Beijing Basics

Since this is a practial guide we will not bore you with unnecessary info about China and Beijing, if you want to read about beijing history and that sort of things, there are plenty of other websites for that.

Instead let's begin with short list of useful facts:

  • Beijing time - GMT+8
  • Weather - Dry, winters are quite cold, around 0 centigrade, Summers are hot, around 30.
  • Chinese Currency: Yuan. 1 USD=~8 Yuan, 1 Euro=10 Yuan. Chinese money is also referred to as ren min bi (people's money) or RMB for short.
  • Language - Local dialect of Mandarin.
  • Dialing codes - Beijing area code: 10 , China: 86
  • Coordinates - Latitude: 39? 55' North Longitude: 116? 23' East
  • Population: About 13,000,000


What to expect?
We can pretty much sum it up in the three words clich? "expect the unexpected". Why?
When thinking of China people tend to visual very calm images, relaxed and kind people, quite spaces, blue sky and so on.

Beijing paints a slightly different picture:

  1. Beijing is highly populated city and therefore very crowded. Many times you will find yourself thinking there are too many people, on the road, when using public transportation, in shops and pretty much everywhere you go. To this add the fact Chinese people like to take their time when their walking, so their pace is much slower than the average westerner. This can get quite annoying, especially when you are in a hurry.
  2. Bad habits - In Beijing it's very common to see people spitting. Men and women, young and old, everybody is doing it and pretty much everywhere. You may see your taxi driver opening his door while waiting for the green light and after giving you a front row seat to his take of Chinese opera, he will discharge a very impressive loogie. Before you say anything, keep in mind they find it disgusting to see people sneezing and blowing into a piece of cloth and putting it back in their pocket. If you find smoking to be a bad habit that's one more thing you will have to deal with. Smoking is very popular in China, most men and a much less significant part of Beijing women smoke. Smoking is not allowed on public transportation but that means they smoke pretty much anywhere else, restaurants, public bathrooms, on the street, even while riding their bike.
  3. As a foreigner, you will sometimes get the feeling people see you as walking bags of money. The western travels usually are not aware of the true price scale in China and local people often take advantage of that. At certain markets people will name a figure ten times the real price and that's where bargaining comes in handy. At some places beggars concentrate their effort only on foreigners.
  4. Bathrooms - There are plenty of public bathrooms all over Beijing, some are free and some not. You may not be so comfortable using some of them though. Most of them are still seat less and the hygiene level can vary from "ohh, that's not so bad" to "oh my god, I can barely see the floor". Privacy is one other thing - some bathrooms have compartment and some don't. And sometimes, even though there are compartments, for an unknown reason the locals don't feel the need to use them.
  5. Don't assume every one speaks English. Most people don't. However if you blurt out one word in Chinese they will assume you are fluent so be careful with that.
  6. You almost never get to see partly cloudy sky in Beijing. It's either clear blue sky or gray.

 

Don't let the list above discourage you, that's not its purpose. It's simply there to help you be more ready for your Beijing experience. We hope you didn't get the impression it's a gray city filled with people who are either smoking, spitting or asking you for money because it's not. Beijing is a great place to travel, to begin and end any trip in China. It has wonderful sights to see, amazing food and great nightlife.