A travel guide for Beijing China. This video highlights the major tourist

attractions of Beijing.

In 10 minutes we're going to cover the following sites: We'll start by visiting

Tiananmen Square the center the city and its most important landmark.

We'll then visit the Forbidden City, home to the imperial court

during the Ming and Qing dynasties. We'll then go to the Temple of Heaven

the symbol and Beijing surrounded by a lovely park.

at Wong Fu Jing Beijing's most famous shopping street we'll visit two culinary

attractions. First we'll visit

Quanjude for Beijing's best Peking Duck. Then we'll walk on over to

Donghuamen

a night market for exotic snacks like scorpion and starfish.

And we'll conclude with the Great Wall of China

which needs no introduction. But before we begin our tour

I'll start with a few introductory points on Beijing. First

the air quality yes it can be bad. On the left is a good day

and on the right is a bad day. The best time of year to visit for clean air

is spring and fall, April-May, August and September.

Next up transportation. Beijing is famous for its

awful traffic. So don't even think about getting a rental car.

Actually as a foreigner you need a special license to even drive.

The combination of light vehicles like bicycles and big vehicles like buses

makes for some awful gridlock

at many of Beijing's intersections. The freeway isn't much better.

luckily Beijing does have a very good subway system

that'll take you most places that you wanna go as a tourist. Taxis are an option

but the taxi drivers

generally don't speak English so make sure you have your destination

written in Chinese. If you're going someplace far away, a guided tour on a tour

bus might be great option.

This was our tour bus going to the Great Wall. The bus driver had a

grasshopper for good luck. Final note on transportation,

when you're crossing the street be careful. Cars don't really yield for

pedestrians here.

Just kinda pick a constant speed and try to walk

and the cars will hopefully drive around you. Okay!

Now on to our first sight. Tiananmen square, named after the Tiananmen gate to the

Forbidden City to the north

this is the world's fourth largest square. It measures 440,000 square meters

and it's a great place to come to just people watch and take in the humanity here.

The square is also home to several other important attractions including

the National Museum of China and the daily flag raising and flag lowering

ceremony,

here at the top of this flagpole. If you want to see the flag-raising you'll have to get up

early

because it happens before sunrise. Some days as early as 4:45 in the morning.

Next up is the Forbidden City. It was home to 24 emperors.

It is the world's largest palace complex and has over 8000 rooms.

The main entrance is just to the north of Tiananmen square

underneath the portrait of Chairman Mao the palace got the name the Forbidden City

because in the past no one was allowed to enter or leave without the Emperor's

permission.

But today, you can enter for the low low price of sixty

renminbi. Just make sure you get here before four o'clock

to buy your ticket. So after passing through three courtyards, saying no to about

10 tour guides

saying no to 5 art students who want me to go to their art exhibition and not

buying about twenty books that are put in front of me

standing in line for ten minutes to get my ticket finally inside

the Forbidden City. Now I know why they call it Forbidden.

I feel like I've just run the gauntlet in American Gladiators.

But let's go check it out!

With 8886 rooms to explore

a visitor can be in here for a long time. If you're just visiting some of the main

squares and significant buildings, you could probably walk through it in about 2-3

hours. But if you wanna visit some of the other museums and exhibits then allocate

the better part of the day.

Once you exit you can head up to this observatory at Jingshan Park

and get a bird's eye view of the massiveness of the palace.

it's really quite amazing! The Temple of Heaven is a popular attraction for both

locals and tourists alike.

It's a park and a temple and you have to buy a ticket

to go in. At the ticket office there are two different tickets available

one for park entrance and the other one, the through ticket

for 35 renminbi that's the one you want to get that brings you into the park

and the temple

of heavenly heavenness. The surrounding park is also a lovely place to go for a

stroll

a sit or to play majjong with some of your closest Beijing friends.

Quanjude is China's most famous Peking Duck restaurant.

One of their main locations is located on

Wangfujing, the main street in Beijing. It is a five-story restaurant that seats

a ton of people. The menu is quite extensive

but the main attraction of course is the "Beijing kaoya."

Or the "Peking Duck." Like any good duck restaurant when you order your

Beijing Kaoya

the chef comes out with a cart in front of your table

and carves it right in front of you. The Peking duck is served in a few different ways:

the skin here is served with sugar.

that you dip the skin in the sugar. The rest of the meat with the

skin here is served with the pancakes and the

green onions and the hoisin sauce. The first one being made for you by the

waitress.

And as an extra bonus they also bring out the

duck head on a plate so you know it came from a whole duck.

The final course is a bowl of duck soup.

Which tasted kind of like chicken soup only more duck like.

And finally they also provide a card that has a serial number

up the duck that you ate.

The Donghuamen night market is in

Wangfujing off the main street. Here is a collection of over a hundred

specialty snacks from all over China. Though the predominant food seems to be

meat

on a stick. But you can get special things like scorpion on a stick

or snake on a stick. Some of the other tasty specialties here include

starfish, sheeps penis, centipede, silkworm

stinky tofu, crabs, bird's nest

noodles, dim sum, potstickers

pan fried dumplings, iced tea and soy milk to wash it all down

and for dessert deep-fried ice cream. And now our final destination

the Great Wall of China. And the first thing you need to know about visiting

the Great Wall of China

is because it is several thousand kilometers long

there are multiple different locations that you can visit

of the Great Wall. In fact from Beijing there

are 8 different locations. One of the most popular is Badaling,

but I think the best one to avoid the crowds is

Mutianyu. The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall is located about 45 miles

northeast of Beijing.

And is known for its sweeping and panoramic views.

So the best way to get up to the Mutianyu part of the Great Wall is to take the

Cable Car or Ropeway. There's two, one takes you to the Tobbagon

and this one takes you up to the highest part. 65 Yuan for

the round trip. Looks to be pretty

Steep

Hear we go!

The rather nice thing about visiting this part of the wall

is because its lesser visited than Badaling, its relatively

tourist free. So you really feel like having the wall

almost all to yourself. Though to walk the Great Wall

you do have to be able to take some challenging sections and some steep

slopes and also some steep staircases

this is one of the nicer ones but make sure you watch out because there are

some

guardrails if you're not careful you might fall off!

So this is an example of one of the staircases.

As you can see, pretty steep, and the handrails

pretty low. I don't know about you I don't know that anyone is that short

A pretty cool thing about this part of the Great Wall

are the watchtowers. I'm inside one of them now. You can see another little one down

there

You can pretend you were a person here in China shooting arrows

at the Mongolians invading.

This particular tower number

14 was actually used as a command center.

Pretty high tech! Though the staircases

up the watchtowers those are the most treacherous and only

for the most adventuresome but I'm pretty adventuresome

It's like the top of the world and from the top of the watchtowers is where you'll

get some of the most rewarding views.

You might even catch somebody getting married on the Great Wall

of China. Thanks for watching click here to subscribe!

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