Thursday, March 11, 2010

Beijing attractions, beijing attraction list, beijing guide

Beijing Tours from Xingang Port and Xingang Transfer Service

Beijing is a city with rich cultural attractions,Forbidden City, the best preserved imperial palace in the world; Ming Tombs, the imperial tomb cluster for thirteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644); Great Wall, one of the seven wonders of the world, which is also the symbol of China; Temple of Heaven, the worshipping site for the emperors; Summer Palace, the grandest imperial garden in China; Sacred Way, a divine road reflecting the respect and dignity of emperors; Tiananmen Square, The largest city central square in the world; Lama Temple, a renowned temple dedicatewd to Tibetan Buddhism; Beihai Park, a centuries-old park with marvelous scenery where the last emperor of China spent his last few years; Hutong, a carrier and mirror of Beijing folk culture. The 798 Art Village will give you the depth tour of the modern feeling.

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beijing cooking tour, beijing cooking class, learning cooking in beijing

Beijing Tours
Beijing Tours With Hotel
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Beijing Coach Tours
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Beijing Bike Tours
Beijing Cooking Tour
Beijing Honeymoon Tour
Beijing Half Day Tour
Beijing Kungfu Tour
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Beijing Night Tour
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Private One Day Tour
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Great Wall & City Tour
Great Wall Coach Tour
Beijing Travel Guide
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Beijing Entertainment
Beijing Shopping
Beijing Dinning
Beijing Transportation
Beijing Travel Tips


Beijing Cooking Learning Tours

Are you interested in cooking Chinese dishes? Our pre-designed Beijing cooking learning tours will provide you such a chance to experience authentic Chinese cooking by yourself! In the cooking school you are arranged to learn cooking three different dishes from beginning to end, getting to know the basic secrets of excellent Chinese culinary skill.

If you find the Beijing cooking learning tours on this page not what you expect, you may contact our Beijing China trip advisors to organize for you the customized or higher level Beijing cooking learning tours.


Cooking Beijing is the brand name of the Beijing cooking hand-on learning tours offered by China Travel Compass. Enjoy Beijing your cooking learning immersed in the sightseeing Beijing.
Beijing Cooking Learning Day Tour A
Attractions:
Beijing cuisine school,
learn cooking three different dishes, a local vegetable market, Daoxiangcun Foodstuffs Store
Service: Lunch + private tour guide & driver + private car / van from US$ 55 per person
Beijing Cooking Learning Day Tour B
Attractions: Beijing cuisine school, learn cooking three different dishes, a local vegetable market, Daoxiangcun Foodstuffs Store, Gaobeidian Village, the Tonghui River, Gaobeidian 1500 meter-long Classic Furniture Street, household visit
Service: Lunch + private tour guide & driver + private car / van from US$ 70 per person
1. The cooking lesson is a nice experience, but not for high level cooking. This is really for people who don't have an idea at all about Chinese cooking. It is really baisc!
2. The family and the meal at Gaobeidian Village is nice, but the tour of Gaobeidian is more of a village than a suburb or a countryside.

Beijing Dinning Guide , beijing restaurants, beijing dinning guide

Beijing Dinning Guide

Beijing Imperial Cuisine, or Fangshan in Chinese pronunciation, as the name suggests, consists of dishes once prepared exclusively for the imperial family. Todays Court Cuisine is based on the dishes prepared by the Qing imperial kitchens but further developed ever since. In ancient times, although imperial food originated with the common people, imperial food used high quality raw food stuffs. The rice, flour, meat, vegetables, melon, fruits, poultry, fish, and unconventional delicacies from land and sea were carefully chosen as tributes by local officials throughout the country. They were unmatched in quality and purity

For example, the rice used in the imperial kitchen was only grown at Jade Spring Hill and Tang Spring in the Haidian District, west of Beijing. It was known as Jingxi Rice (west of Beijing) or Haidian Rice. Because of its low yield and excellent taste, only the emperors could eat it. Top quality rice tributes from other parts of the country were also eaten only in the palace.
Baijia Dazhaimen Restaurant (On the Right )
The mutton eaten in the palace came from the Qingfeng Department (Department of Celebrating Good Harvests). The Qing Dynasty Imperial Kitchen did not serve beef, but it did use cows milk, which came from the same department. All kinds of melon and fruits, and delicacies from land and sea were tributes from different parts of the country. The palace cooking water was brought every morning from the Jade Spring, which Emperor Qianlong named the Number One Spring in the world. Poultry and seasonal vegetables were bought at the market. Carefully chosen raw food stuffs were a pre requisite for preparing imperial food.

