Talk:Beijing/Archive 2003-2012

Advertising

While more content, excessive promotion of particular restuarants / bars is against Wiktravel policy and will be deleted. Just so you know! --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 05:23, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

I'm going to delete any new hotel listings that just look like advertisements rather than actual reviews. There's already enough hotels on the page, I think... --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 08:29, 12 November 2008 (EST)

Too Long

This page is now almost certainly too long, especially on a slow Chinese internet connection. Much smaller cities have been broken down into sections and I'd say this one should be too. Agree? (WT-en) Sachabrunel 11:24, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

I totally agree. I need to look around to see how other cities did it though -- got any particular examples in mind? --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 05:30, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

I don't think it is too long since the amount of information is just so much. The only alternative would be to change the location of different sites to separate pages listed under each district. Also, I just think it makes more sense to have "Understand" before the districts...--(WT-en) Guiyang laoshi 19:20, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, Beijing is definitely large enough to be districted, but the job needs to be done carefully. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:04, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Moving "Understand" looks good to me, GL. Maybe one way to start the process of breaking up the page would be to separate out all the stuff that's further away from the center of town -- Haidian district (Summer Palace, Zhongguancun and so on), and the Great Wall, for example. What do you think? --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 07:46, 17 December 2008 (EST)

OK, I've put together a rough page for Haidian here. Mostly cut & paste from the main article, but some additions too. Let me know what you think. I haven't removed anything from the main Beijing page (yet?). --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 11:01, 19 December 2008 (EST)

I did a first pass at Fengtai. Sights to see in that district are all new. If anyone knows about hotels or restaurants in the area please add them! --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 10:03, 26 December 2008 (EST)

Is definitively not too long. Having all the information on one page is the most useful thing for people to be able to save pages in their PDA-s on the go. I myself lost a lot of time by searching for informations in cities with splitted sections so NO.

Chinese Placenames

by (WT-en) LiangHH

Once again and I summarize...

1) If you want to add the Chinese name for some place's name, it does not help if you write it like this:

• Summer Palace (Yiheyuan)

Tho this is very common in many travel books as well (and only accepted because nobody knows better), it doesnt make sense at all! Even native Chinese speakers have big problems to get the meaning out of something like "Yiheyuan". With this example it might work, but there are other places less famous. I would even go as far to say, it's wrong. And wrong stuff doesn't belong into an encyclopedia.

If you want to add an name in chinese, it should look like this

• Summer Palace (颐和园 Yíhéyuán)

If you are not able to write Chinese, at least write the correct Romanizations, using those important stokes above each vowel -> Read about Chinese romanization [1]

This is according to the rules: Project:Romanization

2) I would like to start something like a "Write proper Pinyin" campaign. Like those notes in the end of the article "Names of places in this article don't have proper names in Chinese & Pinyin If you are fammilar to the Chinese language, please help correcting those" Can somebody help?

I agree that the current pinyin system is not great. Looking around I found two webpages that are particularly useful for editing these entries -- Adsotrans [2] can convert characters to pinyin with the diacritics, and Pinyin.info [3] has a good section on pinyin rules to refresh people's memories. If everybody uses those then things will turn out much neater. Also, Pinyin.info also advises, and so does the Wikivoyage romanization page, to avoid italicizing pinyin. Looks better to me too. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 02:17, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

There was a later debate on the Romanization page that indicated italic was best for pinyin. Although I think it's kind of ugly, that's the why I'll be doing it now! --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 06:14, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

Best time to travel and more detail!!!

One of the most important things a traveler needs to know is missing from this article....."The best time to travel to China"!!!! Now, when i say best, I mean a combination of all three likes. Personally, I prefer to travel during Low season BUT.....I need to know what months those are. I have been reading all the stuff about China, and Beijing, etc... and the most I have seen about the traveling seasons is "kids come home at the end of the school break and the locals travel home during the such and such break, etc...." Yes, don’t get me wrong, the articles did say to avoid China around the Chinese New Year and Labor holiday, but I NEED ACTUAL MONTHS!! Something simple (remember the KISS method) like "the cheapest months to go to China are May, June, July (for example only)....but it is cheap because of blah, blah, blah". See how that works? Simple, clean cut, and detailed.

