3 Days: Beijing and Beyond
Three days gives Beijing enough room to breathe: one day for the palace and square, one for the wall, and a third for the parts of the city that don’t show up on a postcard. Here’s the plan, plus the logistics you actually need to sort before you land. Want the same three days with none of the visa talk? Our 3-day Beijing itinerary covers the sightseeing only.
Book these before you go:
- Forbidden City tickets release online exactly 7 days ahead and sell out for weekends
- A Mutianyu Great Wall tour if you’d rather skip arranging your own driver
- A hotel in Dongcheng near Wangfujing; check rates on Agoda before you land
| Day | Focus | Distance from center |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiananmen Square + Forbidden City + Jingshan Park | In city |
| 2 | Great Wall at Mutianyu | ~90 min / 73km |
| 3 | Temple of Heaven + hutongs | In city |
Before You Land
The 240-hour visa-free transit scheme covers roughly 55 nationalities, including the US, UK, Canada and most of the EU, and lets you skip the visa entirely if you’re holding a confirmed onward ticket to a third country and enter through an approved port like Beijing. A separate 30-day visa-free entry scheme covers about 50 other countries with no onward ticket required, but the US is not on that second list, so Americans depend entirely on the transit scheme’s onward-ticket rule. The clock starts at midnight the day after arrival, so a three-day trip uses less than a third of your window. Before you fly, not after, install and test a VPN; the Great Firewall blocks Google, Maps, WhatsApp and Instagram, and it blocks most VPN providers’ own websites too once you’re inside. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with a foreign card ahead of time using your passport and international phone number, since it becomes the default way to pay for nearly everything.
Day 1: Tiananmen and the Forbidden City
Can You Buy a Forbidden City Ticket After You Land?
No. Every ticket is real-name, passport-required and released online at 8pm Beijing time exactly seven days before the visit date, with no gate sales at all. If you land without a booking already made, the earliest you can visit is a week out, so this has to happen before your flight, not after.
Get through the airport (Airport Express to Sanyuanqiao from PEK, or the newer Daxing Express to Caoqiao from PKX, ¥25-35), grab a Yikatong card or fire up the transport QR in your payment app, and head for the Forbidden City . Tiananmen Square next door needs its own separate WeChat reservation and its own security check, so plan for two lines, not one. Climb Jingshan Park afterward for ¥2 and the best rooftop view of the palace in the city, then have dinner at Siji Minfu, a duck restaurant near the Forbidden City that beats the more famous Quanjude on both price and quality, no tour-group markup involved.
Day 2: The Wall
Skip Badaling; it’s the closest section to the city and also the busiest, wall-to-wall with tour groups by mid-morning. Mutianyu, roughly 90 minutes out, gets you a cable car up (check current hours on the official Mutianyu site ), a toboggan down, and noticeably fewer people, all while showing you the same wall. Go early. Pack water, sunscreen and shoes you don’t mind sweating through, and know going in that no, it isn’t visible from space with the naked eye, no matter what you’ve heard.
Day 3: Temple of Heaven and the Hutongs
Start at the Temple of Heaven , ¥15 for the park alone or a bit more with the halls, and watch the locals doing tai chi or playing cards under the cypress trees before the tour buses arrive. In the afternoon, trade Nanluoguxiang’s coffee shops and souvenir stalls for Wudaoying or Fangjia hutong instead; both feel like an actual neighborhood rather than a shopping street with old brick. Wander Houhai’s lakeside in the evening, or grab a bowl of zhajiangmian somewhere unglamorous, and use the last night to try hotpot if you haven’t already, a copper-pot lamb version runs about ¥100-150 a person.
Getting Around
The metro, run by Beijing Subway , is your default: about 27 lines, English signage throughout, fares from ¥3. DiDi fills the gaps, but link your card through Alipay or WeChat first, since cards added directly in the DiDi app frequently get blocked by the home bank.
Where to Stay
Dongcheng district, near Wangfujing, keeps you close to the Forbidden City and the hutongs both, which matters more than it sounds like over three days of walking.
Watch For
The “tea ceremony” invitation from a friendly stranger near Tiananmen or Wangfujing is a scam every time, ending in a bill nobody agreed to. Same goes for the art-gallery version. Buy Great Wall and Forbidden City tickets only through official channels; touts near both sell fakes.
Money and Language
Everything runs on the Chinese yuan, and you’ll rarely need to touch a bill once Alipay or WeChat Pay is linked, though small hutong stalls and rural vendors sometimes only take cash, so keep some on hand. English gets you further at hotels and major sights than it does at a noodle counter, and a translation app closes that gap fast. If a third afternoon opens up before you fly out, Qianmen’s restored old shopfronts near Tiananmen or the Panjiayuan antique market are worth the extra hour over another lap of Wangfujing.
Three days is the sweet spot where you stop feeling rushed and start actually noticing the city around the landmarks. Staying longer or heading elsewhere in China, our Beijing-and-beyond guide has the full logistics rundown this itinerary keeps brief.