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Midnight in Peking Walking Tour

  • Beijing Railway Station (map)

On January 8 1937 the body of a young foreign girl was found brutally mutilated at the foot of Beijing’s city wall. The murder shocked the foreign community in the capital and made headlines around the globe.

Based on the murder case we have created a walk that shows a largely unknown side of republican Beijing. At the center is the so-called Beijing Badlands, an area where white Russians and retired soldiers ran bars and brothels, catering to the respectable high society of the old Legation Quarter.

We will piece together the background story of a crime committed during the anxiety-filled days where China was on the brink of war with Japan. From the hutong where Pamela lived with her father, to the allegedly haunted Fox Tower where the body was found.

All of this is possible because by a remarkable coincidence all of the main sites of the crime case still exist to this day.

The unsolved murder of Pamela Werner was largely forgotten till the author Paul French stumbled upon an unlabeled box of dusty yellow paged files at the British National Archives. The documents mostly written by Pamela Werners father Edgar Chalmers Werner inspired Paul French to write his novel Midnight in Peking that became an instant bestseller when it came out in 2011.

The walk ends at the Beijing Postcards gallery where we will serve 1930 style cocktails and present archival material related to the case, not least a 200 pages long Chinese police report we've been able to obtain, that is not even mentioned in Paul French's book.


Where to meet: Near Beijing Railway Station

Cost: 450RMB per person

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November 20

A Crash Course to the Forbidden City

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December 30

New Walk: Temple of Heaven by Night