Also, I noticed that there isn’t too much detail about itineraries. I mean…I would like to see a sample itinerary. I saw something similar but it was really lacking. I mean maybe I am not using this web site correctly, but I thought that this website was suppose to give travel info from the people that have been and although there is much info about the countries back ground and other facts, etc., it is still missing the all important ”sample itinerary”. For instance, yes…I know I need to go to the Forbidden City, but how much time should I leave for this and how long does it take to get there, etc… How many things can I actually do/see in one day? Now granted everyone is different and will have different paces that they sightsee at, but…in general you should be able to give me some kind of idea of how much I can see in one day, and the times, etc..

I want to plan a trip to China and hit all the important spots, but I also want to try to fly over to Tokyo and such. This is what people look for. I have traveled to many countries and when ever people travel to the countries that I have been, they always ask me “so…what did you do, how did you do it, when did you it, and what did you not do, and what did you not want to do”, etc…. And I can always tell then.

So…I ask you this…please help me plan my trip!

mid-March to mid-April, mid-October to mid-November would be the best. 218.68.245.244 08:28, 10 April 2007 (EDT)

I think some of the issues the original poster raised still need to be addressed. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 06:14, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

China National Grand Theatre?

There's very little information about The Egg online and this article doesn't even mention it. Isn't it something worth seeing?

yes , it is a great building, worth seeing. and easy to get there , in the main street "chang an jie" in beijing

Scams

Given that this city will be the future destination for many tourists, shouldn't a section about "scams" be included. There are lots of money hungry scammers in this city, it would be nice to list a few of the popular scamming methods. But of course this goes against the wikivoyage conventional style. But if any one thinks its a good idea, just say so and I can add the section later with material. If some one thinks its a bad idea ...please say so, don't want my input deleted.

-Yes, I agree. I would include a section of scammers at the airport for the most part! Theres fake taxis and the people trying to take an 'exit fee' from you before you get into the secured area.

There's already a big "Stay safe" section at the end, folks... and why do you think this goes against "wikivoyage conventional style"!? I've added an infobox into the By plane area also. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:49, 20 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Hotels

I don't know how to edit on Wikipedia, but I think that you should add the Peninsula Palace Hotel in Wangfujing (www.peninsula.com). They've just had something like a 37million USD refit and it is an amazing hotel.

It's been added --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 05:34, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

Cope/Safety tips etc

Most of the Safety and Cope tips apply to all China and are not only for a specific city. What to do? I have 2 suggestions. Either...

• Delete all the general advice from the city pages and link to the country page where they are collected. Like >>For generell advice about travelling China see China#Stay_safe<<

or

• Simply complete all the city pages by copying the advice from the other cities. Beijing has good advices which could be copied to Chengdu for example, which has no adive. (A LOT OF WORK!)

(WT-en) LiangHH 05 Jan 2006

The info should be concentrated in Stay safe. However, Beijing has more than its fair share of scams, so this definitely needs to be highlighted there as well. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:55, 5 Jan 2006 (EST)

Beijing buses

It would be very good to start collecting the information about the bus lines here. I would suggest a photo of each bus line map and links to the stops. Each stop could be documented as to the interesting things in the area.

It should have a list of all the chinese characters that occur in all the stops. it could contain information about the meaning and pronouciation of the char. Each Bus Stop could have its own wiki entry with all relevant information It would be incredibly useful to have a sorted list of bus stops names in a small booklet and a map that could be printed out the wikipedia.

I would like to discuss this topic with anyone.

I own such a book (Chinese only, I'm afraid), but it's probably longer than is reasonably printable. 50 or so pages at A5, and the type is fairly small. It lists by stop and by bus route, but often there are several stops of the same name that are a little way (a couple of minutes walk) from each other, so it's not always obvious where the next bus leaves from.

There's a link to the BJ Bus website with its interactive map -- that's as good as we'll get for a while, I think. But any contributions; work on this would be helpful. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 05:33, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

Places to drink

Why does 'The Tree' get a special mention in the places to drink section? It is a nice place, but should be included within the description of Sanlitun, I reckon. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 02:11, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

That's actually the way it should be -- descriptions of areas to go in text, then bullet points of specific bars/nightclubs/... below them. I'll jiggle the layout a bit. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:06, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, that looks great.--(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 20:37, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

Can anyone clarify the different between the "standard" and "pure" beer? --Stefan Wrobel, 13:18, 28 Sept 2007 (EDT)

I'll update the relevant section --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 06:13, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

"3.1%-3.6 alcohol content" for beer...any source for this?