All cooks in the imperial kitchen were well trained and masters of their specialized categories. They cooked their dishes to emphasize taste, color, and shape. Besides tasting good, every dish must look as good as a work of art. Many cooks specialized in making one or several dishes during their lives. The more their labor was divided, the better the dishes were prepared. Their excellent cooking skills were the key to the making of palace delicacies.

Imperial cuisine highly values a subtle balance among color, fragrance, and taste and stresses the original stock and taste of the dishes. Between shape and taste, taste would be more emphasized. For example, if the main ingredient is chicken, the dish should taste of chicken. Regardless of what auxiliary ingredients and seasonings are used, they should not affect the taste of the chicken. This was also true of venison, aquatic products, seafood, and of hot and cold dishes. A dish that looks good but does not taste good is not acceptable, and vice versa.

Ingredients in the imperial dishes were strictly blended, and the auxiliary ingredients could not be modified. In public restaurants cooks can adjust the ingredients according to whatever ingredients are available as long as they make dishes with appealing color, aroma, and taste. But in the palace, not a single auxiliary ingredient could be replaced. If a cook wished to create a new dish, he had to assume a risk. If the emperor liked his new dish, his bonus would be impressive, but if the emperor disliked it, the cook would be punished or demoted.

Palace dishes were named simply, usually for their cooking methods, main ingredients, or for the major and minor ingredients so the emperors knew what was in the dish as soon as they saw it. For example, quick fried chicken with fresh mushrooms; pork meatballs; shrimp and sea cucumber; stir fried fish filets, and quick fried mutton with onion. Looking through more than 200 years of files from the Qing Palace Imperial Diets, we found no dishes with fancy names

Maybe this was because the emperors wanted their ministers to think and act consistently. While the imperial dishes were named differently from those in restaurants, they were very similar to dishes eaten by the common people. Palace cuisine can be regarded as a collection of the best examples of Chinese food. The imperial cooks who started the Fangshan Restaurant in 1925 passed along their cooking skills so that today we can taste imitations of the palace dishes.


Beijing Beihai Fangshan Restaurant
The Beihai Fangshan Restaurant is located in Yilantang Hall on the north side of the Jade Isle, where Empress Dowager Cixi (1835 - 1908) used to take her meals after sightseeing in the park. The food made in the Qing Palace for the emperors was called imperial food, so a restaurant operating outside the palace making and selling imperial food was only an imitation (in Chinese, Fangshan).

The restaurants popular food is cooked wheaten products, such as baked sesame seed cakes with fried minced-meat filling and pastries shaped like apple, peach, fingered citron, and lucky rolls. Whatever wheaten food you eat, you will receive a good luck message: apple all is well; peach longevity, you will live a long life; lucky rolls everything is fine.The pastries included steamed corn-flour cake, rolls of kidney bean flour, and mashed pea cake, which were all favorites of Empress Dowager Cixi.

The most sumptuous food at Fangshan Restaurant was their Manchu and Han banquet. These dishes have the blended flavors of the Beijing cuisine and palace dishes.

Fangshan offers a selection of complete set-meals and fixed banquets ranging price from 100 RMB to 800 RMB per person depending on the selections. The menu combines imperial recipes, traditional Beijing favorites and modern creations. Guests who reserve a table on the second floor can enjoy a stunning view of the Beihai Park Lake.

The restaurants traditional Qing Dynasty atmosphere, where the waiters and waitresses wear elaborate silk gowns and delicate platform shoes, still brings guests back in time to an imperial-style banquet.

Add: 1 Wenjing Street (inside the east gate of Beihai Park), neighborhood Xi Cheng District, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 6401 1879

Opening Hours Lunch: 11am-1:30pm Mon-Fri; 10:30am-1:30pm Sat-Sun; Dinner: 5pm- 7:30pm Mon-Fri; 4:30pm-8pm Sat-Sun



Tiananmen Fangshan Restaurant
it provides the deluxe and famous Imperial Dishes in Beijing. Hand-made special desserts are very flavorful, including deep fried sesame corn bread. Box-packed desserts are also available as presents to your relatives and friends. Special dishes include Braised Sharks Fin, Sauted Sliced Fish, and Fried Prawns with Crabmeat, Braised Toad, and Braised Sea Cucumber with Sinew.

