Beijing,
handled.
The Beijing a local actually loves. The food worth being brave for, the neighbourhoods that aren’t staged, the night out no tour runs. The visa and payment stuff? Handled, so it never touches your trip.
Start with the good stuff.
What locals eat, where they go out, and what the big sights are actually like.
Where the English guides get Beijing wrong.
The English web recycles five-year-old advice. I read what Beijingers actually say on Xiaohongshu (小红书) and Dianping (大众点评), and tell you the gap.
- Everyone sends you to Quanjude for duck. Beijingers don’t eat there. Here’s where they go.
- Nanluoguxiang is “the historic hutong.” It’s a shopping street. The real ones are three stops north.
- Download five apps and two VPNs. You need far fewer. Here’s the short list.
The boring stuff? Handled.
Visas, payments, getting online, tickets. Sorted in an afternoon, so none of it eats your trip.
Pay
Alipay & WeChat Pay on a foreign card, before you land.
Get online
The eSIM to buy, and which of your apps still work.
Tickets
Around the Chinese-phone-number wall at the big sights.
Visa
Visa-free, 240-hour transit, or not? Thirty seconds to know.
All of it, in order
The free Beijing Starter Kit. One page, checked off before you fly. Get it →
The Beijing Starter Kit
Everything to set up before you fly, in the order to do it. Check it off and board relaxed.
No spam. Just the kit, and a note when something big changes, which in China it does every few months.
I’m a Beijinger. I read Xiaohongshu (小红书), Dianping (大众点评) and the official notices every day, and write it up in plain English, the way I’d brief a friend flying in.
Just what’s true this month, and what I’d actually do if I were showing you around.
The whole idea: you shouldn’t need to read Chinese, or lose twenty hours to forum threads, to have a brilliant, easy trip. I do that part. You go and enjoy it.