Hills

There's a tall hill on the island in Beihai Park as well as in Jingshan Park, so should the second paragraph of the article be changed to reflect that fact?

Michael 22:22, 12 Apr 2006 (UTC)

Yes definitely, please edit away. (WT-en) WindHorse 13 April 06

Source for place names in Chinese

Extracted from article: You can find several places on the net with this information, a very good page is the Beijing travel Tips page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:17, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

USA-centered

The whole article and the comments are very USA centered. Not everybody gets homesick and wants Texan food. And anyway, someone who wants to eat steak in China is in the wrong place.

That doesn't mean we should delete the steak restaurants for those who do. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:40, 24 February 2007 (EST)

I'll fix it. (WT-en) Brutannica 23:26, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

Bicycling

I will add the following info:

• bicycle rental
  • location, fee, deposit
• bicycle parking
  • 0.2 yuan for supervised parking
  • locks used (not usually attached)
  • metro parking lots open 24/7
  • theft common

Coping - diet

Is it necessary to advise people to bring diet supplements? Eating too much meat may be a problem for tourists who order too much meat at restaurants -- wouldn't it be better to say they should make sure they order more vegetables and eat more fruit while they are in Beijing? Wikipedia has a page on dietary fiber here: [4]. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 02:12, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

Maybe this could be a problem elsewhere in China, but not really in Beijing. (WT-en) Sachabrunel 11:22, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

I'll edit that bit. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 06:13, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

Chinese characters

For anything transcribed to pinyin it would be very helpful to get the tones with it, e.g. (ni2 hao3, instead of ni hao)

There are a number of chinese characters in this article that show up as squares or question marks in my browser. These need to be changed to the correct HTML character codes, or excluded from the article. I do not have the correct character sets loaded to show these characters correctly. See Project:Foreign-language names for how foreign languages should be shown. -- (WT-en) Huttite 18:47, 2 Oct 2004 (EDT)

There's only one maker of operating systems these days whose browser does not come with enough characters to read this page by default. Hi Seattle!

And yeah, some of the uses of Chinese characters are just obnoxious on this page. There is no good reason for writting "Yuan" in Chinese in a travel guide. -- (WT-en) Colin 20:55, 2 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Thanks for the changes - it makes a lot more sense now.

And I suppose I will have to download "simplified chinese" the next time it is offered to me on the next chinese spamsite I visit. At least at the moment I cannot even see the characters, so I know other users of that tiny piece of software from the Pacific Northwest (United States of America) cannot either. - (WT-en) Huttite 22:04, 2 Oct 2004 (EDT)

The characters still don't appear correctly - they are traditional characters and usually disply too many of them, sometimes with a box and usually followed by a question mark. I've tried multiple browsers with no luck, but when I click edit to correct them the edit page shows the characters correctly. The sites for Yunnan province and the city of Chengdu show correctly, while Shanghai and Xi'an have the same problems as Beijing. (WT-en) Athanor 11:53, 19 Nov 2005 (EST)

Viewed in China it appears correct. (WT-en) LiangHH 13:59, 05 Jan 2005 (GMT+8)

Collaboration of the month September 2008

This article was a collaboration of the Month for September 2008. The goals were:

• • it's the Olympic City come August 8th. Wikivoyage's page should be up-to-date and helpful!
  • There's a lot of recent public transportation infrastructure that's been added and should be explained.
  • The Beijing 2008 Olympic page sucks ([5]) and needs reworking.
  • MoS clean-up.
  • Restaurants should be ordered in a more meaningful way.
  • List of things to Do seems very small for a city with >15m residents.
  • Get Out list should be longer to suggest daytrips away from the city.
  • If the sights could be grouped by location that might help planning visits. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 06:11, 11 July 2008 (EDT)

Breaking the Beijing article up in districts

It seems that further work on breaking the Beijing article up in districts is needed. Does anyone plan on starting any of the districts? Further, has anyone any thoughts on whether each district (each 'qu' that is) should have its own article or if some of the districts should be merged? It seems like a lot of articles to have 18 in total, maybe some of the nothern districts could be merged and maybe also some of the central ones could. Does anyone work on an overall Beijing map showing the location of the different districts?--(WT-en) ClausHansen 07:18, 26 February 2009 (EST)

I did the Haidian and Fengtai pages. Been busy for a while and haven't got around to doing more. My feelings is that the 8 central districts could all have pages, while the further districts probably don't haven enough stuff to justify a whole page and could be dealt with together. A decent map of the districts would be great. Wikipedia's district map is small and poor. I don't know the best way of going about getting a better one... --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 09:25, 26 February 2009 (EST)

Where do I find Wikipidia's district map?

