Beijing 2024 - Hutong Hotel Stay Part 1

 

With early dinner done at the Beijing Duck Restaurant, it was time to relocate ourselves from our cheap budget hotel, to a more upscale Hutong Style Hotel. It was still in the same neighbourhood cause I hate moving around too much during my travels. Above is the name of the hotel in case you are interested.  

But first we had to checked out from our first hotel first. This is the lobby while I waited for hubby to collect our luggage. I wanted a photo here so that I could remember what it was like staying here. The staff were very friendly during our stay, and we were aware that it was a local budget hotel so we weren't really expecting much. It was just a room to sleep at night and put our things in as we go about exploring Beijing. But our next hotel was a splurge for us, so we could relax and recover from our fatigue and enjoy the last remaining leg of our trip. 

Making our way to the new place via the small alleys around the Hutong. It's so charming to me!

Street signs and wall decoration in the concrete wall. I think this was the alley name where our hotel was located. This was the first time we were here in the daylight. We've located the place before during the night time when we were researching where the hotel was.

Although it was in a hutong, the hotel was pretty high tech. We rang the door bell, and showed our face to the camera, and the front door was automatically unlocked for us. Upon entering, we were greeted by the guardian deity of the place!

Walking in, it was so much more spacious inside! With courtyards and different section of the place. You can't tell it was so nice outside because the entrance was just a small door at a narrow alley! What a pleasant surprised. Sure I did googled the place before booking, but it's always nice when it turned out nicer than you imagined. 

It was hard to tell where was the reception area since the whole place just looked like you've entered into someone's hall. Even the deco looked like it was from your grandparent's house! Lol. So this area, or around it was the lobby and reception area. Basically we've only met 2 hotel staff during our stay, and mainly interacted with the lady staff. She looked like she lives here! Lol. 

After checking in, we were show to our room, which was at the inner part of the building. Look how beautiful and open concept the place is! Super love it, and was so happy I booked it to experience what it was like living in a hutong. No business hotel for me thank you! I'll take this unique stay anytime anywhere if money wasn't an issue! It was slightly more expensive, but it was also more modern and cleaner and brighter, and more private.

So many courtyards to go thru! Hahahaha

The friendly hotel staff who taught my husband how to buy online stuff and having it delivered to the hotel. Delivery took like 30mins! He ordered non-stop! The staff was kind enough to let us use her mobile number as it's required for online purchase via the mobile app. Whenever we have time, we also linger outside and talked to her asking her about life in Beijing. She told us that you don't really need to leave your house in Beijing, you could order and get anything delivered to you! 

Beijing 2024 - Dinner of Peking Duck at Dashilan (大栅栏) Area

 

One cannot visit Beijing without eating Beijing Duck! It was on my to-do list of this trip, even though I suspect it would be expensive. My husband was trying to avoid agreeing to dine at a Beijing Duck restaurant, but after so many days, I've had enough excuses. With the success of us visiting most of our tourist attraction, I thought it was time to reward ourselves at our mid way point! So on our way back from QianMen, I took the back alley route and found this Jing Fu Xiang restaurant that looked local and reasonable.

It was again, another late lunch, or early dinner, depending on how you see it. So the restaurant was practically empty! Yay! We asked if they were still in service, and was guided inside to our seats.

They seated us on a table next to the window overlooking the streets outside. I love the ambiance! It really felt like we were dining in a nice Chinese restaurant finally! The room was also quiet empty, so it was totally relaxing! 

We were served some flower tea right away, but it was hot tea. I didn't quite like it cause I think it's chrysanthemum tea. But it was good service!

Menu was provided for us, even though you could also order it via a QR code.

Here is the menu information.

We ended up ordering a bowl of JaJiangMian to share, cause I read that it was one of those dishes you had to try in Beijing. I was surprised at how the noodle was served. It looked so pretty! Nothing like those black thing we had in Korea! Hahaha. I am not a fan of JaJiangMian, but I like how they serve it here in Beijing. 

This is what it looked like after mixing everything together. The pickled garlic was a pleasant surprised! It tasted very refreshing and cleanses the palate with each bite. I was quite hesitant to try it at first cause it looked green like it was perhaps mouldy or fermented. Glad I put my bias aside as I ended up loving it. 

