This page is under construction. It is intended to provide information about living and sightseeing in Beijing.
Money
Obviously a chief concern about coming to Beijing is cost. The biggest expense, the plane ticket, is covered on the Getting to Beijing page. This page will provide information on expenses in Beijing.
In general, it's important to remember that Beijing can be both a very cheap and a very expensive city. You can stay in a 5-star hotel for hundreds of USD per night, or you can stay in a hostel for 5USD per night. You can spend as much as you would in New York on food, or you can eat incredible food in a small restaurant for a couple of USD per person.
That said, people generally find Beijing to be rather inexpensive. Below are some estimates of how much one might spend during a week in Beijing.
We haven't picked a hotel yet, but we'll likely be able to negotiate a group rate of about 40USD per night for a 4-star double room. The rate for a 3-star room will likely be 30+USD.
You won't have to pay for dinner on the night of the wedding (!), but don't worry, because it's easy to eat cheaply in Beijing. You can eat very well at nice, clean restaurants in Beijing for under 10USD per person per day. This is for Chinese food, and you can expect to pay Western prices for Western food.
You can travel from one end of downtown Beijing to the other in a taxi for less than 5USD. The subway, while not well-developed, costs less than .50 USD per trip. We estimate that you'll spend at least 15USD per person per day on transportation and admission tickets while in Beijing, not including a trip to the Great Wall, which would cost a bit more.
Given the above estimates, we estimate that you should expect to spend around $50 per day during your time in Beijing. That's not including any gifts/souvenirs you might want to buy.
Accomodation
We will be negotiating a group rate at a hotel. Although we haven't decided on the hotel yet, it looks like there will be 3 and 4-star options (with different prices, of course!). Of course, you may also arrange your own accommodations.
Our goal is to have more concrete information on living arrangements by mid-May. Please check back to this page for more information.
Sightseeing
We will be helping to organize some sightseeing and tourist activities in the week leading up to the wedding. More details will be provided on this page in the NEAR future.
Weather
It's hot in Beijing in August. Hopefully it won't be too hot this year, but I'm pretty sure it'll be hot. The average high temperature in August is around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It's okay to wear shorts, though many people here don't, even in the summer.
More Info
Apologies for not having more info yet. If you'd like to know more about Beijing, check out The Beijing Page. It's a collection of links about Beijing.
You might also check out Beijing's entry in the Wikipedia.
In the future, we'll have more information about how much it costs to live in Beijing, but for now just suffice it to say that living, eating and travelling here is much cheaper than in the US.
As noted above, this page is incomplete, but still feel free to provide feedback or ask questions by posting on the discussion board or by emailing us at wedding @ riverbendfarm . org (remove the spaces).