driven to Badaling, the crowded coach-tour section. We take you to Mutianyu instead — the same engineering, a fraction of the people, with a cable car up and a toboggan down if you want it.

Allow four to five days. Beijing rewards slow days: a morning inside the palace, an afternoon in a teahouse, an evening eating Peking duck in a restaurant that has served it for a century.

Beijing has a genuinely old Muslim community, so halal food is not hard to find — it is simply unevenly distributed. The Niujie district south-west of the centre is the heart of it: qingzhen (halal) restaurants, butchers and bakeries on almost every block, plus the Niujie Mosque itself. Most 3- to 5-star hotels can arrange a halal or Muslim-friendly breakfast if we ask in advance, and we confirm every restaurant on your route before you travel.