Beijing is easy to figure out, a bit like Manhattan, it is like a big grid. Get a map of the city from the hotel. If the hotel does not have any, buy one from the Foreign Language bookstore on Wangfujing. You will see the ring roads and figure it out easily. Take the subway, it goes to all the major attractions and is only 2RMB. Make sure that you go to the Temple of Heaven early in the morning. Hang around the Drum Tower and Houhai. Walk randomly through the hutongs. Maybe you will be confused walking in that maze but you will eventually come out on a main street. People are friendly. If you are not sure where you are, show them your map. Most restaurants have menues in english and photos even if the waitress speaks no english. Just point at the menu. You'll have a good time.

If you enjoy walking, I think Beijing is a great city to do so, as it is flat and there are long boulevards. Weather is also cool (OK currently cold, they had snow last week), but that makes it easier for walking than the hot summer. Bring gloves, a hat and a scarf. (Beijing has some winter winds.) I am not one for organized tours, so I would say to avoid these as much as you can. There is a subway which is quite easy to use (has English signage), and taxis are not that expensive. If you have your hotel or destination written in Chinese, taxis are no issue.

When walking you may get lost a little, but won’t get into trouble. Beijing is very safe. (Take normal precautions with purse and wallet. It’s not Utopia. It’s just that street crime is very rare. Violent crime even rarer.) Get a good street map. You will find many people who speak enough English on the street to help if you do get lost

You can walk to Tiananmen and see the Forbidden City, Mao’s tomb and just take in the square (go for the sunrise flag raising if you can). You have the luxury of taking as long as you want in the Forbidden City. Get the audio tape and enjoy taking your time seeing all the bits. (The Eyewitness Guide is excellent if you have time to get it before you leave.) If you like a long walk, then go south all the way to the Qianmen Gate, and then beyond is an area of shops redone in old Beijing style with more traditional areas behind it. Reward yourself with lunch at the fabulous Capital M. http://www.m-restaurantgroup.com/capitalm/home.html. The Liulichang antique street area is a bit further west, this could be included; or do this whole southern part on another day.

You can take a subway to the Summer Palace and spend the better part of the day there.

You can take the subway to the Temple of Heaven. The Hong Qiao market is next door, and is a hoot for shopping for “pearls” and other stuff.

I love the hutoung areas, and they are made for walking. You can get a bit lost, but eventually you end up on a main street and can re-orient yourself. Lots of little restaurants and shops there. Consider cooking lessons at Black Sesame (http://www.blacksesamekitchen.com/cooking-classes/), this is a great area for walking around. I think the site has a small map of the area which may be helpful.

The only thing you might want to take a tour for is to go out to the Great Wall. It is doable by yourself if you don’t mind paying for a taxi or car and driver. But a tour is of course easier.

That’s five days as I see it, and I haven’t even gotten to museums.

You should feel completely safe and generally there will be someone who can help direct you. Be sure to have your destination and also the name of your hotel written in Chinese in the event you are lost. People are generally very helpful. Seek out younger people when asking directions as they learn English in school. As previously stated, the metro system is excellent.

If you have a smart phone that will work in china, download the program pleco for translations from English to Chinese. Even if you won't have wifi, download it and put phrases in ahead of time - ie where are the toilets?, where is the metro?, etc

Thank you all for your advice - I truly appreciate it. I will see if I can find the Eyewitness Guide. I'm now feeling much more confident that I can walk around on my own and still enjoy a safe, enriching experience. So excited! Many thanks.

Take a business card from your hotel that has the address in Chinese characters. You're never lost, you're simply waiting for a taxi! If you have the names for the attractions you want to see printed out then you can just point to those and people will point you in the right direction as long as you're in the right general vicinity. If you get really turned around, you can point to an attraction or your hotel address in a taxi.

I spent a few days wandering around Beijing on my own and had a wonderful time! People are very friendly and very happy to help. Do be careful of the tea shop scam ("I'm practicing english, would you like to have tea with me?") etc. A handful of people (mainly girls my age) tried this one with me but as soon as I said no thank you they were happy to just go on their way, they never gave me a hassle at all. I never felt unsafe in the least.

If you go shopping at the pearl and silk markets, bargain like crazy. To find a price you simply go back and forth typing in an amount in a calcultor that all of the shop keepers will have on hand. If they don't offer one right away, just write numbers back and forth on a piece of paper.

Don't be afraid to ask at your hotel for advice or help. They're happy to write out a phrase or location for you to show to a taxi driver or shop keeper. I would suggest trying to use chopsticks if you can. I practiced at breakfast at my hotel where I had the option of a fork to fall back on. That made life a lot easier at lunch and dinner since I didn't have to ask for a fork.

You'll have lots of fun! Beijing was the highlight of a fantastic trip to China.

Thank you Iowa Redhead! Good advice. I will be on a mission to get a "real" silk dress to wear here for the holiday season. Hopefully I will be successful!

Also... there are so many museums! Any recommendations? History of China is fascinating.

As others have said, it is easy to visit Beijing on one's own (even as a solo female). The subway system is remarkably good. Be sure you have with you a business card from your hotel (in Chinese) that you can use if you need to.

For museums (not counting things like the Forbidden City), I was very impressed with the National Museum, which has a very extensive and well displayed collection. Be sure to visit the collection showing local traditions.

You might find some useful information in my extremely long (but searchable!) trip report - just click on my name to find it. I visited Beijing for a few days at the start of my trip and then for a longer time at the end of my trip.

