Beijing Travel Guide

With the rapid growth of travel and tourism since China's reform and opening-up to the outside world in 1979, particularly the success of Beijing's bid for Olympic Games in 2008 and China's entry into the World Trade Organization(WTO) in 2001, an ever-increasing number of overseas visitors are coming to Beijing.

Beijing is a world-renowned ancient capital, and a famous city of world history and culture as well. Beijing is an ideal place to visit, as well as to invest, and to do business, to shop, to dine or to be entertained. Beijing is both an ancient and a young city. The city is ancient, because it boasts a 500,000-year history of civilization; as a city, Beijing has a history of more than 3000 years (the city was established in 1045 BC), and as a capital (Jin Dynasty, the first dynasty in the Chinese history, made Beijing its capital in1115 AD), it has a history of nearly 900 years. This ancient city of Beijing is a masterpiece of the longest history and the largest scale in the world and also is the crystallisation of the capital construction in the history of China. Beijing is a young city in terms of vitality and its importance not only in China but also the world over. The reasons why Beijing attracts and pleases people are not hard to discover. To start at the heart of Beijing itself, tourists see the Tian’anmen Square, which is the geographical and emotional centre of the city.

Location
Beijing is located on the western coast of China on the Pacific Ocean. Beijing stands at the northern tip of the North China Plain. Tian'anmen Square in the center of Beijing is situated at 39O56' North Latitude and 116O20' East Longitude. Beijing lies at approximately the same latitude as Philadelphia in the U.S. and Madrid in Spain. The city is 39% flat land and the other 61% is quite mountainous area. Beijing is surrounded by the Yanshan Mountains on the west, north and east while the small alluvial plain of the Yongding River lies to its southeast. Beijing faces the Bohai Sea, and the area is also called the Beijing Bay  Area. Greater Beijing has an area of 16,808 sq km.

Climate
The climate in Beijing is of the continental type, with cold and dry winters, due to the Siberian air masses that move southward across the Mongolian Plateau. The summers are hot owing to warm and humid monsoon winds from the southeast bringing Beijing most of its annual precipitation. January is the coldest month and July is the warmest. Winter usually begins towards the end of October. The summer months, June to August, are wet and hot with about 40% of the annual precipitation.

Time
Time used in Beijing and all over China is called Beijing Standard Time. It is 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT + 8), and 13 hours ahead of New York time.

Population
13.82 million (March 2001), half of the people live on the outskirt of the city.

Ethnic groups
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.

Agriculture
In 1994, the gross value of agricultural output reached 28.69 billion yuan (non-agricultural output value accounting for 79.5%). The gross value of rural industrial output accounted for 40.2% of the city's gross value of industrial output in 1994. The main cereals are wheat, corn, and rice. The total amount of grain output was 2,761 million tons, and per-hectare yield was 6,420 kilograms. There are 541 farms where each farmer is responsible for more than 6.6 hectares. Mechanization in agriculture has been basically realized in plain areas, and various kinds of bases can provide abundant sideline products.

Industry
Beijing's gross domestic product (GDP) reached 82.9 billion yuan in the first five months of 2000, up 12 percent over the same period of last year, with high-tech enterprises leading development, according to Beijing Youth Daily. From January to May, the added value of Beijing's industrial output was 6.35 billion yuan, up 18.8 percent over the same period of the previous year.

City Flowers
In the spring of 1987, delegates to the Sixth Session of the Eighth Municipal People's Congress, meeting in the Great Hall of the People, overwhelmingly approved the scholar tree and oriental cypress as the official city trees, the Chinese rose and the chrysanthemum as Beijing's official city flowers. The rose, a Chinese native, has been cross-bred many times, but it still has half of the original Chinese strain. Known as Perpetual Spring, Monthly Red, Snow Challenger and Victorious, it is fast growing, regenerates easily and is graceful and long blooming(May to October). The chrysanthemum has many names and varieties. In Beijing potted chrysanthemums may be seen year round. They flower in summer and fall naturally but can be forced to bloom any time of year. During the Qing dynasty, there were 400 rare strains of chrysanthemum. Beijing's flora-culturists now boast more than 1000 varieties.

City trees
The stately cypress symbolizes the courage and strength of the Chinese people, their simple, hard working nature and their defiance in the face of aggression. This Plateaus Orientals, or Oriental Arborvitae, can grow as tall as 20 meters. Some of those in Zhongshan Park were planted as long as 1,000 years ago during the Liao Dynasty. The scholar tree is a symbol of good fortune, joy and well-being. Dating back to the Qin and Han dynasties Sophia Japonica were planted extensively at the Tang Dynasty Imperial Palace in Chang'an. At Beihai Park an ancient specimen in the courtyard of the Painters Corridor, is believed to have been planted during the Tang Dynasty, before 907. Another ancient scholar tree near the Broken Bridge in the Forbidden City is said to have been planted before 1125. Both are well adapted to Beijing's cold, dry winter, hot and dry summer, and alkaline soil.

History
Some half a million years ago, Peking man lived in Zhoukoudian, in the southwestern suburbs of Beijing. The climate of that time was warmer and more humid than it is today. Forests and lakes in the area supported large numbers of living creatures. The fossil remains of Peking man, his stone tools and evidence of use of fire, as well as later tools of 18,000 years ago, bone needles and article of adornment from the age of Upper Cave Man are the earliest cultural relics on record in China today.
Beijing is the capital city for five dynasties; they are Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties(947-1911).