One district per half day is a plan, not a failure of ambition

Beijing is drawn at imperial scale. Two dots that look adjacent on a map can be a twenty-minute walk apart, and crossing the ring roads eats afternoons.

Set up the metro QR code inside Alipay or WeChat before you land, then group your days by district: palaces one morning, hutongs one afternoon, 798 on a weekday. Bags go through a scanner at every station, so travel light, and skip lines 1, 2 and 10 between 08:00 and 09:00.