[6] is one I found -- it's actually better than last time I looked. It could be incorporated somehow, probably. --(WT-en) Julian Suddaby 10:19, 27 February 2009 (EST)

Great work guys! one suggestion though, I'd propose we split up the suburbs into North (Yanquing, Huairou, Miyun, Pingu, Shunyi & Changping) and South (Mentougou, Fangshan, Daxing & Tongshou) already now, just to make any future sub districtification easier to deal with, while it also makes writing something like a Get in section that much easier. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 09:20, 2 March 2009 (EST)

- Also, I find the Pinyin to be somewhat superflous, as the Romanization is already there, and the average visitor has no clue how to use the system anyway, but if someone do find it useful, this is no raving objection from my part either --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 09:32, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Please keep the pinyin, it's the only way to pronounce it right. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:04, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Recent deletions

I have noticed some recent deletions that I would like to comment on

• Understand Section: I agree that this should be taken out
• See Section: I agree that the wording on museums was not good, but I still think there should be some general introduction to museums and not just a list. I will make a new suggestion
• Do Section: I agree that the wording on the Great Wall was not good, but some relevant information has now been deleted. I will make a new suggestion

--(WT-en) ClausHansen 13:54, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

The opening statement in the Museums and galleries section states "The museums in Beijing are still not up to the standard seen in other major capitals around the world," but there needs to be a basis for this statement. According to whom? "Other major capitals around the world"? Which ones? Tehran? Tokyo? Cairo? Sydney? Mexico City? Hanoi? Santiago? Bangkok? Jakarta? New Delhi? Seoul? Manila? These are all major capitals. I just think the statement makes no sense factually, and just plain lazy writing. Would the article in one of these cities' museum section say, "the city's museum is not up to the standard of other major capitals around the world", probably not because the standard is subjective and it depends on what you are comparing with. I suggest the statement to be rephrased.--(WT-en) BradSpencer243 17:58, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

It is also suggested by ClausHansen that the Understand section be trimmed or taken out. It reads too much like laughable commentary and one person's impression on the people. Where is the basis for these information?--(WT-en) BradSpencer243 17:37, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

I'm not sure what it means to "take out" the understand section, but it sounds undesirable. Even trimming seems inappropriate as well—there is a problem of too little information, not too much. Some rewriting as well as new writing, on the other hand, would be great. History needs to be expanded drastically for a city that has so much. "Characteristics" is too vague for a section header, and should be split into several appropriate topics like "People," for example.

Lastly, travelers sharing their impressions is precisely what Wikivoyage was created for, so lets avoid deleting that content. If you disagree with characterizations, and believe you have a better handle on the subject, rewrite it, don't simply delete it. Just be sure not to remove POV and conversational language. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:43, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

stay safe section' I have remodeled following sentence" The rule of thumb here is that if anyone of Chinese descent approaches you at a tourist spot speaking English, do not go into any building of their choosing." I feel putting it like this is still not safe enough. No Caucasian can possibly tell the difference between Chinese and other East-Asian nationalities. Thus it is perhaps more advisable to say "East-Asians',as any Chinese - or any person of Chinese descent - could easily pose as Japanese, Korean, Thai etc. Moreover, Chinese - or any person of Chinese descent- might know bits and pieces of other languages, such as French, German, Spanish, and even Russian. So why don't we put it like this : The rule of thumb here is that if anyone of East-Asian descent approaches you at a tourist spot speaking any language other than Chinese, do not go into any building of their choosing."' Or like mom and dad put it ' don't talk to strangers', it's even shorter.

