Handpicked experience · Beijing
Beijing, China
An evening built around a duck whose skin is dried overnight before it is roasted, and a lane of houses designed so that nothing can be seen from the street.
4-hour evening tour with an authentic Chinese dinner in the lively neighborhood of Hutong Street.
Drive through the city passing Tiananmen square, you can choose to walk around the square with your tour guide.
The National Center for Performing Arts to take photos.
The Place Mall with its huge LED TV Screen to take photos
Stroll around the shops and restaurants at Wangfujing street
you will enjoy the Houhai lake area. Stroll around to enjoy the night lights.
A meal whose preparation begins the day before it is served
Skin lacquered hard over a fruitwood fire
Courtyard houses that present blank walls to the lane
A screen wall placed to stop anyone seeing in
A skyline whose display switches off at a set hour
A private vehicle between stops that are genuinely far apart
Four private hours in Beijing after dark, ending with dinner on a hutong lane. The city's landmarks are illuminated to a fixed schedule rather than left lit all night, which is why an evening tour runs when it does.
What is served at the end of this evening is usually roast duck, and the process behind it is longer than the meal.
Air is worked in between the skin and the fat so the two separate. The bird is scalded, then painted with a sugar solution, then hung in moving air for several hours or overnight until the skin is dry to the touch and taut like paper. Only then does it go into the oven, hung over a fire of fruitwood rather than sitting in a pan.
All of that is aimed at one outcome. The prize is the skin, lacquer-hard and shattering, and a properly carved bird is presented as a hundred or so slices in which skin, fat and meat are deliberately proportioned. Eating the meat and leaving the skin is the one way to get it wrong.
The lanes look plain from end to end: grey walls, doors, the occasional tree. That is the design working rather than failing.
The traditional courtyard house turns its back on the street. Rooms face inward onto a private yard, the outer walls carry almost no windows, and the gate sits off to one corner with a screen wall behind it so that nobody standing in the lane can see in even when the door is open.
So a walk down a hutong is a walk past a row of closed boxes, and the difference between passing through one of these lanes and sitting down to eat inside one of the houses is the entire evening. Dinner here is not a backdrop; it is the only way the architecture makes sense.
Beijing is enormous and the distances between the lit landmarks are real, so an evening covers a small number of things properly rather than a list.
Expect a couple of exterior stops, the drive between them, and a meal that is a fixed part of the schedule rather than an add-on. If you want the interiors of the great sites, that is a daytime product; the buildings that reward a night visit are the ones designed to be seen from outside.
The lit hours are seasonal, and in winter the display begins early and finishes early too.
Hutong lanes are uneven, poorly lit by design and shared with bicycles and scooters that carry no lights at all.
Beijing's winter is genuinely cold once you are standing still outside, and the evening involves more standing than walking.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Usually roast duck, prepared by a process that takes far longer than the meal itself.
Separating the skin from the fat with air, scalding, glazing with a sugar solution, and hanging the bird in moving air for hours until the skin is dry and taut.
Because the skin is the dish. Roasted over fruitwood it turns hard and shatters, and a carved bird is portioned so that skin, fat and meat arrive together.
Eating the meat and leaving the skin, which is the part all the work was for.
Because the houses face inward. Rooms open onto a private courtyard, the outer walls have almost no windows, and a screen wall behind the gate blocks the view in.
Entirely. Walking a lane shows you closed boxes; sitting inside one is the only way the architecture makes any sense.
A small number of places properly. The distances between Beijing's lit landmarks are long and the evening is not a list.
They shut before the evening starts. What repays a night visit is whatever was built to be looked at from outside.