Beijing has never been on my wishlist, in fact it’d probably be right down there with Pyongyang and Kabul. Everybody who has been to Beijing says it’s a shithole and that was pretty much confirmed. I have no idea how people live there, and can’t understand for the life of me why anybody would want to visit there, other than to see the Great Wall, which by the way, is a wall. “Yeah, I went to see a wall”. Okay, okay, so it’s long, it has some history, but it’s just a wall for donkey’s sake!
Anyway, this was a short trip to Beijing, and thank god for that. Honestly we didn’t do much, (you can see exactly what we did in the “Things to Do” section), and apparently we struck it on an average day pollution wise – so just haze and pollution choking the sun to it’s demise. On the positive side, I don’t think you would ever need to buy or bring sunblock to Beijing because there’s so much pollution the chances of getting sunburnt are next to nothing. As you might gave guessed, this isn’t going to be pretty. Beijing is a city with absolutely zero redeeming qualities as far as I’m concerned. Even not considering the constant pollution, the city is a dull, depressing place which I can’t recommend to anybody unless you’re keen on filling your lungs with some of the most horrible air of any city in the world.
Sure, I’m not a big fan of China, but at least Shanghai has some energy, interesting architecture and liveliness. Beijing on the other hand, I can only describe as a good place to go to end an incurable disease early. If you absolutely have to go for business or some other reason, bring a face mask and prepare to be totally and utterly underwhelmed and unimpressed, it might then make anything half decent, seem quite good.
If you’re thinking about going to Beijing, save yourself some time, don’t read anything else here about it and just don’t go. There are better places in China that I’d go to any day of the week. The best thing about Beijing is the Aman at Summer Palace hotel, check out our review here.
