Beijing hotels & operas
 

We will be visiting Beijing in October. I have started researching hotels there. Our objective is to locate accomodations that are roughly US$85/night including tax. Safety is very important to us. Can anyone point at the "safer" areas of the city? It seems like there are a lot of good hotels east of the Forbidden City.

Also, we would like to go to an opera. Any suggestions? Do we need to reserve tickets beforehand? Dress codes?

Thanks...

There are no dangerous areas of the city. This is not the U.S. Stay wherever you like.

For that price you may be able to get into the Marco Polo, if you book nearer the time, but not in the first half of October, which you should avoid if at all possible as rates will be at their highest and many hotels will be full.

See if anything is going on at the Ming-era Zhengyici Xilou, or the Qing-era Huguang Huiguan Xilou (which also has a small museum). Performances in both places are about as authentic as they get, in traditional surroundings, and usually take place at 7.30pm. There is no need to enquire before you arrive in China, both theatres are reasonably central and easily reached by taxi. There is no dress code. Going to Chinese opera has nothing to do with going to Western opera--if you want to behave like the locals then talk through the performance, crack melon seeds between your teeth, and spit the husks on the floor.

Peter N-H
http://members.shaw.ca/pnhpublic/China.html

Thanks as usual, Peter. Your responses are always informative and appreciated. By the way, do you or anyone know if/when Fodor's is going to release the next edition of its China guide? The most recent one came out about 2 years ago. We want to get a guidebook. Any suggestions?
We would be interested to hear of others' opinions of the Marco Polo in Beijing or any other hotel there. Does anyone know if Marco Polo has a website?

http://www.marcopolohotels.com/beijing/index.html

It is part of the Hong Kong-based Macro Polo chain. [For a while in the 90's, they also owned the Omni Hotel Group, but have sold it, I believe.]

Thanks, rkkwan. We appreciate it.

My husband and I stayed at the Marco Polo for 10 days this past April. It is a very nice hotel, and we really liked its location. It is NOT in the midst of the tourist area, and we found that especially appealing. We appreciated having the opportunity to eat, walk, shop and mingle with the locals! The hotel is west of the Forbidden City area - maybe a 20-minute walk. The two subway lines are just down the block - very convenient. We paid $85 per night, including breakfast. With taxes, it came to approx. $100 a night. We had originally planned to stay at the Marco Polo for five nights, then move to another hotel for the second half of our visit to Beijing. However, it met all of our needs so well that we extended our stay there. We would definitely recommend it.

In regard "safety", don't even worry about it - except when crossing the street, which is an entirely different issue!

My wife and I stayed at the French run Novotel Peace Hotel (make sure it is the east wing) in Oct '02. We were very pleased with the hotel located right at the WangFuJing area. They served a very good buffett breakfast. The French pastries were excellent. However, their beds are extremely hard. Fotunately we got used to it after 2 nights.

I stayed at the Swiss Hotel and it has a subway stop right in front and everything is $2 taxi ride, except when the driver will not use the meter. Nice hotel. Not sure of cost, but no issues plus the crazy Dutch stay there so the bar in the hotel lobby are fun. And is not that hard to get to the airport. About 10minute taxi ride to the forbidden city ( think). I like the European hotels, behind the large Japan hotels.