Not every day in Beijing needs to be:
Forbidden City → Temple of Heaven → Summer Palace → Great Wall → exhausted Dad. 😂
Sometimes we just want to go somewhere…
and spend time there.
On this particular day, Dad & Elaine took the Beijing Metro (北京地铁, Běijīng Dìtiě) to Wangfujing (王府井, Wángfǔjǐng).
There was no guide waiting for us.
No tour bus.
No complicated itinerary.
Elaine wanted to revisit a bookstore she remembered from our previous Beijing trip.
So that became our plan.
Metro → bookstore → wander around Wangfujing → stay into the evening → Metro back.
That’s it.
And perhaps that’s exactly why this is a useful story for someone wondering what traveling Beijing independently can actually feel like.
If you’re still at the planning stage, start with our Beijing Essential Guide for First-Time Visitors for the practical side of making your first Beijing trip work.
☕ Our Day at a Glance
Place: Wangfujing, Beijing
How we got there: Beijing Metro
Main plan: Revisit Wangfujing Bookstore
Travel style: Independent and deliberately slow
What we did afterward: Wandered around Wangfujing into the evening
What made the day work: We weren’t trying to “complete” Beijing
🚇 First, We Took the Beijing Metro
There it was on the train:
下一站 — Next Station
王府井 — Wangfujing
For someone planning a first China trip from overseas, Beijing’s Metro map can look rather intimidating.
Lots of lines.
Lots of interchange stations.
A very large city.
But once you’re actually using it, the problem becomes much smaller:
Where are we now?
Where do we need to get off?
That’s all Dad & Elaine needed that day.
The station information also illustrates why the Metro became so useful during our Beijing trips.
Different parts of this enormous city become connected through the network.
We didn’t need a private driver to take us to Wangfujing.
We didn’t need to join a tour.
We took the train.
Dad & Elaine have used Beijing’s public transport repeatedly on our own trips. If you’re wondering how that worked in practice, we’ve shared the broader experience in How We Explored Beijing by Ourselves — Subway, Local Food & Practical Tips From Our Real China Trip.
For this particular day, however, we only needed the Metro to do one job:
get us to Wangfujing.
🏙️ Then We Walked Out Into Wangfujing
And there was our next destination:
Wangfujing Bookstore (王府井书店, Wángfǔjǐng Shūdiàn).
This wasn’t Dad dragging Elaine into another historical site.
😂
Elaine wanted to come back.
She had visited the bookstore on our previous Beijing trip and remembered it.
So this time, we returned.
📚 Elaine Wanted to Visit the Bookstore Again
One thing was immediately obvious:
this is a serious bookstore.
Books.
Books.
More books.
And, naturally, Dad eventually found himself near things like:
economics
management
AI
and…
Chinese history.
😂
Most of the books we saw were in Chinese.
That’s worth knowing if you’re an international traveler imagining this as somewhere to stock up on English holiday reading.
But that didn’t make the bookstore uninteresting.
Quite the opposite.
There were children’s books, cultural products, gifts and other things to browse.
And even when you can’t read every title, a large bookstore can tell you something about what people around you are reading, learning and buying.
For Elaine, it was simply somewhere she had enjoyed before.
And that’s another reason Dad likes returning to places.
On the first visit, everything is new.
On the next visit:
“Oh! I remember this.”
A city slowly becomes less abstract.
And apparently one big Beijing bookstore wasn’t enough for us. 😂 On another slow day, Dad & Elaine discovered PAGE ONE and our little coffee-and-books oasis behind busy Qianmen.
🥢 Then We Stopped for Lunch
After spending time in the bookstore, Dad & Elaine went looking for lunch nearby.
Nothing fancy.
We found a food court and simply chose what we felt like eating.
Elaine chose fried flat rice noodles — the kind of southern Chinese food that was already familiar to us.
Dad went in a completely different direction.
Prawns.
Vegetables.
