Beijing in 6 Hours
 

We have a 6 hour layover in Beijing and we plan to go the restaurant in Grand Hyatt to have Peking Duck dinner. What would be the best way to go to the hotel? Taxi? Train? We'll arrive around 6PM, connecting to a 12 Midnight flight. Assuming dinner will take one hour and we need to be back in PEK Airport at 10PM, can we squeeze in anything else? We'll be carrying no luggage and we have Chinese visa.

You definitely would want to take a taxi, but it's going to very, very tight. The airport is 45 minutes to an hour from the city and traffic in Beijing is really, really bad. Others may have a different opinion, but I think you'll be lucky if you can manage just the dinner.

I think I have to agree with PTravel here; unfortunately with Beijing traffic getting to the Hyatt, eating dinner, and getting back to the airport in time to get to the gate, etc, is going to take your whole six hours. I will admit, though, the Duck at the Hyatt might just be worth it. If you imagine Beijing as a (really big!) clock, the airport is outside of 2, but the Hyatt is way down at the 4 or 5 (if memory serves).

I might advise, though, considering you'll be landing right in the heart of rush hour, to take the subway back into the city. If your Chinese is none/limited, cab might be the most reliable option, but if you're daring I think the subway might save you 20-30 minutes at 6:00PM. Heading back to the airport, though, cab should be fine.

Six hours should be plenty, but if I hate to say I would advise against being too greedy and trying to squeeze in something else. Otherwise, enjoy the evening in Beijing!

Squeeze anything else? On a bad traffic day, you will be lucky to get there by 10pm, not even talking about eating a duck!

I don't know which terminal you are going to arrive in Beijing, the new one may take you quite a while to walk out. The new subway is your only option to get there, and I won't take a chance for taxi coming back to the airport. One block on 2nd or 3rd ring road, you will miss your flight. Strongly advice you to get back by subway.

Why you want to have a dinner in Hyatt? There are a number of good places for duck and closer to the airport. Even you got there before 8pm, will you enjoy it when you need to check your watch 6 times per hour?

Thank you all.
Getting paranoid now... Thinking of Plan B.

Any great Peking Duck restaurants NEAR the airport that is worth going to?

I don't know how familar you are with Peking Duck, sorry to go through this just in case other people don't know.

The most famous place for Peking Duck is called Quanjude since 1864, obviously it did not start from Grand Hyatt :)

Check this official website http://www.quanjude.com.cn/e_about.html

If you think Peking Duck in Grand Hyatt is great, try the original one. Do remember though, do NOT take the set menu or go upstair eating in a small room. They are not as good as the normal ones served in the big hall, and cost too much for nothing.

If anyone has few hours in Beijing, go to Ya Yun Cun Quanjude Roasted Duck Restaurant at No 309, Huizhong Beli, Chaoyang District (email [email protected], tel: +86 10-64801685/86), it is near the North 5th Ring Road. From the airport, there aren't much traffic at that direction.

The other option is Guomen Quanjude Roasted Duck Restaurant at the Ground Floor of Jing Xin Building, No 2. East 3rd Ring Road North, Chaoyang District (email [email protected], tel: +86-10-84492759/60). Although this branch is closer to the city centre, but it's next to the airport express highway, so you shouldn't have any problem with traffic. Oh, if you know where Hilton hotel is, this restaurant is next to the Hilton.

The best branch, and the 1864 original Quanjude branch is in Qianmen, but that's too far to reach from the airport, if you only have few hours.

I don't think they take reservations, becasue nobody can estimate the traffic in Beijing, even locals. So queuing is the only way for it. I normally go to Qianmen branch (I love the duck so much, that's why I know all of this), and queue for 30 minutes.

The good thing is I normally eat at 7:30, as most of fellow travellors here are from the western world will do, not as early as local Chinese. So we all avoided the huge queue from 5pm to 6:30pm.

Last thing I want to say is, the issue certificates for each duck they serve (although sometimes they run out of them), and all certificate are numbered since 1864 (so we've been told:)). The last one I had was 1.2 billion or something around that number, it's a nice touch and brings memory back.

