Passing Through the World - ALWAYS ON THE WAY
When winter arrives, Beijing sheds its crowds but bares its teeth — gusting winds and the occasional grey haze send most people indoors. So when the sky finally turns a clean, pale blue, don't waste it: lace up and head out. A winter city walk here hides quiet, genuine surprises.
This time we strung together a route of mostly indoor stops with short outdoor stretches — ideal for winter wandering and photography. Whenever the cold bit, we slipped indoors to thaw our fingers, then stepped back out into the light. By evening our camera rolls were overflowing, and so were we — the good kind of tired.
Recommended Route
1. National Art Museum of China (1.5-2 hours) 2. Pangmei Noodle House (1-1.5 hours) 3. Half Coffee (1 hour) 4. Wusi Street (10-15 minutes) 5. 77 Cultural and Creative Park (1 hour) 6. Former Site of Sino-French University (30 minutes) 7. Hui Temple at Songzhu Temple 8. Red Building of Peking University (2 hours)
Total distance: 4.4 KM
PART 01 National Art Museum of China
The National Art Museum of China marked its 60th anniversary with the sweeping survey "Beauty in the New Era — 60th Anniversary Series Exhibition," pulling masterpieces from its own vaults — Su Shi, Tang Yin, Bada Shanren, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, and Lin Fengmian beside foreign names like Picasso, Kathe Kollwitz, and Ansel Adams. Miss it and you'd wait a full decade for the next.
By the time we visited, that show had long since closed. We happened instead upon "Water Color and Mental Imagery — Li Qing's Watercolor Exhibition," where saturated washes and loose, restless brushwork bring animals leaping off the paper. Standing before them, I could almost hear the autumn wind raking through a pile of dry leaves.
National Art Museum of China - Opening hours: Daily 9:00-17:00 (last entry 16:00), closed Mondays (except statutory holidays) - Reserve via the "National Art Museum of China" official reservation system, or on-site (staff guide you before entry). ID card or photo of ID card required for entry - Metro Line 8, National Art Museum Station, Exit A
PART 02 Pangmei Noodle House (Longfu Branch)
I'd heard for ages that the viral Pangmei Noodle House lived up to the hype — and that on weekends the wait could stretch past three hours. Steer clear of weekends, though, and you'll wait only twenty minutes. For two of us, 111 RMB bought a bowl of mixed noodles, a bowl of fatty-intestine noodles, a brown-sugar glutinous rice cake, and a Langya potato — every bite earned its reputation.
PART 03 Half Coffee
Fifty meters from Pangmei, this little café pulls you in. Quan and I each ordered a signature "Summer Soseki" plus a pour-over, then settled into the coziest hour of the day. The Soseki lands bright and clean on the tongue — just the thing for anyone who likes a new flavor to chase.
PART 04 Wusi Street
Wusi Street in early November isn't a postcard, but the wide grove you cross on the way to 77 Cultural and Creative Park lets the sunlight slip through in long, shifting bars. We sank onto a bench and let the weak winter sun warm our faces — simple, and genuinely pleasant.
PART 05 77 Cultural and Creative Park
No ticket, no reservation — just a creative park built around drama and film and TV. It rotates in maker markets, open-air art happenings, and the occasional exhibition. The red-brick factories and spiralling steel stairs frame you from every angle — a scrappy, industrial-chic backdrop photographers have quietly claimed as their own. Tucked among them, a few cafés sit nearly empty, holding the hush of the place.
Come summer, they say the terraces here catch the evening breeze and the first city lights. There are three: the "Undefined Terrace Tennis Court" in Building 1, the "Sunset Terrace" next to the Former Site of Sino-French University, and the "Drama Terrace" crowning the 77 Theater building. Next summer, I mean to come back.
PART 06 Former Site of Sino-French University
It's a hybrid creature — Western bones under a Chinese tiled roof. Sino-French University grew out of the early-20th-century Work-Study Movement in France, when a band of ambitious young Chinese crossed the ocean, laboring by day and studying by night, hungry to master European science and culture and carry industry, education, and learning home to strengthen a struggling China.
The part you can actually enter isn't large. Book at least a day ahead — or, like us, you'll be left craning through the gate.
Former Site of Sino-French University - Opening hours: Daily 9:00-17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed Mondays (except statutory holidays) - Reserve in advance via the "Former Site of Sino-French University" official reservation system (1-7 days ahead). Real-name reservation required; on-site reservation not accepted
PART 07 Songzhu Temple . Zhizhu Temple . HUI Temple
Cross from the Sino-French University site into the hutong, wander a few turns, and Songzhu and Zhizhu temples appear. Both belong to one complex, first raised in the 21st year of Qianlong's reign (1756). Records say Zhizhu once served as a royal scripture-printing workshop and a residence for living buddhas; at its height, sixty to eighty scholars and some 860 monks worked side by side there.
In the 1950s, Songzhu, Zhizhu, and Fayuan temples fell silent as religious sites. Songzhu was swallowed by the Beijing Blind Persons' Rubber Factory. In the early 1960s, an electrical short circuit burned the northwest corner of Zhizhu's main hall. Through the 1970s, merging factories moved into Songzhu and became the Beijing Dongfeng Television Factory, and the Hall of Heavenly Kings, the bell and drum towers, and every building of Fayuan were torn down for assembly lines.
Zhizhu's decline, though, was not the end. In 2007 a Belgian named Juan van Walsem found the place and gave five years to its restoration — work the United Nations honored with its Asia-Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation. Today the temple holds event halls, meeting rooms, and a free public gallery, where modern art leans against ancient timber with a quietly strange harmony. HUI Temple, a tea room inside this rescued sanctuary, draws people on fair days to order a pot and sprawl on the cushions ringed around the hall, letting fatigue and worry drain away.
PART 08 Red Building of Peking University
Part Chinese, part Western in its lines, this is one of the key birthplaces of the Communist Party of China. Its red bricks and red tiles gave it the name "Red Building" when it rose in the autumn of 1918. Home to National Peking University's liberal arts, library, and administration, the library sat on the first floor — and in its southeast corner sat the office of Li Dazhao, then the library's director, who turned these rooms into a base for rallying progressive students, studying and spreading Marxism, and seeding the Party to come.
- Opening hours: Daily 9:00-17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed Mondays (except holidays) - Reserve in advance via the "Red Building of Peking University" official reservation system (1-7 days ahead). Real-name reservation required. Children 130cm and under (including 130cm) do not need reservations and may enter with a guardian