Rice.
😂
And this is something worth showing a first-time traveler.
Being in Beijing doesn’t mean every meal has to become:
“TODAY WE MUST EAT A FAMOUS BEIJING DISH.”
Sometimes you’re hungry.
You see something you like.
You order it.
You eat.
Then you continue exploring.
But while we were there, Dad deliberately photographed two foods that were much more distinctly Beijing.
👀 Two Very Beijing Things Caught Dad’s Eye
First:
The English sign actually called them:
BEIJING DOORNAIL MEAT PIE.
😂
These round stuffed meat pies are known as 门钉肉饼 (méndīng ròubǐng) — their shape is associated with the large decorative door studs seen on traditional Chinese gates.
Dad didn’t photograph them because we’d ordered them.
We hadn’t.
Dad photographed them because:
“Eh… what’s that?”
Exactly the kind of little thing that catches your attention when you’re walking around China.
Then Dad saw something else.
豆汁儿 (dòuzhīr).
Beijing’s famous fermented mung-bean drink.
This one Dad knew.
Because on an earlier Beijing trip, Dad had already tried it.
And let’s just say…
Dad remembered it. 😂
If you’re wondering what dòuzhīr tastes like — and whether Dad managed to finish it — we’ve already told that story in How We Explored Beijing by Ourselves — Subway, Local Food & Practical Tips From Our Real China Trip.
This time?
Dad was happy just taking the photograph. 😂
If those two very Beijing foods have made you curious, our Beijing Food Guide for First-Time Visitors goes much further into what to try — and what our Beijing guide thinks first-time visitors can safely skip. 😂
🚶 Then We Went Back to Wandering
Lunch finished.
No next attraction waiting.
No guide checking the time.
So Dad & Elaine went back outside…
and continued wandering around Wangfujing.
🚶 Then We Did Something Very Complicated
We walked.
😂
There wasn’t another major attraction that had to be reached by 3:15pm.
We didn’t have a guide waving a little flag.
We simply stayed around Wangfujing.
For travelers who want the deeper background to this famous commercial street — rather than our very ordinary day on it — we’ve already explored Wangfujing Street (王府井大街): Beijing’s Timeless Avenue of Traditions and Surprises.
Today, we’re just walking.
🌆 Wangfujing Changed as Evening Arrived
As the daylight disappeared, Wangfujing didn’t empty.
People were still out.
Shopping.
Meeting friends.
Queuing.
Looking around.
Doing exactly what Dad & Elaine were doing:
spending an evening in the city.
This is one of the things that can be difficult to picture before your first trip.
You know what Beijing’s monuments look like.
But:
What happens after sightseeing?
Sometimes nothing particularly dramatic.
You walk.
Look at shops.
Watch people.
Stop when something catches your eye.
Keep going.
🍊 Elaine Saw Something Dad Hadn’t Noticed
As evening arrived, Elaine spotted the big white bear.
Dad saw:
ice cream. 😂
Elaine saw something else.
She told Dad this was connected with one of Beijing’s old local drink brands — the sort of brand that can carry childhood memories for people who grew up in the city.
The older story is Arctic Ocean soda (北冰洋汽水, Běibīngyáng Qìshuǐ).
Its roots go back to the old Beiping Ice Factory, and the familiar orange soda became part of everyday Beijing life for generations.
The ice cream Dad was looking at is part of the brand’s newer life.
Then Elaine made a connection Dad hadn’t made.
“Other cities have these too.”
She remembered Xi’an (西安, Xī’ān).
There, the local name you’ll see again and again is:
Bingfeng soda (冰峰汽水, Bīngfēng Qìshuǐ).
For many Xi’an locals, Bingfeng isn’t simply another orange soft drink.
It belongs with the city’s food culture — especially the classic combination of local snacks such as roujiamo (肉夹馍) and liangpi (凉皮).
And Elaine mentioned Guangzhou too.
