Beijing Tourist Traps: The No-BS Survival Guide
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Friends, please heed my advice: Never book a tour group to Beijing! Never ever!
Let me share with you my 'bitter experience':
- Due to my busy work schedule, I was worried about missing tickets to popular tourist spots in Beijing if I chose to travel alone. So I opted for a tour group.
- During the communication with the travel agency customer service, they said it was a "High-Quality Small Group Tour". (They implied that there would be fewer people and thus better experiences.) However, when we got together, it turns out there were more than forty of us!
- The tour guide kept urging each of us to contribute an extra 390 yuan to see the Olympic Park, join an acrobatic show, and ride shuttle buses for meals.
- He also hinted that if we didn't agree to pay extra, the group wouldn't wait for us, which could ruin the family trip for my parents who rarely got out. I bit my tongue and agreed to endure.
- The tours were indeed cheap in terms of money; however, everything else turned disastrous:
- There was always some delay for lunch, with most of our dinners pushed off until one or two in the afternoon when you were already famishing. You had to eat, no matter how much your stomach protested.
- The tours often ended by three or four PM. You might think your suffering was over then but the truth is that our accommodation was located in "outside the Fourth Ring Road"——which meant our hotels were miles away from downtown Beijing, with traffic in the evening taking us as long as two hours back daily!
- Day One: We woke up super early for the flag-raising ceremony and a visit to Mao Zedong Memorial Hall——both are signature political and cultural landmarks. Then, went to the Forbidden City where, purportedly being a 'Deep Dive Tour', we only heard stories but got no thorough visit, even having missed many important palaces here. Still, the Forbidden City itself was really grand and impressive. This will definitely be a place I want to explore more properly next time, but this time around I wasn't satisfied with their itinerary.
- After visiting the Forbidden City, we all headed to restaurants through shuttle buses. And what an experience: It was disorientingly dirty-looking restaurant environment and the food seemed not fresh at all——but too hungry to think much and had to bear it with gritted teeth.
- As a result? Many of us in group, including myself, suffered from diarrhea after the meal.
- Day Two: In the morning we had climbed the Great Wall, which was indeed unforgettable due to the famous saying that, “Until you reach the great wall, you are not a true hero." Then in the afternoon we visited the Olympic Park——that 2008 Olympics zone. But again, it's as though we were only casually taken around the park and only heard some introduction about buildings.
- Day Three: The tour was just dreadful! Almost the entire day morning was spent in a jade or diamond shops. The guide claimed to support the local industrial, but most probably aiming for a commission! I actually had experience selling jewelry with my relatives back home and knew that these products were fake. Of course, no one in the group bought anything. The whole way, this overly energetic guide was nowhere to be found suddenly, instead we had met another new guide with an overall bitter face. To avoid lengthy explanation, you can imagine the worst possible tour guide experience.
- Then we visited the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan—the Summer Palace of Empress Dowager Cixi. Group tours only covered the entrance ticket; any payment for the more profound site inside like 'Big Water Law Site' or 'Overall Layout Model', we needed to pay for ourselves. What's more, probably due to poor sales results, the guide became extremely sour and didn’t give any commentary during the whole journey anymore.
️ Travel Tips for Fellow Foreigners:- Never opt for tours at dirt cheap prices!
- These tours are prone to hidden costs. Either the guides arrange for you to make additional payments, or drag you to certain shopping places to waste valuable time.
- Book your tickets ahead of time!
- Tickets to many popular Beijing tourist attractions like the Forbidden City or the Great Wall can be booked online on Official Websites or Apps, no worries about missing the tickets.
- Choose locations with excellent transport connectivity!
- Try to decide accommodations closer to the city center (within the Second or Third Ring Road). Maybe it's a little expensive, but it helps save the time that otherwise would've been wasted on transportation. Additionally, being closer to city center ensures that you can enjoy some late night fun and shopping after days trips easily.
- Careful on meal choices!
- Especially those team meal places at the tourist sites; hygienic condition may vary widely. Consider having some snacking items by yourself, or try other regular restaurants.
- Resolutely say 'No' to shops!
- If you feel forced to make unnecessary purchases in a shop, do not hesitate to say no! Your trip should not be marred by such things.
- Best to travel individually to key historical and cultural sites!
- Places like Forbidden City or Summer Palace, with a rich cultural foundation, are best to be visited alone with ample time, so that you can leisurely appreciate every piece of history and culture.
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Which one is that?
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Yao Yang.
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Haha, we just got here too! Before this, we stopped by a jade shop where even a tiny peace buckle (Ping'an Kou), about the size of a fingernail, was priced over a thousand. I don't know much about jade, but it looked full of flaws and not very pretty. You'd have to be a real sucker to buy that for over a thousand.
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How long do we stay in here?
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My experience has been terrible, precisely because I joined a tour group.
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I want to go home right now. This is absolutely disgusting.
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Same situation here. Just warning everyone to steer clear of this pitfall.
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That tour group.