General Information of Beijing

City Layout		Tourism in Beijing
History and Position Today		Neighbourhoods in Brief
When to Go		Climate & Weather Report

City Layout

Beijing is located at 3956'N and 11620' E, covers an area of 16,808 square kilometers, Two-thirds of it are mountains areas encircling the western northern and eastern sides of the city. The center of the city is 43.71 meters above the sea level. Main rivers include the Yongding River, the Chaobai River and the North Canal.

Beijing, including the urban and the suburban areas and the nine counties under its administration, is located in the northeastern corner of China, roughly the same latitude as New York City. Beijing municipality has a total area of 16,800 sq km (6552 sq mi). roughly the size of Belgium.

Beijing has 10.6 million permanent residents and over 3 million transient populations.

The permanent residents of Beijing come from all of China's 56 ethnic groups. The Han nationality accounts for 96.5% of the total. The other 55 ethnic minorities claim a population of more than 300,000, most of them are from Hui, Manchu, and Mongolian nationalities.

Though it may not appear so in the shambles of arrival, Beijing is a place of very orderly design. Long, straight boulevards and avenues are crisscrossed by a network of lanes. Scenic spots are either very easy to find if they're on the avenues, or impossible to find if they're buried down the narrow alleys (hutongs).

Encircling central Beijing today are a First Ring Road, a Second Ring Road, a Third Ring Road and a Fourth Ring Road, as well as a fifth one is to begin.

There are ten districts and eight counties under the jurisdictive of Beijing. The ten districts are Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chongwen, Xuanwu,Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai, Shijingshan, Mentougou and Fangshan Districts and eight counties are Changping.Shunyi, Tongxian, Daxing, Pingnu, Huairou,Miyun and Yangqing counties.

Tourism in Beijing(TOP)

After being "out of the tourism loop" for decades, Beijing has come of age in the world of international travel, offering choice, organization, facilities, and the experience and expertise it takes to produce a quality product.

Serving as the capital city of China's Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, its long history has endowed the city with countless historic and scenic spots which boast of precious value of aesthetic. Now more than 200 such scenic spots are open to the public while some 50 historic and scenic spots are visited by overseas tourists all year round. The Forbidden City houses the world's largest and most intact imperial palace while the Summer Palace is China's largest imperial garden. There are also the Temple of Heaven where Ming and Qing emperors showed their respect to heavenly gods and the world famous Great Wall.

Beijing is a major force in China tourism, accounting for a quarter of the country's tourism income and number of visitors in 1996, when 2.18 million overseas visitors spent USD2.25 billion. When the 76 million domestic visitors and their USD5 billion expenditures are factored in, tourism accounted for a third of the output value of the municipality's service sector and 14 percent of its gross domestic product.

There will be a big overseas sales push focusing on sightseing and business tours, with group tours, and individual visits enhanced and given more attention. Specialized programs will come on stream and, fulfilling its position as a recognized conference center, there will be more emphasis on incentive and similar tours.

History and Position Today

Dated from around 1000 BC, Beijing developed as a frontier trading town for the Mongols, Koreans and tribes from Shandong and central China. It had grown to be the capital of the Yan Kingdom in the Warring States Period. During the Liao Dynasty Beijing was referred to as Yanjing ( capital of Yan ) which is still the name of Beijing's most popular beer.

Burnt to the ground by Genghis Khan in 1215 AD, the resurrected city was passed on to Kublai Khan (Genghis's grandson) as Dadu, or Great Capital.

The mercenary Zhu Yanhang led an uprising in 1368, taking over the city and ushering in the Ming Dynasty. The city was renamed Beiping( northern peace ) and for the next 35 years the capital was shifted south to Nanjing.

In the early 1400s Zhu's son Yong Le shuffled the court back to Beiping and renamed it Beijing (Northern Capital). Many of the structures like the Forbidden City and Tiantan were built in Yong Le's reign.

Manchu invaded and established the Qing Dynasty in the 17th century. Beijing was thoroughly renovated and expanded. Under them, and particularly during the reigns of the emperors Kangxi and Qianlong, Beijing was expanded and renovated, and summer palaces, pagodas and temples were built.

In the last 120 years of the Manchu Dynasty, Beijing and subsequently China were subjected to power struggles, invaders and the chaos created by those who held or sought power: the Anglo-French troops who in 1860 marched in and burnt the Old Summer Palace to the ground; the corrupt Regime under Empress Dowager Cixi; the Boxers; General YuanShikai; the warlords; the Japanese who occupied the city in 1737; and the Kuomintang after the Japanese defeat.

With Mao Zedong's proclamation of a 'People's Republic of China' to an audience of about 500,000 citizens in Tiananmen Square in 1949, the Communists stripped back the face of Beijing. Down came the commemorative arches, along with several outer walls, in the interests of solemnity and traffic circulation. Later, the reform of the 1980s and 1990s have changed Beijing dramatically. Nowadays, Beijing is increasingly becoming a modern and prosperous city.

