Books About Beijing

Every year, my family goes to another country during the December holidays. But... we have a family tradition that every year, my sister and I will not know where we are going until 2 weeks before we leave! Then, our parents will get us books and we will do research on that country and make PowerPoint slides about that country. This time however, it was in the summer of 2024. (We are also going somewhere in December)

The reveal for 2024 summer was Beijing! We went there because I had a swim camp in Hebei, and we were going to go back home by the Beijing airport, so my parents thought it was the perfect opportunity to fetch me and have a holiday in Beijing and go home later together instead of with my team. I liked that Beijing had many places to visit like The Temple of Heaven (天坛），The Forbidden City (故宫）and many more. I didn't like that it was super hot and the tour guides started really early in order for us to escape the heat and see more places. Even though we were on holiday, we usually had to wake up at around 6:30.

My sister was almost 8 and I was 10 when we read these.

On to the books about Beijing

Top Ten Beijing

This book was super helpful and it was this book that let us plan out where we wanted to go, the food we wanted to eat and good shopping places. I really loved this book. There were even pictures of the places, foods, restaurants and shopping malls. It was also because of this book that we discovered the Silk Market is in an air-conditioned mall now, not an actual market. This is a really helpful book, so if you're going to Beijing anytime soon, you should get this book for sure.

Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang

A couple of other books on your bookshelf...