Created in partnership with Portfolio, Condé Nast's new business magazine, our city business guides offer guidance for business travelers hoping to maximize their productivity (and enjoyment) while on the road. Stay tuned for more guides in the months to come.

In the past 20 years, China's capital has gone from sedate to supercharged as multinational conglomerates, high-tech highfliers, and globe-trotting entrepreneurs seek to crack open the world's biggest consumer market. Thanks to newly relaxed government regulations, they've set up and made the former cultural cynosure a regular stop on the Asian economic circuit. With the 2008 Summer Games just over a year away, construction sites are sprouting on nearly every street corner, and real estate prices are rocketing.

Where to Sleep
The glitzy high-rises that crowd the Central Business District, known as the CBD, are home to offices, embassies, deluxe apartment buildings, and the top hotels. The St. Regis's butler service, including the new luggage butler who will pack your bags, attracts heads of state—President George W. Bush has checked in twice—and chairmen such as DaimlerChrysler's Dieter Zetsche. Whiz kids from Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, and IBM head to China World, which is closer to the city's main thoroughfare, Chang'an Avenue. Owned by Hong Kong mogul Li Ka-Shing, the opulent Grand Hyatt is a favorite with his fellow tycoons, as well as the American consultancy Ernst & Young. Sleek and discreet, The Peninsula has free Wi-Fi for its media and Hollywood clients. Slightly to the west and bordering the Back Lake district, the charming and old-fashioned Lu Song Yuan, a traditional courtyard hotel, remains beloved by editors from French Elle Decor and the owners of the gallery Chinese Contemporary. New hotels are popping up in Jingrong Jie, or Financial Street, the city's Wall Street: The shiny Ritz-Carlton Financial Street has already hosted U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice; Citigroup and Goldman Sachs execs prefer the InterContinental Financial Street.

Where to Eat
It would be insulting not to try the city's eponymous dish. Peking duck joints abound, but bankers and consultants in the know entertain their Chinese counterparts at the Nanxincang branch of Da Dong Roast Duck, whose 22 private rooms insure against prying eyes and ears. Impress local clients with some insider intel by booking a table at South Beauty, in the Oriental Plaza, a favorite with local yuppies, where modern riffs on traditional Szechuan dishes—mashed potatoes with spicy Szechuan pickles—are served to diners in white faux-fur booths. If wielding chopsticks tires your poor little fingers, twirl artisanal pasta at Cepe, in the Ritz-Carlton—U.S. envoy Christopher Hill recently treated North Korean diplomats to a taste of Italia here. Expats, journos, and young venture capitalists prefer the breezy atmosphere of Alameda and its eclectic Brazilian-European-fusion prix fixe. Hatsune's fresh Japanese fare is so popular among Motorola employees that the menu lists a sushi roll named after the company. Long lunches of delicate dumplings and sublime noodles at Din Tai Fung, a Taipei import, sate Asian pop stars and Hong Kong/Taiwan investors.