China: Beijing
After visiting this city I (again) arrived to an old veteran traveller conclusion - it is much better to go on your own rather than sticking to the usual tourist guides. Not to mention that I had to discover by myself that Goggle Maps have a significant coordinate offset with respect to the GPS location (500-700m, year 2013, a Chinese government requirement), rendering the GM+GPS as a navigation tool almost useless. The satellite image seems to be aligned correctly and can be used, but it contains no annotations and you can get it lost easily without a data connection. Additionally, the visitors should not forget that Chinese taxi drivers cannot read the English alphabet, the only reliable way to get where you wanted is to show the driver a map with the name of the destination written in Chinese.
The Forbidden City is a nice place to visit without any doubt, but it is actually not much more than a painted shell struggling to preserve the spirit of old times against the endless crowd of tourists. On the contrary, Lama temple proved to be a much more spiritual place, a true sanctuary in the jungle of concrete and heavy traffic. Another thing that should not be missed is spending a few mornings in different Beijing parks. You will see native residents practicing T'ai chi and many other interesting activities, even the Chinese opera singing. Parks were definitely my favorite in Beijing.
Whatever impression you got about Chinese food, don't be afraid of it. Eat at any place that has a lot of native Chinese guests or customers, to me it would be a shame to eat in an international restaurant. If you are looking for the Peking duck, I would avoid the flashy luxurious restaurants as this dish may be at a silly high price. Again the average restaurants (the most crowded ones) are what I would recommend.
You can also visit The Great Wall, an authentic section of it is located some 70km NW of Beijing (The Great Wall of Badaling). Hotels organize tours but I suggest you skip this and go on your own, it's more fun to ride with the locals. Buses depart from the Deshengmen bus station, start early in the morning and you can complete your visit for a day.