Breaking Beijing Suburbs Article up in a number of articles

I am planning on doing some work on the Beijing Suburbs Article, but find it difficult to handle a huge district like this in one article. It covers 10 administrative districts located very far away from each other with different characteristics. If a traveller happens to want to visit one specific area he would not want to have to go through a long article with information on districts far away from the one of interest. Therefore, I plan to split the article as shown below even though some of the articles will be quite short

• Rural Beijing - Consisting of Yanqing, Huairou, Miyun and Pinggu. This will contain information on the great wall and is expected eventually to have enough content to justify a separate article
• Northern Suburbs - Consisting of Changping and Shunyi. This might be a quite short article, but it does not make much sense to merge it into any other article
• Tongzhou - This is one of the fastest developing areas in Beijing and is on its way to become a new administrative, cultural and touristic center. This will already now have a reasonable amount of content and it will be convinient to have this district in a separate article as the area develops further in the comming years
• Western and Southern Suburbs - Consisting of Mentougou, Fangshan and Daxing. This might be a quite short article, but it does not make much sense to merge it into any other article

Any comments on this are most welcome! (WT-en) ClausHansen 22:45, 2 July 2009 (EDT)

Pollution

From the end of the article:

"Air pollution has traditionally been a big problem in Beijing. Car exhaust, coal burning, and dust storms from the Gobi desert combined to make some of the worst city air on the planet. Winter is the worst time as the cold air creates an inversion layer and traps the pollution in the city. A white surgical face mask may help with the occasional dust storms. Since 2007, the air quality has improved considerably as a result of stringent measures put in place before the Olympics. While bouts of severe smog still occur, the overall situation is greatly improved.”

I think this makes the situation sound much better than it actually is. Sounds like China Daily wrote it. But I am only a visitor and can only compare it to where I come from, so can anyone who actually knows comment or change it? Thanks. 218.247.230.91 09:42, 19 August 2010 (EDT)

I don't think so. The air in Beijing is not good but is not worse than in most cities of the same size.

I've been in Beijing on-and-off since early 2007, and the air quality has improved a fair bit. The last few days (for example) were pretty bad, but I remember back in the day you couldn't see the next building over the road about 50% of the time. So it's improved, but it's still much worse than Shanghai, Xi'an, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. (WT-en) Sachabrunel 02:59, 11 October 2010 (EDT)

Laundry advice deletion

Few weeks ago i've posted an entire paragraph "Laundry advice" explaining to travelers where they can do their laundry in Beijing for very little money. Why it has been deleted and by who?!! I will post it again and if it bothers someone may he display his reasons why he doesn't want travelers to make their laundry for a reasonable sum of money. Does someone from the hotels/agency here has interest in ripping-off tourists??

As you can see from the [edit history] of this article, I changed the laundry entry. It is not deleted but moved to the cope section and also reduced as it was way too long and also very touty. Feel free to expand the description, but please do not turn it into a long advertisement for one service (also please put new entries to the talk page at the end and sign it by clicking the second button from the right above the edit field)., --(WT-en) ClausHansen 03:49, 1 October 2010 (EDT)

Are you joking me or what?! Do you call this changing the laundry entry? "You can have your laundry done in most hotels. They will charge you by clothing article, which will be quite expensive at least at top end hotels. There are also laundry shops scattered around the city. If you want to save money, try to find one that charge you according to weight." Are you from Beijing at all?! There are NO laundry services here that charge by weight, the students one is the only. You completely deleted the directions of the service i posted. How are people supposed to find the place?? What's that logic??? I am again replacing the article as it was with all the directions. If you want to shorten it don't delete the directions, that makes no sense!!!

Internet access

I'm removing this from the page:

August 13, 2010, terminal 3 new wireless network "Airport WiFi (FREE)" put into use, this is the last one to put into use wireless network, also marked the Beijing capital international Airport has been wireless network coverage. The passenger can free get to the Internet, but need to be effective certificate by the account, and the new rear can log on the Internet authentication, most per person a day can apply for three accountS, a account can free online 5 hours.

Quick access to WiFi by mobile phone in Beijing Airport from 15,Nov. 2010. Since that, passenger can easily obtain WIFI account and password by mobile phone. Whether China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and international roaming mobile phone users, are all applicable to this method.

As I can't really understand it, and didn't manage to use the WiFi in the airport. I think the registration pages were in Chinese. If anyone knows better, please fix it! M Blissett (talk) 17:20, 18 November 2012 (UTC)