After you land and Before you Step out

Getting from the Airport

Once you have touched down at the Airport, your first trip is to get to the Hotel.

Taxis for one to three people and Vans for 4 or more seems to be the practice. And both are not shy of fleecing you if they can. Find out the fares to your hotel and stick to it. You can draw Chinese currency at the Airport ATMs, rates are better there than you can outside the country.

To the Wangfujing/Forbidden City area a Van should cost under 200 Yuan and a Taxi 150 or less. Just estimate these before you go or find the Mandarin to say, put your meter on.

Better still is taking the Airport Express, which makes limited stops to allow you to make connections with the broad Subway network. If you are single, this should be the only way and the same stands if you are just a couple. With my group of 4 there was not much to save as the Express costs about 24 Yuan. However we would have saved time. The traffic can be snarling and it took twice as long to get to Wangfujing. I'm not complaining thought, I got to see an introduction to Beijing while getting to our hotel.

Cash, Credit Cards

Once you  have situated at your place of stay, walk around the area, get some Cash using your Debit Card and have a couple of thousand at least I'd say. Your American Credit Card is largely useless and ours did not work anywhere.

The ATM's are plentiful, the exchange rates reasonable and fees negligible.

Get your Passport out

Have your passport and for everybody in your party ready at all times. Entry into Forbidden city and several of its special exhibits require you to show your passport. 

The same was the case at the Temple of Heaven, where entry didn't require it but beyond that there are a few sites where additional fees are charged for and these requested me to show a Passport I did not bring.

Hotel Visiting Card

As soon as you reach the hotel, do take a bunch of their Visiting cards that lists the Hotel Name and Address in Chinese and hand it to everybody in your party, including the kids.  This will be the easiest way for them to tell the Police or the Taxi driver or any good Samaritan where to head back to.  My telling of "Wangfujing"or the name of my Hotel, just didn't make any sense to the Taxi Drivers. 

Yikatong - The Subway Card

The Yikatong

The City's Subway system is excellent, efficient and Traveler friendly. Well at least English friendly. All station names are in English, all announcements are also in English, Subway exists are usually listed as  A,B,C & D.

This is the best way to travel, teamed up with your Google Maps and allows you walking directions from Subway exit to your destination of the moment.

Subway's though don't run all night, it appears they more or less close around 10pm and don't warm up until 6am or so, times may vary a little for some lines. But beware, this ain't New York.

Most of the machines also have English instructions for most part and once you've gotten a Yuan 20 card you are good for 4-5 trips depending on the routes you take. On entry into the station your bags are checked and the entry point does tell you how much money you have left. The machine that issue tickets also can be easily used to feed it with more funds. They only accept 10 or 20 yuan and greater, I forget, its written on the machine, I spent a while trying to add 5 yuan.

The ticket keeper/official in the Subway stations were uniformly friendly and were always there to break a 100 yuan in to smaller bills and the like, with almost nothing spoken between us or to show how to refill the card. One Card per Person.

You can get back what's left of your money in the card when you are done with your trip, not sure how as I drove it down to 0.

At peak hour the trains are Packed and just have an agreement with your group if you have young ones that if they miss the train to stay put so you can come back on the next train down.

And phones seem to work very well on the subway through out, and as American's we were the louder of the groups within the train on most trips. Though we were not Undisputed in this category.

You can actually refill your subway card using your Phone with WeChat and AliPay apps, but these require a Chinese bank or Credit Card account, and some of the smaller machines in the stations also do this using the QR code, but this was too advanced for me,

Additionally this card can be used on Buses, to rent some of the Bikes from Bike stands and a few other uses that I did not get to explore.

Book tickets through the Concierge

The Forbidden City is a Zoo and to avoid having to stand in line for the tickets, I'd suggest getting this from your Hotel Concierge, which they do at Cost. You will need your passport to have this booked and they give you a printed sheen in Chinese that you provide the ticket stall on Entry (which is a long from what you think is the entry) along with your passports to get the actual tickets.

Check the Palace Museum website to see the forecast on the Crowds, it as in most Museum and historic sites (not the Wall) are closed on Mondays and Tuesday can see a flood of people, Wednesday and Thursday appear to be a little more relaxed before Friday and Saturday see a flood.

Tickets can also be gotten for shows such as the Acrobat shows @ Chaoyang, and other things the Concierge will try to sell you.

I would suggest that you check Trip Advisor to see what tickles your fancy.

Final Checklist

Make sure your Mifi device is fully charged, your VPN is in working in the devices that are running Google Translate, Maps and you have a wad of Cash.

You are ready to hit the Beijing ground running.