These three attractions are located close to each other. In a not-so-busy day, you can visit all of them on the same day if you start your journey early. The area around these these destinations were heavily guarded by security guards. Be prepared to go through some security checks when you enter these attractions.
Palace Museum
- Grade: 5A (AAAAA)
- Official website: https://en.dpm.org.cn/
Beijing is home to the capital of the two most recent China dynasties, Ming and Qing. The amount of resources they put into the palace were enormous and honestly, quite incredible. Even after many years and being through different wars and conflicts, the Palace Museum remains one of the most well preserved palace in the world.
This explains why no matter what time of the year, the Palace Museum is always crowded. Your only hope for a pleasant visit is to get ahead of the crowd and be there when it opens (around 8:30am). There are merchants along the way to the entrance of the museum. You can buy a nicely drawn Palace map for CNY 20. The quality of the map is quite good. Passport holders line up at a different counter than the locals. In fact, most locals do not even need to line up. They use WeChat to reserve their electronic tickets.
Before you leave the counter, make sure you also rent the audio guide (especially for the kids too). It will make a huge difference to your visit because the audio guide will explain each item in more details and the palace is famous for its attention to details. Besides the beautiful and exquisitie architecure, you will also find ancient trees (some over 600 years old) and royal gardens.
Due to its shear size and its popularity, most kids will likely find the visit tiring and frustrating. In addition, most buildings do not allow anyone to go inside. This means you will be fighting with the other tourists and locals for a spot to peek inside. In spite of this, this is still a must see attraction for anyone who come to Beijing.
Ring roads of Beijing
Take a look at the Beijing street map above. Do you notice that major roads form enclosed rings? In fact, major roads are called ring roads. And the center of these rings? It's the palace. So you can see how important is the palace to the Chinese.
Tiananmen Square
Directly north of the mausoleum and separating it from the Palace Museum is the Tiananmen Square. It is one of the top ten largest city squares in the world. Having an open space between two solemn buildings gives you some room to breath and to reflect. The square itself was also home to some major events, most notably the Tiananmen Incident in 1976 and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Mausoleum of Mao Zedong
The mausoleum of Mao Zedong houses the embalmed body of Mao Zedong. It probably means more to the local Chinese than to any tourist. My boys were eager to see that his body remained mostly intact after all these years. For most tourists, however, I think the wait was not worth it.