Handpicked experience · Beijing
Beijing, China
A prince's house that had to become a monastery, a Buddha too large to carry through a door, fifty-one thousand names cut into stone, and a hill made from the palace moat.
Three connected sites — a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, a Confucian temple and the imperial college — within a few streets
A rickshaw run through the hutong lanes at street level
A dim sum tasting with the dishes explained as they arrive
The Jingshan viewpoint over the Forbidden City
A drive past the Olympic Park for the contrast with the old city
A 4-hour private tour of Beijing's old scholarly quarter — the Lama Temple, the Confucius Temple and the Guozijian imperial college — with a rickshaw ride through the hutongs, dim sum at a teahouse, and the view across the Forbidden City roofs from Jingshan.
Your own guide throughout, with three walk-through sites standing within a few streets of one another and short drives for the rest. Expect a fair amount of slow walking and standing on uneven stone. This corner of central Beijing is markedly quieter than the areas around the palace.
Yonghegong began as the residence of a Qing prince. Once he took the throne as the Yongzheng Emperor, custom held that his former home could no longer serve any ordinary purpose, so half of it was given over to monks and eventually all of it was. The roof tiles were changed to imperial yellow, a colour otherwise kept for the palace — which is why a working monastery here wears an emperor's colour.
The standing Maitreya in the rear hall is roughly eighteen metres tall and cut from a single trunk of white sandalwood, sent by the seventh Dalai Lama and hauled overland for some three years before it reached Beijing. The hall was then built around the finished figure, since there was no way to carry it in through a door.
In the Confucius Temple courtyard stand 198 stone tablets carved with the name of every candidate who passed the highest imperial examination across roughly six centuries — around fifty-one thousand people in all. Families came here to find an ancestor. Everyone who sat the examination and failed left no record whatsoever, and that was the overwhelming majority.
Next door at the Guozijian, the Biyong Hall stands on an island in a circular moat crossed by four short bridges. An emperor was expected to lecture here once in his reign. Students knelt in the courtyard well out of earshot while officials repeated his words outward through the crowd.
Jingshan is not a natural rise. It is the earth dug out to make the Forbidden City's moat, heaped up behind the palace. The last Ming emperor hanged himself on its slope in 1644 as rebel forces entered the city. It remains the one vantage point from which the palace roofs read as a single sequence.
Hutong is generally traced to a Mongol word for a water well. Lanes were laid out around shared wells, which is a large part of why the old grid runs the way it does.
Wear shoes you can walk on uneven paving in. The Lama Temple burns a great deal of incense and the smoke sits heavily in the halls on still days. Photography is restricted inside several of the halls.
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.
Three compounds are covered on foot and the rest by vehicle. The ground is old stone and rarely level, so the pace is slow rather than the distance long.
Because the buildings were an emperor's private residence before they were a monastery. Once Yongzheng took the throne the place could not revert to ordinary use, and the tiles were upgraded to the palace colour.
Yes — a single white sandalwood trunk, about eighteen metres of finished figure. It was moved overland for around three years, and the hall around it was raised afterwards because it could not have been carried inside.
A roll of honour. 198 stelae carry the names of everyone who passed the top imperial examination over about six hundred years, roughly fifty-one thousand names. Failed candidates were never recorded.
The lecture hall of the imperial college, set on an island in a round moat. Each emperor was supposed to teach there once, with his words relayed outward by officials to students too far away to hear him.
It is the only place the Forbidden City reads as a whole rather than a series of courtyards. The hill itself is the spoil from digging the palace moat.
It is a tasting at a teahouse with the guide explaining the dishes, not a sit-down lunch. Plan to eat properly afterwards.