That made Dad realize something.
A traveler can walk into a Chinese city and see:
“orange soda.”
A local may see:
school days + summer + neighborhood shops + meals with family + childhood.
Different city.
Different bottle.
Different memory.
Beijing has 北冰洋.
Xi’an has 冰峰.
Guangzhou has its own old local drinks too, including names such as 亚洲沙示 (Asia Sarsaparilla) and 广氏菠萝啤 (Guangshi Pineapple Beer).
Suddenly Dad wasn’t looking at an ice-cream shop anymore.
He was looking at something Elaine had noticed before him:
Cities don’t only have famous buildings and famous foods. They can have their own childhood tastes too.
🐼 And We Brought an Old Beijing Friend Back
Before we continued walking, we took one more photograph.
The panda in Dad’s arms wasn’t bought that evening.
Elaine chose Panda at Beijing Zoo when she was eight years old, during our family’s first China trip in 2013.
More than a decade later, she brought her childhood travel companion back to Beijing.
And this time Panda had company:
Cheers. 😂
So there we were in Wangfujing:
an old Beijing brand behind us,
Elaine’s childhood Beijing panda in Dad’s arms,
and Cheers joining a much later chapter of our China journeys.
Sometimes returning to a city isn’t really about seeing something new.
It’s about noticing how much has changed since the last time you were there.
We’ve told Panda’s longer homecoming story in our Wangfujing Street journey.
Panda came back to Beijing.
Elaine came back older.
And somehow Dad ended up carrying everybody. 😂
🚇 Eventually, the Sign Pointed Us Home
By then, the street lights were on.
And one of Dad’s photographs captured a very useful little sign:
Dong’anmen Street ←
Beijing Department Store ←
Wangfujing West Street →
and:
Wangfujing Subway Station ↑
There was our way back.
No tour bus to find.
No driver to call.
We simply headed toward the Metro.
☕ What Did We Actually “Do” in Beijing That Day?
Not very much.
And that’s the point.
We:
took the Metro
→ returned to a bookstore Elaine liked
→ looked around
→ wandered Wangfujing
→ watched the city move around us
→ stayed into the evening
→ took the Metro back.
There was no pressure to collect ten attractions.
No need to prove we’d “done Beijing properly.”
After several trips, Dad & Elaine have increasingly appreciated days like this.
Because Beijing is enormous.
If every day becomes a race between famous attractions, you may see a lot of Beijing…
without spending much time simply being in Beijing.
🧭 If This Is Your First Beijing Trip
We’re not suggesting you skip the Forbidden City.
😂
Your first Beijing trip will probably include several famous places — and it should.
But give yourself enough time that every hour doesn’t need an admission ticket.
Our Beijing Essential Guide for First-Time Visitors recommends giving Beijing enough time rather than compressing one of the world’s great capitals into a two-day checklist.
A slower afternoon or evening isn’t necessarily wasted time.
It may be when the city starts feeling like somewhere you’re actually traveling through…
rather than a list you’re trying to finish.
❤️ Why We’re Sharing an Ordinary Day
Nothing extraordinary happened.
That’s why this story belongs in IN THE CITY.
Before your first China trip, you can find thousands of beautiful photographs of Beijing’s famous sights.
But perhaps you also need to see:
a Metro sign
a bookstore
people out in the evening
a random ice-cream shop
a street sign pointing back toward the subway.
Because those photographs answer a different question:
“Could I actually spend a day in Beijing on my own?”
For Dad & Elaine, this particular day looked like:
Metro → Wangfujing → books → wandering → evening → Metro home.
Nothing heroic.
Nothing difficult.
Just:
a day in Beijing.
And perhaps after seeing it, you’ll think:
“Ahhh… I can picture that.”
Maybe even:
“We could do that too.”
That’s exactly why we’re inviting you along.
☕🏙️
Real Journeys. Real Stories. Real China.
See China. Understand It Better.
