Beijing

Beijing is the capital city of China.

Its name means "Northern Capital". Beijing has very old palaces and very new skyscrapers. More than 21 million people live in and around it.

Beijing is the capital of China, in the north of the country. Its name means "Northern Capital". It has been China's capital for most of the last 600 years, and the capital of the People's Republic of China since 1949. About 21.8 million people lived in the Beijing municipality, the city and the land around it, at the end of 2024.

Beijing mixes very old and very new. The Forbidden City, where emperors once lived, still stands at its center, while skyscrapers rise in its business district. In 2008 Beijing hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the first time.

Beijing is a province-level municipality and the capital of the People's Republic of China. Britannica notes that few cities have served so long as the political headquarters and cultural center of so vast an area, and that nearly every major old building in the city has national historical significance. The municipality covers 16,410.54 km², and its permanent population was 21.832 million at the end of 2024, down 26,000 from a year before.

Since 1949 the drive to modernize and industrialize has destroyed much of the older city, but monumental buildings, old restaurants and centers of traditional arts and crafts remain, and the government has acted to keep further industry out of the core. Residents of Beijing speak a dialect of Mandarin that forms the basis of Modern Standard Chinese, putonghua.

The Forbidden City is a giant palace with golden roofs and red walls.

Emperors lived there long ago. The Temple of Heaven has a round building with three roofs. The Great Wall runs over the hills near Beijing.

At the heart of Beijing stands the Forbidden City, the palace of China's emperors for about 500 years. A moat and high walls surround its golden-roofed halls, which together hold nearly 10,000 rooms. South of it is the Temple of Heaven, where emperors held great ceremonies; its round Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests has three layers of roof topped with a golden ball.

The Summer Palace, first built in 1750, mixes hills and lakes with pavilions and bridges. Outside the city, people visit the tombs of the Ming emperors and the Great Wall.

Beijing has several World Heritage Sites. The Forbidden City (1987), seat of supreme power from 1416 to 1911, has landscaped gardens and buildings whose nearly 10,000 rooms hold furniture and works of art; golden roofs, white marble balustrades and red pillars sit inside a moat and walls with a tower at each corner. The Temple of Heaven (1998), founded in the first half of the 15th century, is a complex of ceremonial buildings in gardens and old pine woods; its Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (1420) is a lofty, cone-shaped building with triple eaves and a gilded ball on top.

The Summer Palace (1998), first built in 1750, largely destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored on its foundations in 1886, is a masterpiece of Chinese landscape gardening. At Zhoukoudian (1987), 42 km southwest, fossils of Peking man, who lived about 770,000 to 230,000 years ago, were unearthed between 1918 and 1939.

Beijing winters are cold and dry.

Summers are hot, and that is when most of the rain falls. In winter, cold winds blow from the northwest.

Beijing has cold, dry winters and hot, rainy summers. January averages −4 °C and July 26 °C. In an average year the temperature drops below freezing on 132 days between October and March.

About 635 millimeters of rain falls in a year, most of it from June to August; July alone averages about 230 millimeters. Winter is long, usually starting in late October, when cold northwesterly winds grow strong. Mountains protect the city a little, so it is slightly warmer in winter than other places in China this far north.

Although Beijing is not far from the sea, air circulation is mainly from the northwest all year, and maritime effects are slight: its climate is of the continental monsoon type of the temperate zone. Sheltering mountains make it slightly warmer in winter than other parts of China at the same latitude, but monthly means stay below 10 °C for five months. January averages −4 °C, July 26 °C and the year 12 °C, with 132 days of freezing temperatures between October and March.

Precipitation averages 635 mm, mostly from June to August, and July is the wettest month at about 230 mm; it varies greatly, from 1,400 mm in 1959 to only 180 mm in 1891. Winter begins in late October, when northwesterly winds strengthen and dominate until March. The municipal government names the Chinese scholar tree and the arborvitae as Beijing's city trees.

In old parts of Beijing, families live along narrow lanes called hutongs.

Homes are built around little courtyards. In the parks, many people do slow, gentle exercises called tai chi.

In the older parts of Beijing, narrow lanes called hutongs are lined with homes built around enclosed courtyards, some with tiny potted-plant gardens and carved stone lions at the gates. Broad new boulevards have replaced many of the old street stalls and markets, but hutong life can still be glimpsed.

Tai chi, a slow, flowing kind of exercise, is practiced alone or in groups along roadsides and in parks. On hot summer evenings many people sit outside their apartment blocks to catch a cool breeze and chat, and street food stalls are busy. Young people fill cafés, and families visit nearby sights such as the Summer Palace and the Great Wall.

Traditional courtyard houses were built around three sides of a main courtyard, usually shaded by a large tree, which was the center of family life; in many compounds today several families share a courtyard and a common front gate. Broad new boulevards have displaced many old stalls and markets, but neighborhood life survives in the hutongs, with their potted-plant gardens and stone lions.

Britannica describes a wide range of leisure pursuits, especially those considered good for health: tai chi chuan is practiced singly or in groups along roadsides and in parks; older people gather in small restaurants and tea shops, and young people in cafés and clubs with music from DJ sets to Chinese rock bands. After 1949 the Temple of Heaven's grounds were repaired and opened as a public park.