Beijing News You Might Have Missed this Week, Nov 6

Beijing is a happening city! Don't miss a thing with our weekend roundup of the latest news.

Palace Museum Tickets Can Now Be Booked Seven Days Ahead: From Nov 1, the amount of days needed to purchase advance tickets for a visit to the Palace Museum – aka the Forbidden City – has been reduced from 10 to seven days. Other ticket rules will remain unchanged, though. Tickets to visit the Palace Museum can be booked ahead on their website, official WeChat account (微故宫 Wei Gugong), or on Meituan.

Haidilao Announces Closure of 300 Branches: On Nov 5, popular Chinese hot pot chain Haidilao announced it would gradually close 300 branches leading up to Dec 31 of this year due to low customer volume. The closures will account for 20% of the chain’s global stores, which will reduce their total branch numbers from over 1590 to around 1300.

City Advises Residents to Wear Masks, Wash Hands When Picking Up Packages: In light of the ongoing epidemic situation in Beijing, the city has advised residents to wear masks when collecting deliveries from express handlers. The city also advises people to wash their hands immediately after retrieving any packages and taking out their contents to avoid potential COVID infection.

Dijing Garden Community in Fengtai District Exits Quarantine: Courtyards 6 and 7 of the Dijing Garden Community officially exited its “closed management” quarantine at 1:15am on Nov 3, following the areas last batch of nucleic acid testing results.

Outdoor “Concerts” Held for Quarantined Community in Changping: On the evening of Nov 3 and 4, a group of health care workers armed with a pickup truck as a stage, speakers, microphone, and sound equipment, hosted four concerts for compound residents in quarantine within a community undergoing closed management. In a series of videos that have gone viral on Chinese social media, a singer clad in PPE is seen serenading residents high above in their apartments, some of them cheering, singing, or waving their phones along to the music.

READ: Beijing News You Might Have Missed this Week, Oct 23

Images: contexttravel.com, insisderetail.asia, China Daily, 新京报