These days, Beijing's youth are more interested in MTV then Mao; the rhetorical slogans of the Cultural Revolution have given way to herniated English splashed across designer-copy T-shirts; and experts, tourists, foreign investors and a cellular phone-toting hipoisie mix it up with the bureaucrats.

Beijing's temples, parks, and historic sites all sing wonderfully and powerfully of the dream that was Old Cathay, but in the same hallowed space there's a new Beijing taking shape.

Matching the international hotel sector and its glittering array of 254 homes-away-from-home, Beijing municipal authorities have built, and continue to add to, their network of highways, airport facilities and other elements of the infrastructure, bringing their city into the 21st century after only a brief stop in the 20th.

Coupled with the rapid development of cultural, economic and technical exchanges between China and the world has come an ever-increasing demand over the past decade for international meetings and specialized activities to be held in China's big cities.

Nor does it stop there. Tourism authorities recently unveiled plans to make Beijing one of the world's top tourist destinations and event hosts early in the new millennium. Over the next 15 years, they will invest time, effort and hundreds of millions of US-dollar equivalent funds developing and building scenic, historic and archaeological locales and upgrading its urban infrastructure. They will also build tourism sector by tightening the implementation of industry regulations and standards.

Neighbourhoods in Brief(TOP)

As with any large other metropolis, Beijing is subdivided into smaller districts and neighborhoods.The six main districts of interest to the traveler are introduced below.
Dongcheng is located north of Chang'an Avenue and from the Forbidden City east, which contains many of Beijing's top attractions, including Tiananmen Square and Wangfujing Dajie, the great shopping street. Jingshan Park, the Lama Temple (Beijing's most popular), and the historic Bell and Drum Towers scatter in the north part. Its northern and eastern borders are today enclosed by the Second Ring Road, which is where the city walls and gates once stood.
Chaoyang, once the great suburb east from Dongcheng District, is now one of the city's wealthiest urban districts. In the area along Chang'an Avenue (now called Jianguomenwai Dajie) are Beijing's most famous open-air market (Silk Alley), the Friendship Store, the China World shopping center, and a row of grand international hotels. Ritan Park, an adjacent, tree-lined embassy district and the Sanlitun diplomatic district lined with scores of bars and small cafes range northward. On the northeast arc of the Third Ring Road (here called Dongsanhuan Beilu), Chaoyang holds a number of international hotels, shopping plazas, and restaurants, including Beijing's Hard Rock Cafe.
Chongwen is located south of Chang'an Avenue in the eastern quadrant of the great Beijing grid. It is home to the Natural History Museum, the old Qianmen neighborhood, and a stellar attraction, the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan Park).
Xuanwu Also south of Chang'an Avenue, but in the western quadrant, Xuanwu contains the city's largest Moslem neighborhood (near the Ox Street Mosque) and the historic street of Liulichang, Beijing's best strolling and antique shopping row.
Xicheng is immediately west of the Forbidden City. It is the sector of some of the most extensive old hutong (alleyway) neighborhoods left in Beijing. It also contains the most beautiful lakes of the city: Beihai Lake, praised by Marco Polo, and the three "Back Lakes" of Xihai, Houhai, and Qianhai. The lakes are near some excellent temples and the lavish once-private grounds of Prince Gong's Mansion.
Haidian Located far to the northwest on the way to the Summer Palace and the Western Hills, Haidian is best known as the capital's university district (site of China's Harvard, Beijing University) and the location of a new aquarium, the zoo and an old temple that now houses the Beijing Art Museum.

When to Go

Beijing's climate is defined as " continental monsoon."
Beijing has four distinct seasons. Spring, from mid-March to mid-May, is mild, although sometimes dust storms strike the city. Summer, from mid-May to mid-September, is both humid and rather hot, and subject to heavy rains in July and August. Beijing's "Golden Autumn," from mid-September to mid-November, is pretty dry, with mild days and chilly nights. The long winter, from mid-November to mid-March, can be bitterly cold with Siberian winds, ice, and increased air pollution (due to increased burning of coal for heating); however, with little snowfall some days can be expected that the skies are clear and turn refreshingly blue.
The average annual temperature amounts to 13 (averaging 25.2 in July, the hottest month, and -3.7 in January, the coldest month). It is very hot in daytime in summer and very cold in deep winter. The annual precipitation comes to 600mm and the frost-free period lasts 189 days.

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Climate & Weather Report

Climate		unit	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Temperature		'C 'F	-4.7 23.5	-1.9 28.6	4.8 40.6	13.7 56.6	20.1 68.1	24.8 76.6	26.1 78.9	24.8 76.6	19.9 67.8	12.8 55	3.8 38.8	2.8 37
Precipicution		mm. in.	76 3	76 3	76 3	102 4	152 6	203 8	305 12	254 10	178 7	152 6	102 4	76 3
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