Business offers solutions to requests from the routine to the zany

Like many Beijing newcomers, Sarah Keenlyside was intimidated by the size and scale of the capital city and frustrated by being unable to speak, read or write the language. The picky eater was also wary of the unfamiliar food.

But instead of griping, or getting on a plane home, the UK expat formulated a plan to build a business that focused on making life easier for new arrivals, whether they were residents, or tourists. That operation, Bespoke Beijing, began on a small scale: clients were issued with a guide book and a mobile phone that offered access day and night to an individual who knew the city and could speak English and Chinese.

It has since grown into a full-fledged events and travel company that organizes corporate shindigs usually with an offbeat twist and tailored itineraries for individual visitors who want to know the real Beijing.

Ironically, the once-fussy eater is now something of an expert on Chinese cuisine, able to speak with authority on the different regional styles and recommend the best places to dine.

Says Keenlyside: "We live in the city daily and focus only on Beijing, which means we are able to dedicate our time to trying new things out as and when they open, ensuring our clients are the first to know about new and better opportunities.

"We are creative and contemporary, always staying on top of what is new. We are always imaginative and the way we price it is much more transparent; we don't mark everything up, we always give our clients the honest price of the suppliers and then we charge for our time. I think people like that level of transparency."

A typical Bespoke Beijing itinerary might involve dinner in the courtyard of an ancient temple, a team-building treasure hunt designed to foster company camaraderie or a tailor-made chauffeured tour to a little-visited part of the Great Wall.

She says: "Bespoke Beijing was founded so people did not have to waste the time that I spent trying to know the city. It is tough if you don't speak Chinese; it is a huge city and you are worried about the food. As I discovered later, the best thing about Beijing is the food: one of the great pleasures is showing people how good the food is. If we can send people away raving about the food in China we have done our job."

Staff members pride themselves on being able to respond to offbeat and sometimes bizarre requests. One client wanted an igloo effect for an event in one of Beijing's hutongs, or alleyways, which was fulfilled by creating ice sculptures; another visitor, a beekeeper, wanted to meet a counterpart in Beijing; a request for Japanese sumo wrestlers was met by providing models in sumo-wrestler suits.

There are plenty of less zany requests, from mainstream corporate clients, who have heard about Bespoke Beijing's ability to come up with interesting options. Bespoke Beijing employees also try and approach familiar topics in a different way; a recent team-building event for embassy staff took the form of a treasure hunt around the alleyways and galleries of the 798 art district.

Increasingly, Bespoke Beijing is being called upon to organize large-scale events for companies such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, involving hundreds of people, but creating individual travel programs remains a major part of the business. The capital is such a fast-changing city that it is impossible for guide books and even web sites to be bang up to date, a fact that the company emphasizes.

"People don't want to waste time, and with our Savvy City Guide you have flexibility," says Keenlyside, 31. "Part of our unique selling point is that we are nimble; every week we can come up with something different, put a new restaurant in if we think it is good.

"We want to make sure that people visit really unique Beijing spaces, not just going to the obvious which is what people automatically do. We have even organized events in private courtyard homes to give people the local experience.

"When we do events we try to include entertainment or something that showcases Chinese culture without it being too cheesy; we did a themed dinner where we invited our Chinese traditional medicine expert to co-create a menu with the chefs."

For trips to the Great Wall, the company books cars that are equipped with WiFi and insists that drivers wear smart suits and selects knowledgeable guides with outgoing personalities who can bring the ancient structure to life. Likewise, a tour of the hutongs can be much more informative in the company of a Beijing-born guide who can chat easily to locals who live in the courtyard dwellings.

After seven years in the city, Essex-born Keenlyside, 31, who first came to Beijing with her partner, has a firm list of personal favorites. Top of them is Jingshan Park, just behind the Forbidden City, which has a hill offering stupendous views of Beijing.

She says: "If you go on a Sunday morning, everyone is friendly and in a good mood and from the top you have a view in all directions. It is just lovely, so nice.

"I also like to go into the hutongs. If you are a visitor and you don't go there you really miss what life is like on a daily basis. People are surprisingly uninhibited, they don't mind dancing in the public parks or belting out a song on their bicycles. There is not that concern about looking silly they are just being themselves.

"I also like the 798 art zone. It is not just for art lovers, it was a model factory, visited by leaders again and again. It is fascinating. You can still see the Mao Zedong slogans on the walls."

Bespoke Beijing has plans to start a similar operation in the port city of Shanghai and, down the road, in other world cities. The basic package will aim to remove the frustration Keenlyside experienced at being a newcomer in an unfamiliar place.

She adds: "I was fresh off the boat, didn't speak Chinese and didn't know what I was doing and found it just as difficult as someone else plopped into a new city. Bespoke Beijing was founded so people do not have to waste the time that I spent trying to know the city. It is tough if you don't speak Chinese. It is a huge city."

For China Daily

(China Daily 04/30/2013 page5)