Add: No.37 Dongjiaominxiang, Chongnei Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 6523 1240 Opening Hours Lunch: 11am-1pm; Dinner: 5pm-8pm

Beijing Shopping Guide, beijing shopping places, how to do shopping in beijing

Beijing shopping

Beijing Shopping Guide
Beijing Shopping Overview
Beijing is a paradise for shopaholics. There is a large variety of items from elsewhere in China and abroad. Many emporiums anddesignated tourist shopping centers have foreign currency exchange counters and accept major credit cards.Modern Beijing offers many shopping opportunities.

There are many supermarkets, shopping malls, shopping areas and distinctive markets. For day to day items, supermarkets are well stocked. Shopping malls in China, to some extent, cater for the high end of the market. Large shopping malls in clusters form shopping areas, some of which are in fact commercial streets.Bargaining is a routine in China when shopping, with the exception, of course, of supermarkets, department stores and exclusive shops.

In China, bargaining is neither a quarrel nor a face-losing act, but instead a friendly communication. Remember: vendors always overcharge, allowing a wide scope for you to haggle.

Beijing Transportation Guide, Beijing transportation

Beijing Airport information
The Beijing Capital International Airport terminal officially opened on October 1, 1999, marking the 50th anniversary of Chinese Communist rule. This new, bright and airy terminal, built at a cost of $1.1 billion, is a welcome replacement for the former facility, which started operating in the 1950s, and has become increasingly cramped and dingy with the rise in the number of passengers visiting China.

The new four-storey terminal (including basement level) covers an area of 336,000 square meters--three times the size of the former terminal--and puts much more emphasis on passenger comfort. The complex also includes a large-scale public parking building and a cargo station.

Laser scan technology is used for luggage inspections; computer-aided aircraft guiding systems, security equipment, and information display boards are all first-rate. Electronic display boards are installed throughout the airport, providing arrival and departure information in both Chinese and English. The Unisys Airport Passenger Processing System (APPS) is used at the airport. APPS puts intuitive Windows-type graphical screens at the fingertips of airport personnel, enabling them to check in passengers and baggage and complete reservations and departure control processes more quickly and efficiently. When this state-of-the-art terminal goes into full operation, it will be able to handle 190,000 flights, 35 million passengers, and 780,000 tons of cargo a year. The building has 51 elevators, 63 escalators, and 26 moving sidewalks to make maneuvering around the airport easy.

Beijing is served by international carriers such as Northwest, United, Canadian Airlines, Lufthansa, SAS, Dragon Air, Japan Airlines, ANA, British Airways, Malaysian Air, Austrian Airlines, Air France, Alitalia, Korean Air, Pakistan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai International, Air China, China Southern, and China Northern.

Travelers will be able to stay in touch with the world via multimedia payphones conveniently located throughout the terminal. A phone card, available at airport counters, is required to make calls.

There are no English-language travel books or maps available at the airport, but tourist information and maps can be found at the front desks of most hotels.

Free baggage carts are available on the concourse outside the departure hall. There are no porters at the airport. The airport offers Smarte Locke lockers for passengers to store their baggage. The lockers are located on the second level. Bags may be stored for anywhere from an hour to seven days.

Banks & ATMs

There are 12 ATMs and four auto cash exchange machines conveniently located throughout the terminal and they accept the following cards:

Cirrus
American Express
Visa
Visa Interlink
MasterCard
The following banks have windows set up at the airport for foreign currency exchange: Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, and the Construction Bank of China. Some of these banks can also provide cash advances with a Visa card. The ATM machines are available 24 hours a day while the bank windows are open during normal flight and arrival departure hours. The Bank of China in the international separating area on the second floor also provides foreign currency exchange for passengers.

Travel Tax

Travelers departing Beijing on an international flight must pay a RMB90 airport construction tax. Those flying to domestic destinations must pay RMB50. Payment must be made at counters in the departure area prior to checking-in for your flight. Keep your receipt.

Airport Transportation

The airport is 26 kilometers, or 40 minutes, from the center of Beijing.

Modes of transport (available during normal flight arrival and departure times) include:

Bus: The airport bus is available on the lower level just outside the Arrivals area. There is just one government-run airport bus shuttle. Many hotels run their own airport shuttle bus services.

Taxi: Available on the lower level just outside the Arrivals area. There is no real difference between the various taxi companies in Beijing.

