Handpicked experience · Beijing
Beijing, China
A stadium lattice built to hide a roof that was cancelled, cushions arranged to a problem solved in 1993, and towers that once told a whole city when to go home.
Tian'anmen square is regarded as the largest city central square in the world which can hold half a million people at one time.
The National Centre for the Performing Arts for photo taking.
You will stop at the famous Wangfujing street, to look at the shops around
you will enjoy the Houhai lake area. Stroll around to enjoy the night lights.
Stroll around the shops at Yandai Xie Street.
The Place :- You can't miss the shopping centers here, they are well known from their massive LED lights and very colorful.
The Olympic structures lit, which is when they photograph best
Tian'anmen Square in the evening, including the flag lowering
A hutong or night market walk for the part of the city that stays awake
A vehicle and guide used by your party alone
An itinerary weighted to photography or atmosphere, as you prefer
A private evening drive of three to four hours around Beijing after dark: the Olympic Park with the stadium and the aquatics centre lit up, Tian'anmen Square, and time on foot in a hutong or night market, with a car, driver and guide to yourselves.
Short drives and short walks, with the vehicle doing the distance so you are not crossing the city on foot at night. The itinerary bends around what you want — photographers get longer at the fixed points, everyone else gets more time in the lanes.
The main stadium's tangle of steel was not meant to be the whole design. It was drawn to conceal a retractable roof, and the roof was dropped in 2004, after a terminal building collapsed in Paris and every large span in construction worldwide was reviewed. The engineers removed the roof, kept the lattice, and lightened the structure by thousands of tonnes. What reads as decorative chaos is the frame of a machine that was never installed.
The aquatics centre next door is skinned in air-filled cushions arranged to a pattern that mathematicians spent a century looking for: the most efficient way to fill space with equal-volume cells. The solution was only found in 1993, and this building is the first structure built on it. In 2022 the pool was floored over and turned to ice for the Winter Olympics, so the same building has hosted both swimming and curling finals.
North of the centre stand a drum tower and a bell tower that between them ran Beijing's official time for five centuries. The night was divided into five watches, and drums marked each one; the first beat sent the city home and the gates closed behind it. The final beat before dawn released everyone again. Both towers still stand at the top of the old axis, floodlit now rather than working.
The flag on Tian'anmen Square is raised at the exact moment of sunrise and lowered at the exact moment of sunset, recalculated for every day of the year by the national observatory. No two days run to the same schedule, and the evening ceremony draws a crowd on any night of the week.
Beijing gets genuinely cold after sunset from October onwards, and the square and Olympic Park are both wide open with no shelter. Entry to any paid attraction is settled on the day, and street food is bought as you go, so bring some cash. Night markets in the city have changed a great deal in recent years; your guide will take you to one that is currently trading rather than a name from an old guidebook.
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.
It was drawn to disguise a retractable roof. The roof was cancelled in 2004 after a terminal collapse in Paris prompted a worldwide review of large spans, and the lattice was kept without the machinery it was hiding.
The most efficient known way to divide space into equal-volume cells, a problem only solved in 1993. The building was the first to use it structurally, and its pool was frozen over for curling in 2022.
They kept the city's official time for around five hundred years. The night ran in five watches marked by drumbeats; the first sent everyone home and closed the gates, the last released the city at dawn.
At sunrise and sunset exactly, with the time recalculated daily by the national observatory. The evening lowering is the one that fits a night tour, and it draws a crowd.
Not much. The vehicle covers the distances and the walking is concentrated in the hutong or market stop, which is the part best done slowly.
Your guide chooses one that is currently open. Several well-known Beijing night markets have closed in recent years, so the choice is made on what is actually trading.
From October onwards, yes — noticeably colder than the daytime, and both the square and the Olympic Park are completely exposed. Dress for standing still outdoors.