Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
museum piece, and tourists come here by the busload. September is the best time to wander
over, as it's the time they celebrate Confucius's birthday with music and dance.
And then, a block east, literally above Lama Temple subway station, is Lama Temple
(Yonghegong) itself. The Lama Temple is also definitely a tourist attraction, but it remains
a working Buddhist temple and monastery. In fact, it's one of the largest and most important
Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world, and thousands of Chinese come here to pray.
When your own family comes to visit, it's well worth taking them here. The architecture
and artwork is magnificent and well maintained, and, unlike the Forbidden City, a visit here
is extremely manageable and won't frazzle your guests with compressive crowds or hours
of walking.
Living in the vicinity of the Lama Temple is sure to embed in your mind long-term
memories of your Beijing home, which will come flooding back every time you smell in-
cense. In the streets around the temple, vendors sell bundles of fragrant incense and the air
is never without the scent of it.
Getting Around
This area is a great base from which to jump on the expressways, be it to get out to the
Great Wall, the airport, or the 798 Art District. Though these places seem a good distance
away, the roads out to them are good. You can be at Lido or 798 in 15 minutes, and the
airport in 30. Unfortunately, it's getting to closer places, such as Sanlitun or the CBD, that
can be a headache. Unlike the major roads on the periphery, the internal roads are narrow
and seasoned heavily with traffic lights, so road traffic is constantly in a frustrating squeeze.
During rush hour it can easily take an excruciating 45 minutes to make the 5-kilometer trip
from Nanluogu Xiang to Sanlitun. So on a day-to-day basis, bicycles are a must—not only
do they let you bypass the stalled road traffic, there's also nothing like pedaling through
the
hútòng
or picking up some fresh produce from your local store and popping it in your
basket. For social activities, everything is close enough that you can often forgo transport
all together and just walk there, and at night, when everyone else is fighting for a cab, it's a
relief to be able to stroll home.
SUBWAY
The Lama Temple to Gulou area is serviced by Lines 1, 2, 5, and 8, and few locations re-
quire anything longer than a 15-minute walk to get to a subway station. Thanks to the new
Line 6, it's now much more straightforward to get to Haidian and its universities in the west,
and much faster to get out to such locations as Chaoyang Park, Yew Chung International
School, and Beijing Wuzi University in the east. The new Line 8 extension also transports
