Recommendations for Beijing

J and I will be living in Beijing until mid-May. If anyone has any recommendations for things to do and, more importantly, places to eat please let us know!!!
 
Our current top 5 (in no particular order, although eating is almost always #1):
 
1. Eat some Beijing duck
2. Hang out w/ friends and family
3. Walk the grounds of the Forbidden City
4. Trek up the Great Wall
5. Go KTVing (karaoke on steroids)
 
Upvote Upvoted 0
4 responses
6. Penetrate the Great Wall ala David Copperfield.
— Todd Meadows
NO KTVING!!! - - i hear its so "gangsta" that ppl die there just by looking at other ppl... =/
— A visitor
Aw man, I feel especially bad for missing this post!! I should have given you guys lots more recco's (though YK should have been able to give you most of the same ones--and expensed your meal--cuz we hung out a ton in Beijing).

- I dunno what the other guy is talking about. KTV (at Cashbox/Party World) in Beijing for me was the most amazing experience. $15 for three hours, plus all you can eat deliciousness and fancy-schmancy surroundings
- I'm really sad that you seemed to come across lots of sketchy and dishonest people. In my experience, most people were rather honest as long as you were polite and made conversation with them, but you had to be on your guard and it always helped to get advice/guidance from a local.
- I did find people to be rather inflexible and by-the-book and it was very difficult/inconvenient to get a lot of things accomplished, or things would not be up to expectation (i.e. cashing a traveler's check turned out to involve a 2-hour wait at the bank, so I ended up just withdrawing $ from ATMs only)
- Where did you guys eat Beijing duck? Though you probably went to Quanjude, I found (after trying a bunch of places) that I liked Da Dong the best. Not only is their duck less fatty/more crispy, but all the other dishes you can get there are super gourmet and delicious.
- I hope you guys got to try some food from Xinjiang and Yunnan, because you just can't get the same stuff here in the states!
- The pollution is bad, no joke. I was lucky to be there during the autumn when high winds blow it all to Korea/Japan, but it was still awful some days.
- Glad you got to experience the awesome massage experiences!
- I found shopping in Beijing to be completely lacking. Which was fine, because I ended up doing most of my shopping in HK. I had to dig a LOT to find just a couple things I wanted to buy, because usually it was weird and surprisingly not cheap (especially in the malls). I gave up on Silk Street and the like, because even though it cost a bit less, the terrible quality was soooooo not worth it. The few purchases I made that I am still happy about were shoes from Hot Wind which is like the best shoe store ever, shoes from Belle, and a ton of pieces from this tiny minority clothing store on Yandaixiejie, which is right across from the footbridge on Houhai.
- We'll have to talk about the food offline. I'm really curious to hear your take on it! In my experience it was incomparably excellent - when i went to Singapore after Beijing, I was sorely disappointed in the food there. And I think my love of the food has completely colored my love of Beijing, so I am much more inclined for forgive all the inconveniences and frustrations of living in the big bad city.

— Stephanie Lim
Btw, I chronicled my beijing adventures on a different blog (this was pre-Posterous): http://ducktastesgood.blogspot.com/
— Stephanie Lim
Add Website URL »