I have two full days in Beijing. As a first time visitor I want to visit the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall.

Does anyone recommend a centrally located hotel on the less expensive side? Should I take one of the bus tours for getting around? Or is it easy enough to get around as a non-Chinese speaking person?

> Does anyone recommend a centrally located hotel on the less expensive side?

What is your definition of 'less expensive' and are you just looking for somewhere clean to crash at night, or for full-on facilities?

> Should I take one of the bus tours for getting around?

Absolutely not.

> Or is it easy enough to get around as a non-Chinese speaking person?

Yes, it's easy enough by metro or taxi.

Peter N-H

I would like to spend $75 or less a night and I'm happy with clean room and I prefer a solo bathroom.

Your "Absolutely not," seems like a strong reaction. I won't be doing the bus tours. Thanks.

$75 a night is a large sum for Beijing, and gives you a lot of choice of Chinese-run hotels (even more if you are willing to just show up and bargain at the counter, which is the best policy--book in advance and you'll always pay more, except for jingji hotels, mentioned below).

You could consider:

http://www.sihehotel.com/en/room.asp

http://www.jihousecn.com/rooms_xier.html

http://www.4banqiao.com

This hotel is the most spectacular piece of kitsch in the whole of Beijing excepting the Chateau Laffitte [sic] which is too far out to be useful to you. The bath taps are genuinely gold-plated), but there are stories of recent walk-ins getting your kind of rate.

http://www.legendale.com

This can even come in ¥100 less than your budget (and is one you should book on-line):

http://preview.tinyurl.com/q3ju2x which is a Days Inn very close to the Forbidden City.

But if you just want a clean room, wooden floor, shower cubicle only, few (maybe only CCTV9 in English) foreign TV channels, cheerful pastel colours, free (or very cheap indeed) Internet, and breakfast for ¥10–15, at about half what you are willing to pay, there are myriad 'jingji' or economy hotels aimed at small businessmen, for ¥200 to ¥300. Try Googling Hanting Hotels, Joy Inn, 7Days, Jinjiang Inn, Home Inn for assorted locations, some very central indeed.

Peter N-H

Definitely try to book Taiwan Hotel, Wangfujing Street.
They are having internet promotion that fits your budget.
Located right next to Novetel Peace Hotel.
Pennisula Palace Hotel Beijing, Beijing Hotel, Grand Hotel, Department Stores, Subway Station are all within 30 minutes walking distance.

Even Tiananmen Sq. would be about 45 minutes walking distance from Taiwan Hotel.

It would be worthwhile to check the reviews of the Taiwan Hotel on www.tripadvisor.com, especially a couple of reports of gross overcharging by the taxis called by the doorman. The remedy for this is simple enough - just walk into the street and hail a passing cab (but make sure you have details of your destination written in Chinese for the driver, as almost certainly he won't be able to speak English). The location does sound good.

Great wall alone would be a whole day trip with the heavy traffics in Beijing.
Tiananmen Sq. and Forbidden can be done in half day.
Forbidden City locates across street from Tienanmen Sq. on the other side of Changan Road.
First timer, book a tour and don't buy in the overpriced shopping stops.
Wangfujing Street is the major shopping street in Beijing.

The Taiwan Hotel is precisely the kind of long-standing Chinese-run hotel you should be avoiding. When last inspected it was tired, poorly run, and noted for extensive prostitution both in its night club and a massage operation, although these are now said to have been toned down. It's location near a number of much better hotels doesn't seem to add logically to its attraction, unless your purpose in visiting Beijing is to look at hotels, which is doubtful. On the criteria given you'd be better to stay for half the price in the basic jingji Hotel 268 next door (although note the rooms that actually are ¥268 are few in number and without windows).

Using the search box above will find extensive discussion of bus trips to the Great Wall. Without going into extensive detail here, the nearest officially open site (Juyong Guan), the longest open and most popular site (Ba Da Ling) and another very popular site (Mutianyu) can all be reached by train (¥17 one-way) or direct aircon public bus (¥12, Mutianyu involves a change to minibus or taxi at the end). There are daily Chinese bus tours to Juyong Guan or Ba Da Ling from the southwest corner of Tian'an Men Square, typically for ¥125 including entrance tickets, sometime lunch, and a stop at another less interesting sight, but there's not need to tie yourself to these and you're best to take a packed lunch to enjoy while sitting on the wall. The one-day bus tours from Xuanwu Men to Mutianyu (mid-April to early-Oct only) are worth considering but they only run on Sat, Sun, and public holidays: ¥100 including entrance tickets and a not terribly interesting temple. No shopping stops, though. You can bargain a taxi to take you to Mutianyu, wait, and bring you back, down to ¥350, and again if you use the search box you'll find an account from someone who recently did that.