Enjoy your duck!

I agree with the recommendation of Quanjude -- I've eaten there many times and I love the Peking duck. There are two Quanjude locations -- unfortunately, I don't recall the names of the areas, but one is in an office building in a new shopping district, the other in a rather seedy older area. The older one is where you want to go. There are also two grades of duck -- regular and superior. Go for the superior -- it's not expensive and it's out of this world. Finally, be careful at the entrance -- the restaurant is up a small driveway. Extremely aggressive beggars tend to congregate there and they've not only gone after me, but my Chinese associates as well. This is the most aggressive panhandling I've seen in China. If you take a taxi, ask the driver to take you up to the entrance so you can by-pass the beggars. When you leave, ask the restaurant to call a taxi for you.

www.quanjude.com.cn


closest to airport? but maybe a franchise location

Beijing Jingxin Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant
Add. A2 Dongsanhuan Beilu, Chaoyang District;
Tel: 86-10-64660895.

6 hours should be plenty, Assuming it takes you an hour to deplane and clear immigration (I'm being very conservative and giving you a pretty bad scenario), you can take the Airport train (which I've never done) to Dongzhimen (assuming 45mins). It's now 745. Grab a cab there to the Hyatt/Quanjude/Da Dong/Liqun (do an FT search for Duck). Assume 45 minutes (again bad scenario), its now 830. There is no reason that this meal cannot be eaten in an hour. Now its 930. Cab back to airport... 10-1030 PM..

Also for a midnight flight, since you're carrying bags and I assume will be checked through, there is no need for you to be at the airport before 11PM.

To put it short, you've got time. Get the duck.

BIG THANK YOU to all who responded.

We're in BGS Lounge now, waiting for board.

This evening we arrived from JFK at 6PM as scheduled. We were met at the Airport by a driver who took us to one of the QUANDUJE's restaurants. I had originally asked for the restaurants that were suggested here, but my friend who was recently in Beijing somehow changed the location and he wrote it down in Chinese for me. Little did I know, the Quanduje's rest he wanted us to go is actually in town, about 5 minutes of so from Tiananmen Square (which is not that far from our original plan, MADE IN CHINA at The Grand Hyatt)

The problem with this restaurant is that it's in pedestrian only street. The driver was not 100% familiar with it, so he parked the car 15 minutes from the restaurant, so we had to walk in the cold for a bit (We are going to Bali, so we left our coats back home, not thinking we would ever need to be outside a lot in Beijing).

Anyhow, after a brisk walk, we got to the restaurant, got seated in very informal cafe style (benches around a table) with a menu that says FAST FOOD DUCK for RMB90. I then said that it was a wrong restaurant and I wanted to go to the real duck restaurant where they serve the whole duck.

We were then taken to the back building, where the 'real' restaurant that my friend suggested is located.

By then, it was 750PM, we got seated (there were few people waiting, but our driver somehow got us a table right away after pulling the "they just came all the way from NYC and need to eat duck before flying again"

The duck was in one word, DIVINE, and almost worth all the trouble (including obtaining a Chinese visa).

We were back at the airport by 9:30PM.

It's one of those little adventures we would not forget.

Glad to see it all worked out... albeit not quite as you expected!

China has a habit of working like you found it - the guy doing the writing down figures that it's a better idea for you to go to a different branch and just arranges it. Things like asking you don't enter into it!!!!

Surprisingly your local driver didn't bring you to the right place straight away, how strange.

Did you went inside the oldest part of the Qianmen Branch of Quanjude? It is quite different inside that "little room with stone gate". If you were there, you will know what I mean.

In tropical Singapore now. We went to the branch that has the original stone facade. The driver doesn't speak English, but he did point to the facade where there is a plaque in English saying something about original stone. We were so cold, we glanced at it and started walking fast afterwards.

By the way, what's with the trolley and the track?

Those are the replicas of old BJ trolley bus. The link is in Chinese, but there are couple of exterior & interior picture of the bus.