When arriving at the airport, AVOID drivers who approach you in the terminal or outside the terminal as these are almost always price-gaugers, who will ask triple or more the actual price. There is a taxi line just outside the terminal. Drivers should use their meter; make sure that the driver puts down the flag, as some drivers will say they forgot and ask for a ridiculous amount of money.

The cost to midtown Beijing is normally around RMB70 depending on the type of taxi, plus RMB15 for the highway toll. There is no need to tip taxidrivers in Beijing unless they render extra assistance with bags, etc.

Many of the better hotels provide a card with the taxi's license plate when you get in a taxi at the front door. Retain this card should you have a problem with the driver, or should you leave something in the taxi. If you lose something, and don't have the number of the taxi, try either your destination or departure point as it is not unusual for taxi drivers to turn lost goods in to these places. Women are advised to sit in the back seat to avoid any possible harassment.

It's a good idea to always carry the name of your hotel and any destination in Chinese because very few drivers in Beijing speak English. You can ask the staff at the front desk of your hotel to write your destination in Chinese.

Beijing offers many optional vehicles both for locals and visitors to get around the city or leave for other destinations at will. The city now has a greatly improved transport system, though traffic jams may happen at peak times.

Beijing Night Tour, Beijing Tours, Beijing Night activity

Beijing Night tour

Are you looking for Beijing night sightseeing tour, night events, or night shows? See Beijing when it sparkles - Olympic Stadium ( Bird Nest ), Water Cube, Beijing CBD & SOHO Business Street, Ancient City Wall, Changan Street, Tiananmen Sqaure, National Grand Theatre, Beijing Bank Street ( China Wall Street ), and Houhai Lake Bar Street.

If you are a Kung Fu lover, or travel with your kids, then enjoying Kung Fu show in the evening is a must! Are you are interested in Beijing Opera or Chinese acrobatics show? If you like to know more about the old Beijing and enjoy Chinese tea, you can go to teahouses and enjoy teahouse performance.

Beijing nightlife has more to offer! Evening boating on the Shichahai Lake; night tour of the lightening Great Wall; night tour of the CCTV Tower with panoramic view of the city, night glimpse of the metropolitan city and more. Let's start!

BNT-1 Beijing by Night Illuminations Tour
With your persoanal tour guide and private vehicle, see Beijing when it sparkles, simply the perfect way to end a day in the Capital! See Beijing that comes to life at night with all the major sights spectacularly floodlit:- Olympic Stadium ( Bird Nest ), Water Cube......
Tasting Beijing duck and enjoying Beijing Opera are two "musts" for first-time visitors to Beijing. In this 3-4 hour night tour, you are arranged to have the two musts at China Show - the biggest show place in Beijing to enjoy the performance of the national treasures
BNT-3 The CCTV Tower Night Tour
Are you interested in having a panoramic view of the downtown Beijing? If so, the CCTV Tower is your ideal place! CCTV means China Central Television. The CCTV tower is the highest point (405m) in Beijing, one of the modern wonders of Beijing.
BNT-4 Beijing Duck Dinner and Kungfu Show ( The Legend of Kungfu)
In Beijing you have the chance to enjoy fantastic "The Legend of Kung Fu “ The show is a must-see production in Beijing for both tourists and Kung Fu lovers. The show lasts about one and half hours.
BNT-5 Beijing Duck Dinner and Laoshe Teahouse Performance
Laoshe Teahouse is located in the busy shopping area to the west of the Qianmen Gate Arrow Tower on the southern edge of Tian'anmen Square. The teahouse is named after famous Chinese novelist and playwright, Lao She, and his masterpiece drama, "Teahouse".
BNT-6 Beijing Duck Dinner and Peking Opera Show
Dinner: Beijing Duck Dinner
Performance: Peking Opera Show at Liyuan Theatre
Service: private tour guide & driver + private car / van From US$ 45 per person
BNT-7 Beijing's Night Performance with dinner
Large-scale imperial palace dance performances and operas every evening are sure to please visitors with over-the-top drama, costumes and choreography. The house kitchen serves up traditional Beijing cuisine to accompany the show.
BNT-8 Night Boat Tour in Old Beijing
Take a boat and cruise on the Shichahai Lake in the center of old Beijing. The lake is the only remaining water system, dating back to the Yuan Dynasty (13th Century). The lake is a scenic area with 34 hectares which is surrounded by former princes'houses.

shanghai 2010 World Expo, Pavilion Information, Expo Tours

Shanghai Expo 2010 Tours


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