Further flung but more interesting sites such as Simatai, Panlong Shan, and Jin Shan Ling are trickier by public transport, involving taking a long-distance bus going to Chengde and hopping off part-way. Every backpacker hostel runs daily minibus tours to Jin Shan Ling or Simatai, however, typically overpriced at about ¥180, and will often drop you at one and allow you to walk to the other along the Wall. Again, searches here will tell you more.

But the one-day English-language bus tours including those by names you might have expected to be reliable (Gray Lines) are massively overpriced, tend to include rip-off shopping stops and factory tours, and tell you nothing you can't read for yourself on signs at the sites whose information is equally false. If you want reliable historical material on the Wall, bring it with you from home.

As for shopping, Wangfujing is *a* shopping street in Beijing, but there are many others. And much of this is tourist-as-victim territory or high-street brand-names at higher prices than you would pay at home, found in shopping malls similar to those in any Western provincial city. Worth a stroll en route elsewhere, but nothing more. Even the glitziest malls (The Place, Shinkong Place, Seasons Place, etc.) and the largest (Golden Resources) are elsewhere.

Peter N-H

The showing up and bargaining seems a little scary. I know a foreign exchange student from China. What if I had him call the hotel a week ahead? Do you think I could still get the better prices?

For ordinary Chinese-run (non-jingji) hotels the best price will almost always be obtained by showing up at the counter and bargaining--better than over the phone. A compromise is to look at a China-based hotel booking site such as Ctrip (although descriptions of the hotels are not to be trusted) and then to have your local contact call and haggle and use the on-line price as a benchmark to beat or at least equal. With only two nights in Beijing you may feel it doesn't matter too much anyway. The prices quoted by the 'discount' hotel sites give you a good idea of what real normal prices are (the ones they claim to be special but which anyone can get for themselves), although there can be problems with bait-and switch. Note that a frequent problem with hotel reservations at this level is that if the hotel is nearly full and someone shows up ahead of you waving cash your reservation may get 'lost', regardless of the route through which it has been made.

For jingji hotels you should use their own sites/numbers to book (or when only in Chinese get your contact to do it for you). For foreign-run hotels (and you should be checking for special offers even at name you think you might not to be able to afford--the Beijing hotel industry is in pain with a vast oversupply of rooms compared to demand at the top end) most guarantee that the best price is available on their own web sites.

But for most China travel by most Chinese, setting aside peak periods and certain resort destinations, just showing up and bargaining is still the way it's done. You haven't mention what dates you'll be in Beijing, but for most of the year and at all levels there's an oversupply, and you should be bargaining for (often a great deal) lower prices than those published on the hotel websites listed, even where those websites claim to be already offering a discount.

Peter N-H

It is rediculous to see prostitution as an issue
in choosing hotels.
In China, the fact and the matter is that 5 star hotels have 5 star prostitutes, 4 star hotels have 4 star prostitutes and so forth, most of the them can be seen at the lobby lounges holding books, magazines and pretend to be reading.
Realistic speaking, cops don't usually carry out crackdown on prostitution in the 4 star above hotels.
In Beijing, there are three sections of great walls open for tourist, they are in Badaling, Mutianyu & Simatai.
First timer in Beijing should go to Badaling, commonly recognised as the most magnificent one.
Foreign government heads visiting China are usually arranged to see the other two only because of security reasons.
Wangfujing Street is lined with stores, from upscale to downscale. A section of the street is for pedestrians only.
Most of the high end stores are located in the arcades of the 5 star hotels.
On both sides of the streets, there are book stores, photo shops, department stores, drug stores and even RMB10 stores
which's like our 99cents stores at home.
Tourist with only two days in Beijing should stay in the hotel area to shop.
Driving time in Beijing from any point A to point B in the day time could take an hour or hours.

The three sections of great wall, Badaling, Mutianyu & Simatai, are like McDonald's, Burger King & Wendy's.
For someone trying the American burger culture for the first time, which one should they try first?

PeterN_H: Name one hotel in China that has no prostitutes!

I'll be there June 23 to 26.

Be sure to bring a lot of Tamiflu.