Beijing Is the Modern Capital City of the People’S Republic of China As Well As a Well Known City in the Ancient World
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Brief Introduction Beijing is the modern capital city of the People’s Republic of China as well as a well known city in the ancient world. It has over 3000 years of history and has been the capital city of five dynasties. This has made Beijing famous for the depth in culture and richness in tourist resources. No visitor to China today wants to miss visiting the Forbidden City, the largest royal palace in the world, the Summer Palace, where the imperial family escaped the summer heat, the Temple of Heaven, or the Great Wall. There are more than 200 major sightseeing spots open to tourists and over 7300 cultural and historical scenes. Tiananmen Square Tiananmen Square, the largest city square in the world with 44 hectares in size, is the central focus of Beijing. To its west stands the Great Hall of People while the National Museum is located in the east. The Monument to the People’s Hero stands high in the middle of the square and the memorial hall of Chairman Mao is located on the south. The Tiananmen Square was enlarged to its current size in early 1950. It can accommodate a half million people at one time. Tiananmen Square became famous in the Western world after the democracy demonstrations which took place in 1989. People will gather around the flag pole for the flag raising or lowering ceremony every day. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 12.3 km) Palace Museum (The Forbidden City) The Palace Museum is also known as Forbidden City in the western world. There have been 24 emperors who have lived here in the Ming and Qing, the last two dynasties in Chinese history during 1368-1911. It was turned to a museum and opened to the public in 1925. Built from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 square meters. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 11.4 km) The Summer Palace The Summer Palace is located in western part of Beijing. It started out life as the Garden of Clear Ripples (also Gardens of Perfect Clarity) in 1750 and was given the current name in 1888. It is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill and the man-made Kunming Lake and covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers in total, three quarters of which is water. In its compact 70,000 square meters of building space, one finds a variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures. British and French troops looted and destroyed the Old Summer Palace during the Second Opium War. It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze and took three days for it to burn. In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 10.9 km) The Temple of Heaven The temple complex was constructed from 1406 to 1420 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, who was also responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties visited here once a year for the annual ceremonies invoking a prayer to Heaven for a good harvest. The temple grounds cover 2.73 square km of parkland, and comprise three main groups of buildings including: The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, The Imperial Vault of Heaven, The Echo Wall, and The Earthly Mount. The Temple of Heaven was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 11.8 km) The Great Wall The Great Wall stretches over 6,400 km from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west. The long wall is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during the rule of successive dynasties. Richard Nixon visited the Great Wall in 1972 in what was the first step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. The following sections are in Beijing municipality: Badaling, Jinshanling, Simatai, Mutianyu, Juyongguan pass and Jiankou. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel to Badaling is 50.8 km) The Ming Tombs From the Yongle Emperor onwards, 13 Ming Dynasty Emperors were buried in this area, which is located some 40 km due north of Beijing at a specially selected site occupying 120 square km. The entire tomb site is surrounded by a wall, and a seven kilometer road named the "Spirit Way" leads into the complex which is one of the finest preserved pieces of 15th century Chinese art and architecture. At present, three tombs are open to the public: Chang Ling, the largest, Ding Ling, whose underground palace has been excavated and Zhao Ling. There have been no excavations since 1989. The Ming Tombs were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in August 2003. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 40.0 km) The National Centre for the Performing Arts Formerly known as the National Grand Theatre, it is located immediately to the west of Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of People, and near the Forbidden City. The exterior of the theater is a titanium accented glass dome that is completely surrounded by a man-made lake. Guests arrive in the building from the main entrance at north after walking through a hallway that goes underneath the lake. Internally, there are three major performance halls: the Opera Hall, the Music Hall and the Theater Hall. It can seat 6500 people in three halls and is 200,000 square meters in size. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 11.8 km) Capital Museum The original Capital Museum was located in the Confucius Temple and formally opened in 1981. The construction of a new museum was started in 2001, and opened again in 2006 after the relocation. Both were an investment of the Beijing Municipal Government. Articles exhibited in the new Capital Museum are mainly past years’ collections and unearthed historical heritages of the Beijing area, combined with the latest research results concerning the history, cultural heritage, archeology, and relevant subjects of Beijing. There are over 5,600 pieces of historical heritage exhibited in the museum halls. Collection, exhibition, and research are the major functions of museums. The new Capital Museum fully adheres to, and adopts, advanced technologies of construction of museums around the world and is of top class in China in these three aspects. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 14.6 km) 798 Art Zone 798 Art Zone or Dashanzi Art District, is a part of the Dashanzi area in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving artist community among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style. It is often compared with New York's Greenwich Village or SoHo, but faces impending destruction from the forces driving Beijing's urban sprawl. The Dashanzi factory complex began as an extension of the "Socialist Unification Plan" of military-industrial cooperation between the Soviet Union and the newly-formed People's Republic of China. The complex was officially named Joint Factory 718 and since then had performed the role of military factory for 10 years before it was split into more manageable components, and 798 was one of branches. The complex was vacated during middle of the 1990s when most of the artist community was looking for new home in Beijing. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel is 9 km) Bar Street In Beijing, only the international hotels hosted the first bars in the early 1980s, but in the 1990s standalone establishments appeared. Sanlitun and Houhai are the best known places for having bars serving expats and later, to younger locals. Sanlitun Bar Street is located in the diplomatic district and the Yaxiu clothing market, a popular shopping destination for locals and foreigners alike, is situated alongside this street. Houhai is one of the three lakes in the Shichahai scenic area dated back to the Jin Dynasty of the early 12 century. It was the northernmost part of the Grand Canal linking Hangzhou in the south to Beijing. You also can visit the famous sightseeing spots nearby: the Drum Tower, the Bell Tower, Prince Gong’s Mansion, or the typical Chinese Hutong streets with traditional Siheyuan courtyard houses. (Distance from CNCC Grand Hotel to Sanlitun is 11.7 km and to Houhai is about 8 km) Hutong Tour Hutongs are narrow streets or alleys formed by lines of courtyard residence, most commonly associated with Beijing. The size and decoration of the main entrance of a courtyard tells the social status of its owner, they were relatives of the imperial family, or high-ranking officials, or citizens of higher social status such as wealthy merchants or commoners, artisans or laborers. The higher position the owners were the closer to the Forbidden City their courtyards were located. There used to be several thousand Hutongs in Beijing. However, many of them have disappeared, due to different reasons, since the middle of last century, but many of those ancient Hutongs still stand, among them, some are several hundred years old and have been assigned protected status. The Hutongs located in Qianmen, Drum Tower, and Bell Tower are especially attractive to tourists.