We also ordered a small portion of Beijing Duck. It was sooooo good! We actually came back a second time to eat it again! Super love this dish. Please try one if you're ever in Beijing. This wasn't even a famous restaurant or an expensive one. But they did it so well. Of course you have to wrap it yourself with the pancake skin. So with this meal we actually checked off one of my bucket list in Beijing! I think I might have ordered sour and spicy soup here too, but somehow it's not in the picture.

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Library Next Door

 

While making our way out of BeiHai Park, we walked pass a structure next to it that also has the signature red door, blue door sign etc.

The building beyond the gate looked grand and solemn. Perhaps it was a government building?

Closer inspection saw that it was a library!

A library of ancient books! Wait what? They have a library just for ancient books? Wow. Hidden Gem! But it didn't looked like it was open to the public, or perhaps it was past the closing time. It was certainly a surprise find on my part. Spoiler alert, a library was on my trip itinerary. I just wasn't sure if I would have time to actually go visit it :P 

Anyway it was nice to know that there exist in China a library for ancient books! I thought that was super cool!

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Field of Orange and People Cosplaying

There was a corner which we accidentally went into that looked more like a western garden. There we saw a sea of orange flowers! It was like a scene of a Vincent Van Gogh painting! I guess the buildings at the background made the garden looked westernised.

Here is a different view with a Chinese structure there to remind you that we were still in China! I love this garden and also spend some time inside taking photos with the sea of flowers. They actually have some path leading in where you could walk in and take photos. 

Outside at the park area, more pavilions with more people taking photographs. 

This pavilion was closed off, so you can't enter. But there were so many people hanging around outside taking photos. We didn't spend much time here as the structure looked similar to the Confucius Temple we visited. 

Here is a sample of people dressing up and walking around taking photographs. 

From afar the costume looked pretty cool and impressive. With hair piece and make up and accessories. People in China take their photo shot very seriously! I guess it's not too expensive to have an experience like this. I've never dressed up in a Chinese costume before except that one time in kindergarten where I was performing during a Chinese New Year concert.....

After spending almost a day at the park, we finally made our way out from a different path.

Saw another nice banner of the park among these yellow sunflowers. 

Here is a selfie of me among the beautiful sea of orange flowers as a souvenir!

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Lotus Garden

 

A string of Pavilion standing on water at BeiHai Park. Lovely scenic place, but sadly so filled with people that we just walked through it and headed to our next aimless destination.

The next favourite place of mine was this Great Buddha Hall Historical Site. But my favourite part was actually outside of the hall instead of inside, cause that was where the Lotus Garden was! Weeee! What a hidden gem for me!

When you enter the place, the above is what it looked like. A T-shaped lotus pond. Not only that, they also have individual pots of lotus lining the I of the T-shape, if you get what I'm trying to say.... I spend quite a long time here just admiring the flowers and photographing them. So here are some that I love.

Super gigantic lotus that looked like lanterns. Their leaves are so huge that so much water droplets can be found on top of them. Seriously, these looked fake! But they are 100% real!

Look at that pool of water on the leaves! 

There are also a mixed of water lilies here. 

A huge yellow one.

White ones for the pure hearted.

I know it's boring to see so many flowers, but I can't help myself from taking and posting their photos.

A mixed of pink and white with a heart shaped green leaf.

One that could be made into your desktop background photo?

Scattered leaves and a single lotus and a single seed bud. Minimalistic picture. Ok. I'm done! Thank you for bearing with me! Just had to get it out of the system. 

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Calligraphy Exhibition

 

Open Luck Shrine! That is the literal translation of the sign outside this red gate here at BeiHai Park. What a lovely name! Who doesn't want to walk through it and open up their luck to welcome more fortune!

It leads to this hall with the name Heaven King something.....

And inside the hall was a calligraphy exhibition. I was drawn to the colours here. In my mind, Chinese calligraphy is always black in on white paper. But here I saw green, red, blue and yellow paper! Mind blown! It was a bonus as I actually love calligraphy!

It was just a small hall, but with many calligraphy on display. We spend some time here looking around.

Scrolls after scrolls to be admired. They weren't too artistic and fancy like some you will see outside of China (Ahem, National Gallery of Singapore....), but decent looking one which was still beautiful in their own ways. 

Calligraphy to me is an art form, a discipline, and of course, a documentation. What is there not to like about all that? Plus, I'm actually pretty good at it too :) I did a Chinese New Year calligraphy at my home Community Centre in 2025 after not picking up a brush for maybe 30 years? But I still got the foundation for it, so the writing wasn't half bad. If I find the photo of the calligraphy, I'll be sure to post it here one day! Lol.