1. Check whether you need a visa at all
China's visa-free transit policy covers a long list of nationalities for stays of up to 240 hours, and a separate scheme allows some passport holders to enter for ordinary tourism without a visa. The rules are specific about which ports you may enter through and which onward ticket counts. Verify against the official list before booking.
2. Decide your airport before your hotel
Capital (PEK) and Daxing (PKX) are on opposite sides of the city and roughly two hours apart by public transport. Booking a hotel in the north and flying into Daxing is the single most common planning mistake.
3. Set up payment before you land
Cash is accepted by law but is genuinely awkward in daily use. Alipay and WeChat both accept foreign cards now, and both work for the metro, taxis and museum tickets. Install and verify while you still have easy internet.
4. Book the big sights in advance
The Forbidden City, the National Museum and the Mausoleum all use timed, named-entry reservations that routinely sell out days ahead. Walking up on the day usually does not work in high season.
What this site is
These are working notes, not a magazine. I have been putting friends and colleagues through the same trip for several years and kept rewriting the same email, so it is now a handful of pages instead. Everything here is what I would actually tell someone on the phone: the specific bus, the specific app screen, the thing that will be closed on a Monday.
There is no affiliate booking widget and nothing to sign up for. If a page is out of date, it is because a rule changed — the dated line at the bottom of each page tells you when I last checked it.
The short version
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Best months | Late September to early November. Clear, dry, mild. Late spring is second best; July and August are hot, wet and crowded. |
| How many days | Four full days covers the classic list without rushing. Three is possible if you skip one of the Great Wall sections. |
| Where to stay | Inside or just outside the second ring, near a metro interchange. Dongcheng and Xicheng put most of the sights within one or two stops. |
| Getting around | Metro for almost everything. Flat fares start around ¥3 and it reaches both airports. Taxis are cheap but traffic is not. |
| Language | Metro, airports and major museums are bilingual. Restaurants and small shops often are not. A translation app that works offline is worth the download. |
| Great Wall | Mutianyu for a first visit — restored, reachable, cable car. Jinshanling if you want the photographs and can spare the extra travel time. |
Where to go next
- Arrival & transport — which airport, how to get out of it, and what the metro actually costs.
- Paying for things — getting a foreign card working in Alipay or WeChat, and what to do when it fails.
- A four-day route — the itinerary I actually hand people, with the reservation windows marked.