Where should I stay in Beijing?

Dongcheng is the answer for a first trip to Beijing. The district wraps around the Forbidden City, built in 1420, and most hotels near Wangfujing sit 10-15 minutes on foot from the palace's south gate. A mid-range hotel on Wangfujing Dajie runs ¥500-900 ($75-135) per night. Wangfujing station on Line 1 connects you to Tiananmen East in one stop. Mornings here smell like jianbing batter crisping on griddles and sesame oil from breakfast vendors along Donghuamen. The Dongsi area, two stops north on Line 5, tends to be quieter and ¥100-200 cheaper per night. You'll find converted courtyard hotels in the hutongs east of Dongsi Beitiao, where narrow stone lanes hold the overnight cold even in June's humid 24°C drizzle. That said, hutong rooms run small, often 15-18 square meters, and the walls are thin enough to hear your neighbor's morning alarm.

Sanlitun in Chaoyang district is the pick if you want restaurants where you can read the menu and bars where the staff speaks some English. The blocks around Taikoo Li mall and Workers' Stadium have the densest cluster of international food in Beijing. A Marriott or Intercontinental-tier hotel here runs $140-220 per night. Mid-range spots on the side streets east of Sanlitun Lu drop to $80-130. The trade-off is distance. You're 5 km from Tiananmen Square, about 20 minutes on Line 10 transferring to Line 1 at Guomao. Morning visits to the Forbidden City mean a 6:30am subway ride instead of a short walk. The upside is the neighborhood after dark. Warm air carries the smell of cumin lamb skewers from Xinjiang restaurants on Xingfucun Zhonglu. Cold Yanjing beer at sidewalk tables. Mind you, noise around Workers' Stadium on Friday and Saturday nights carries until 2am.

Qianmen, the old commercial street running south from Tiananmen Square, has budget hotels and hostels from $30-55 per night. The pedestrian street still feels like a theme-park version of old Beijing, all restored shopfronts and tourist-priced roast duck, but you're 800 meters from Mao's Mausoleum and the National Museum of China, which opened in its current form in 2003. June humidity in Beijing tends to sit above 90%, and today is no exception at 93%. The ability to walk to major sights without packing into a rush-hour subway car matters more than you'd think when the air feels like warm wet cotton on your skin. One practical note on all Beijing hotels. Foreign passport holders need to register with the local police station within 24 hours of check-in. Most hotels handle this at the front desk, but Airbnb-style rentals sometimes don't, and the ¥500 fine ($74) is real.

Skip the area around Beijing West Railway Station and Beijing South Station for sleeping. Both are transit hubs with ¥200-300 ($30-45) hotels that smell like stale cigarette smoke and have mattresses that sag in the middle. Zhongguancun in Haidian district, sometimes called China's Silicon Valley, sits 12 km northwest of the Forbidden City and has nothing for a first-time visitor after 6pm. The Olympic Park area near the Bird's Nest (Beijing National Stadium, completed for the 2008 Games) looks appealing on a map, but the neighborhood between the venues is wide empty boulevards and convention hotels with a 25-minute subway ride to anything historic on Line 8 south.