Planning
Decide in advance exactly what you want to see and put it into priority order. Be modest in your aims and do not assume you’ll see everything on your list. On arrival in Beijing tackle your top priority and its near neighbours, and then go on to the next. Never leave anything important until your last opportunity to do it, as this will almost certainly guarantee that the electricity will be off, the one person who can help will be sick, the office will be closed for a meeting, the road will have been dug up, or the site simply closed without warning for repairs. Hiccups are many, and travelling times are long, especially above ground. Allow extra time for everything, and while most sights are open for the same hours seven days a week, some close on Monday or Tuesday or have other variations, so pay close attention.
On any particular day, whatever is the most important thing you want to do, do it first. Few premises open on time in China and most close early, unless they are private businesses. Museum staff frequently stop selling tickets an hour or so before the museum closes so as to make sure everyone’s out of their hair in plenty of time for going home, and staff of all government offices right down to postal workers may decide that they are xiàbàn (off work) up to 30 minutes before closing time, even though they carry on sitting at their desks. Two-hour lunch breaks are also likely to begin early and end late, cutting down the working hours of the officer in charge of issuing visa extensions, for instance, to a very brief period. ‘Work’, in this and many other cases, means the strenuous labour of reading the newspaper, drinking tea and discussing the price of things with any fellow officer who may happen to drop in.
Opening times given in this guide were obtained directly by visiting the sites in question and every single one was subsequently reconfirmed by telephone. Unsurprisingly these may not tally with those given on the sites’ own websites, which are rarely kept up to date. Some information will certainly be inaccurate.
Click links below for other practical information on travel to Běijīng, or go to the Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing (home page).
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