Coach Day Tour - Beijing Imperial Culture Tour with Lunch

At 8:30am, meet your guide at your centrally located hotel in Beijing and kick off your tour by heading for Summer Palace, the largest and the most well-preserved royal park in China. It is famed as “The Museum of Royal Gardens”. After this orientation tour of Summer Palace, you will be captivated by the traditional Chinese philosophy of harmonious balance between natural landscape, stream, water, and artificial man-made structures including pavilions, bridges, and halls.

The next visit is Jingshan Park. It is formerly a private imperial garden attached to the grounds of the Forbidden City. Climb to the Wanchun Pavilion you can get the best panoramic view of the Forbidden City.

Later you will be taken to the Beihai Park, a former imperial garden first built in the 11th century. Admire the remarkable attractions like Nine Dragon Screen, a screen wall built in 1402 with reliefs of nine different Chinese dragons brick carvings on both side, and the White Pagoda, a 40-m high stupa placed on the highest point on Jade Flower Island, built to honour the visit of the 5th Dalai Lama in 1651. Its body is made of white stone. Sun, moon and flame engravings decorate the surface of the tower. 

Head for Shichahai Lake area and take a Hutong Rickshaw Tour to an old courtyard for roughly an hour. You will walk into a local family and spend some time with ordinary Chinese people. Hutongs are small alleyways where people live together in communities of homes packed into a small area. Exploring Hutongs by rickshaw can find the residents playing Chinese chess, Mahjong, eating and relaxing on the streets. Hutong is like a museum of Beijing's folk customs.

Tour concludes at 5:00pm in the Houhai. Houhai has become known for its nightlife as many residences along the lake shore have been converted into restaurants, bars, and cafes. The area is especially popular with foreign tourists visiting Beijing and is also often visited by the expatriate community and the younger generations of locals.