3-Hour Beijing Life Experience: Hutongs, Chinese Cooking Class and Tea Ceremony Tour

Beijing, China

To experience authentic Beijing life in Beijing’s hutongs and the narrow residential lanes. You’ll visit the hutongs and the Drum and Bell Towers by rickshaw, visit a local vegetable market, learn how to cook some Chinese food in a beautiful courtyard, and partake in a traditional tea ceremony.

Meet your guide at the ticket office of the Drum Tower to start this tour and follow him or her to visit a local vegetable shop. You will purchase ingredients for the dumplings you will be taught how to cook afterwards. Your guide will help you in identifying many vegetables you have probably never seen before.

Following the vegetable market visit, your guide will take you to a 100-year-old courtyard, where you will get taught to make traditional Chinese dumplings. There are many special ways to make them, and there is no better place to learn this than in China. You will then be able to taste what you have cooked for your lunch.

After lunch you can relax as your rickshaw driver weaves through the ancient narrow lanes, also known as Beijing’s hutongs. The hutongs have captured traditional Beijing’s essence, and spending time here is a real look into authentic Beijing city life as many of Beijing’s residents still live in them and spend their days around the alleys. In fact, many of the alleys have been around for centuries. They sometimes feel a little bit like a village instead of one of the biggest cities in the world.

Within these hutongs, and lying at the northern end of the imperial axis that passes through the center of Beijing, the Drum and Bell towers are two of the oldest structures in the city. In ancient times they were used to officially mark time, with the bell announcing the start of the day and the drum marking the end of it. Today they are the centerpieces of one of the best-preserved hutong areas in China. There are traditional Chinese drum performances several times a day and the views of the surrounding hutong alleyways afforded from the top of either tower are spectacular.

To quench your thirst following the climb up the stairs, you will taste traditional Chinese tea at a teahouse inside the Bell Tower. If you thought tea tasting was easy, just watch the intricate processes involved in boiling Chinese tea – a process that differs for each type of tea.

After this, you will make your own way to your hotel.Traveler Reviews

Review by:   Michael W,    June 2017
Great tour and experience. Friendly guide and hosts made for a fun and memorable morning :-

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