Hope that helps!

I have frequently joined my husband on business trips and had his company only in the evenings. I enjoy museums and can spend lots of time there on my own. But, I really enjoy joining daytrip tour groups. I like being shown around and thru these groups can cover more territory than walking on my own. Walking tours often take one to places I would not have found on my own. In short, both ways are good. I also take bus rides to see more, often just regular transportation buses.

The best museum is the National Museum, just on the east side of Tian'Anmen square. They re-opened it a year ago after spending US$360 million on renovations.

If you want so hand holding. a good guide will cost about 400RMB for a day. Pretty cheap. Cheaper than a tour group and she will take you where you want with no compulsory shopping stop. You could always hire a guide on the first day to figure things out.
As someone said above, you need to hire a driver to go to the Great Wall. I usually use Mark: http://www.best-our.com/

I like everyone's advice. China wasn't even on my radar a few days ago This wonderful opportunity literally cropped up a few days ago so I really appreciate your guidance.

> you need to hire a driver to go to the Great Wall

I don't think so! I believe you can easily take a public bus to Badaling - that's what I did! I'll try to find more info ....

This information is from an old post by PeterN_H; I followed these directions quite easily during my visit in 2010:

“. . . take the metro to Ji Shui Tan and walk a few minutes east to De Sheng Men, or take a taxi straight there . . . and on the east side of the De Sheng Men (rebuilt gate/fragment of city wall) you’ll find express buses departing to Ba Da Ling every few minutes. These drop you straight at the wall. . . . You catch it back from the same place you got off it. It’s traditonal these days to decry Ba Da Ling, often by those who’ve never been there. It remains the most busy of the officially open sites, but for those with a shortage of time easily the most convenient, and a quick whip up an expressway in a reasonably comfortable air-con bus. It remins just as spectacular a site as it always has, the Wall leaping up to every high point, and those with no previous experience of China are hardly likely to mind meeting a few Chinese on the Wall, and be as thrilled as everyone else was when, 15 years ago and earlier it was the only choice.”

Yes Badaling can be accessed by public transportation which is why it is so crowded. Better to go to Mutianyu.

Good sturdy walking shoes are a blessing in Beijing. Suggest you take metro rail to 'Yuan ming yuan' park, north of town and near the Universities of note, esp Peking U and Tsinghua U. The park offers a good unreconstructed picture of long ago but plastered with propaganda denouncing the West. Interesting. And the area around the Univ are alive with vibrant youth eager to practice English and easy-going restaurants of various persuasions. My advice is keep far from 'advisers' as they will steer you and collect a fee. Beijing is a vast metropolis and it is easy to walk for hours and see numerous sights of interest. At 5pm when you see the sign for foot massage, that is the time to experience one of the sensual joys of the orient. The wise traveler to the east always carries her own toilet paper.

Thank you everyone for these wonderful nuggets of information. I read your trip report, kja - sounds like you had a great trip. I found the Eyewitness Beijing book, plus I've downloaded pleco onto my iPhone. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to help me.

You have an iPhone? then you need the following apps. ExploreBeijing - for a very good interactive map of the subway. It show you a map of the surrounding of each station, the exits and travel time between stations; Taxi-book - the free version can produce a Chinese taxi card to show taxi drivers to take you to key places as well as some dialogues; Show & Go similarly produces taxi cards in Chinese; there are tons of Chinese-english dictionaries but don't expect too much from these, even if you manage to ask or show a question, can you understand the answer? Sign language goes a long way. In any case I like google translate and iTranslate for their voice feature. You can also check Photo T which translates text that you take a photo of.

JPDeM, thanks for those app suggestions. I have downloaded all of those apps. ExploreBeijing and Taxi-book look great and easy to use.

Well I have arrived in Beijing. It is cool weather but sunny and blue skies. After walking around the Forbidden City on my own yesterday, I decided I would take a group tour today. We went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. Honestly, I got so much out of the guided tour and I really appreciated the guide's perspective as a person raised in Beijing. I like how easy it is to walk here (although I have almost been run down by cars, trucks and bikes!). My reservations about walking around alone were unfounded but at the same time, I thoroughly enjoyed the guided tour I took. All of the tips received on this forum have been very useful.

<<<I like how easy it is to walk here (although I have almost been run down by cars, trucks and bikes!). >>>

Glad you're having fun! The trick to getting across some streets is to wait until you see someone else going and then stick with them.

Sometimes advice on how to get somewhere sounds incredibly simple until you try and follow it. We were in China in 2008. Sometimes a charachter difference in the spelling of a bus stop, or an unexpected spacing in a word made things tough to follow. Or our B&B said it was three stops when it was four (not a real problem on the subway but a real problem on buses). Of course once we figured it out it all looked so simple.

I am back from my whirlwind week in Beijing. Thanks for all of the advice - I had a great time in this very interesting city. I ended up doing a combination of guided day tours in very small groups (4 people) and a couple of days touring on my own. I saw a lot of the main sites in Beijing including the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Lama Temple, National Museum, Temple of Heaven, the Zoo, and of course the Great Wall. I thought the tours were very educational, plus I enjoyed meeting other travellers. I enjoyed walking for miles on my own and just exploring the various hutongs and parks. I feel sure there is much more to see in Beijing but I am very pleased with what I managed to do on my trip.

Glad you enjoyed yourself - thanks for letting us know!