Best Free Walking Tour Beijing Near Me

4worldlovers:
In the modern city of Beijing lies a place where you can still see the authentic old Beijing. The place is known as Shichahai Area where most local residents still live in traditional courtyard-styled houses dotted along old hutongs. Your Beijing trip is not complete without visiting Shichahai Area.

You will go around those existent hutongs either by richshaw and on foot on our pre-arranged hutong tours. You will visit local families, eat home cooked lunch and learn Beijing folk arts (Papercutting, Inside Painted Snuff Bottles, Shuttlecock and Yoyo), having an authentic picture of Beijing.


Service: Entrance fee for Drum Tower + private tour guide + Bike + car


Experience: Chengxian Street, Bell Tower, Yandaixiejie and Shichahai area （Back Lake)


Way of transfer (hotel - starting point): subway, public bus or taxi (pay on your own)


Papercutting is one of the most popular handicrafts in Beijing. It in an art of paper, scissors and hands. They depicted ancient Chinese generals and beautiful women, Peking opera characters and facial masks, Chinese zodiac animals, and so on. There is a wider variety of papercutting patterns available than you can imagine.


Chinese paper cutting is a unique art form and has existed for a long history. Because of its unique style, paper-cutting is popular among Chinese people and foreigners as well. The art of paper-cutting was listed in the first group of national non-material cultural heritage approved by the Chinese State Council in 2006, and it was listed as a world non-material cultural heritage by UNESCO in the same year.


Snuff bottles were popularly used by the common Chinese and royal family members as well during the Qing Dynasty. The snuff bottles contain powdered tobacco as a kind of a remedy for common illnesses such as colds, headaches and stomach disorders. Though tobacco smoking was later banned and became illegal during the Qing Dynasty, but the use of snuff was permitted due to its meidical functions.


Snuff bottles were made out of many different materials including glass, jade, ivory, wood, metal, ceramic and porcelain, though probably the most commonly used material was glass. Chinese snuff bottles were typically decorated with paintings or carvings,a kind of folk arts desirable for today's collectors.