One important thing to remember when cycling round Beijing: when crossing a ring road in the face of on-coming traffic do not, under any circumstances, hesitate. With a sharp increase in the number of cars on the road, hesitation costs lives. Huddle in with the residents, keep your head down and pedal. Fast. Once you're over that hurdle, the rest is easy - relatively. All that is left to contend with is the daily mortal battle for oad space during the rush hour.
Yet despite the obvious dangers, over a quarter of Beijing's population of 12m are thought to own a bike and, in a city where the cycle paths are as wide as motorway lanes, it's still considered the best way to travel. It is also the cheapest. Bikes can be rented from shops and booths across the city from as little as five yuan a day - less than 50p. For the price of a newspaper, you acquire the means to explore the city's alleys and side streets and see for yourself the treasures which China's northern capital usually keeps hidden.
Too polluted and congested to be called beautiful, Beijing expresses its eclectic charm in other ways. Rather than a faceless metropolis regimented by communism, visitors are confronted with the sight of the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven jostling for space on the skyline with shopping malls and hotel chains. Food stalls selling scorpion kebabs and cooked snake sit beside branches of McDonalds and Pizza Hut. The city may have been hijacked by the 20th century, but 1,000 years of history and over a dozen dynastic changes have left their impact.
It is also a city under construction, gearing up for its 2008 Olympic debut and its entry into the World Trade Organisation. Urban redevelopment is gripping much of China as the country enters the 21st century; in Beijing, this means the destruction of the city's hutongs - small shanty towns - to make way for modern apartments, and the much-needed renovation of its public lavatories. Think of your worst experience of British toilets. Now treble it.
Tian'anmen Square is a good place to begin. Made famous (or infamous) on June 4 1989, when the image of a single man standing down a convoy of tanks during the city's student protests was flashed around the world, it lies at the centre of the city. From there, after your friend has tried to take a picture of you standing as close as possible to one of the soldiers guarding the square without getting arrested (an adrenalin-charged version of the 'getting the guards at Buckingham Palace to smile' game), cross the street to the entrance to the Forbidden City, the world's largest palace complex. Decorated with a huge picture of Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China, the City served as the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Nowadays it is open to tourists from China and abroad, and its treasure-trove of rare antiques and unique symbolic architecture (yellow - the emblem of the royal family - is the dominate colour inside the complex, but the library roof is black because black was thought to represent water and could extinguish fire) make a visit mandatory.
At all major tourist sites, be prepared to run the gauntlet of hawkers bent on selling you everything from copies of Mao's Little Red Book to Beijing 2008 baseball caps. Most things are priced "one dollar", but bartering is common practice - not just on the streets, but in department stores and clothes shops, too.
To get away from the hubbub of the city, take your bike along the alleyways that lead to the artificial Shisha lakes, created during the Yuan destiny, north of Beihai Park. Here you will find streets cluttered with converted palaces and courtyards, restaurants and bars: definitely worth a visit at night. Some of the bars turn out to be people's front rooms, converted and opened to the public. The owners go to bed when the last visitor leaves.
Perhaps the greatest of China's treasures, and one of the first destinations for any visitor, is the Great Wall, about an hour's drive outside the city. Stretching 6,000km, it has to be seen to be believed. Not all the wall is accessible, and the most popular part to visit is at Badaling, 70km north-west of the Beijing. This section has been restored, is besieged by tourist buses and covered in souvenir stalls, and is therefore best avoided. Head instead to a quieter section in Huanghua, a two-hour bus ride from Beijing, which so far remains unmarked by restoration or tourism. Here, you can call in at Xiaohong's Fortune Shop and have a bowl of steaming noodles to set you up for the climb up the wall's steep, crumbling steps.
Make sure you reward yourself for your exertions by heading back into the city for a Chinese feast. Eating out in Beijing is cheap, which gives you a good excuse to try anything. You'll find all styles of Chinese food in Beijing, but its specialities are duck with rich plum sauce, and Mongolian hotpot - a steaming pot of stock in which you dip noodles, vegetables and meat. Restaurants and cafes can be found everywhere, but head to a road known locally as Ghost Street for an array of tasty traditional cuisine. Rumour has it that the street is to be ripped down to make way for another ring road (the city already has four), which would be a travesty. It's a busy street, and should be visited at night, when it glows with the light of red paper lanterns.
Sitting down for a meal is an experience. In bigger restaurants, groups are seated around large tables with a revolving stand in the middle which holds the dishes, so you can pick and pass. Don't expect a knife and fork - they're only offered in the more expensive eateries. This is your chance to master a pair of chopsticks, and if you're hungry enough, you'll pick it (and them) up quickly. It doesn't matter if you make a mess and end up surrounded by pieces of dropped chicken. It's expected, as, unfortunately, is spitting.
Spitting is proving a hard habit to kick in China, despite government efforts, and it's not a habit confined to the older generation. It's difficult not to be alarmed, and a little disgusted, when you're eating dinner and hear someone preparing to take aim with a ball of saliva behind you.
Bars are dotted around the city, but one of the city's main drinking areas is Sanlitun, just outside the third ring road (take a train to Dongzhimen, then a number 113 bus east). Full of westerners, it's not exactly the place to go for an authentic Chinese evening, but it's fun. It even has an Irish bar called Durty (sic) Nellies, which has some of the best toilets in town.
Beer has begun to rival tea as the Chinese beverage of choice. Certain beers, such as Tsingtao, are cheap, priced between three and five Yuan a bottle. If you're not a beer drinker, try to develop a taste for it before you go, as spirits are expensive and Great Wall wine not worth a mention.
If you're feeling daring, try a glass of snake wine. A popular liquor in China, it comes in a large bottle with dead snakes at the bottom - seriously - which ferment with the alcohol. It tasted a bit like sherry to me, and would be palatable if you didn't know how it was made.
Nightclubs are mainly found in the north of the city and in the Haidian university district (hop on a number 322 bus from the terminus outside Beijing zoo). They are cheap to get in to - between £2 and £3 - and often the entry price comes with a free drink. Visit The Den, which has a dance floor upstairs and serves breakfast downstairs for those still awake.
Useful links
Fly with Lufthansa to Beijing, via Frankfurt.
Chinese Embassy, 31 Portland Place, London. 020 7631 1430
