The Beijing I
actually live in

Most people come to Beijing and work through a checklist. The Forbidden City. A cable car up a rebuilt stretch of Great Wall. Roast duck in a restaurant with an English menu and a tour bus idling outside. They leave impressed, a little worn out, and not quite sure they’d come back.

That’s not the Beijing I know.

Mine is the douzhi stall that’s been in the same hutong longer than I’ve been alive, where the owner already knows your order. The jazz bar behind the Drum Tower. The morning the whole lane smells of frying dough. The small stuff nobody puts on a list, because it can’t be Googled — it lives in Chinese, in the apps and the chat groups and the heads of people who grew up here.

For years I watched friends of friends come through and miss all of it. Not because they didn’t care. Because nobody had handed it to them in a language they could read. The good information was right there, just on the wrong side of a wall.

So I started writing it down, in plain English, the way I’d tell a friend landing tomorrow. Where to go, what to skip, what’s changed, what the internet still gets wrong. Not the Beijing on the postcard. The one I actually live in — and would be a little proud for you to see.

Every guide is free, and dated, so you can see how fresh it is. A few links — eSIMs, hotels, tours — are affiliate links; I only point to things I’d send a friend to.