DK Travel : Beijing : Places of interest

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Wangfujing Dajie

Beijing’s main shopping street is filled with department stores and giant malls (see Shops, Malls, and Markets), as well as stores selling silk, tea, and shoes. However, the highlight is the Night Market with its range of open-air food stalls (see Wangfujing Night Market). A little to the north is St. Joseph’s, one of the city’s most important churches, recently restored at a cost of US$2 million (see St. Joseph’s Church).

Wangfujing Dajie shopping street
Wanshou Temple

Up in the northwest Haidian district, the Wanshou (Longevity) Temple is worth a stop en route to the Summer Palace. Looking not unlike a mini Forbidden City, the complex houses the Beijing Art Museum – a collection of historical relics including bronzes, jade, carved lacquer, and a small but exquisite collection of Buddha images.
Western Qing Tombs

If few tourists ever visit the Eastern Qing Tombs, fewer still make it out here to their equally distant western counterparts. Again, this is another vast burial complex comprising over 70 tombs in all, set in spectacular surroundings. Tombs include those of the emperors Daoguang, Guangxu, Jiaqing, and Yongzheng (r. 1723–35). It was the latter who founded this particular necropolis, perhaps because he could not bear to be buried beside his father, whose will he had thwarted when he seized the throne from his brother, the nominated heir. Also here, in a nearby commercial cemetery, are the remains of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China (see The Last Emperor).
White Clouds Temple

The first temple on this site was founded in AD 739 and burnt down in 1166. Since that time, it has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. It even survived being used as a factory during the Cultural Revolution. The shrines, pavilions, and courtyards that make up the compound today date mainly from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Monks here are followers of Daoism and sport distinctive top-knots. Each Chinese New Year this is the venue for one of the city’s most popular temple fairs, with performers, artisans, and traders.
White Clouds Temple

Home to the China Daoist Association, the temple was founded in AD 739 and is Beijing’s largest Daoist shrine. Daoism, also known as Taoism, is a Chinese folk religion, which centers around maintaining a positive relationship with several categories of gods, ghosts, and ancestral spirits (see White Clouds Temple).
Workers’ Stadium

With an estimated capacity of 72,000, the stadium is home to Beijing’s premier football club, Hyundai Guo’an, and it is the city’s main venue for large-scale rock and pop concerts. Perplexingly, it’s also a hub of Beijing nightlife, with numerous clubs and bars clustered around its north and west gates, and some very good restaurants too (see Restaurants). Even oldies get in on the act, with mass open-air dancing taking place on the forecourt of the north gate most summer evenings.

Entrance gate at the Workers’ Stadium
Xiang Shan Park

The wooded parkland area, also known as Fragrant Hills Park, is 2 miles (3 km) west of the Summer Palace. It boasts fine views from Incense Burner Peak, which is accessible by a chair lift (¥30). Close to the park’s main gate is the Azure Clouds Temple (Biyun Si), guarded by the menacing deities Heng and Ha in the Mountain Gate Hall. A series of farther halls leads to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, where the revolutionary leader’s coffin was stored in 1925, before being taken to his final resting place in Nanjing.
Xu Beihong Memorial Museum

Set back from the road with a sign on top in green characters, and opposite a branch of KFC, this museum is dedicated to the man regarded as the founder of modern Chinese painting. It exhibits a collection of the lively watercolors of horses, which made Xu Beihong (1885–1953) internationally famous.
Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)

The name Yuanming Yuan derives from a Buddhist term and can be translated as “Garden of Perfect Brightness”. This was the largest and most elaborate of all the summer palaces of the Qing era. It once contained private imperial residences, pleasure pavilions, Buddhist temples, a vast imperial ancestral shrine, pools for goldfish, and canals and lakes for pleasure boating. The Qianlong emperor even added a group of European-style palaces designed by Jesuit missionary-artists serving in the Qing court. Today, all that’s left are graceful, fragmentary ruins after the complex was razed to the ground during the Second Opium War (1856–1860). A small museum displays images and models of the place as it was.
Zhong Shan Park

Northwest of the Tian’an Men, Zong Shan (also known as Sun Yat Sen Park) offers respite from the crowds thronging the nearby sights. The park was once part of the grounds of a temple and the square Altar of Earth and Harvests remains. In the eastern section is the Forbidden City Concert Hall, Beijing’s premier venue for classical music.