How well do you know Beijing?
Beijing has been a capital for most of the last 800 years. These six questions look at the Forbidden City's hidden rules, the city's alleys and a record no other city holds.
Did you know?
- Some Beijing pigeon keepers tie small whistles, made from gourds or bamboo, to their birds' tail feathers. When a flock circles over the hutongs, the air fills with a soft, humming, flute-like sound, a tradition that goes back centuries and is still kept alive by enthusiasts.
- Beijing Daxing International Airport, which opened in 2019, was designed with a central hub and five arms that give it a starfish shape. The layout is meant to keep walking distances short, so passengers can reach even the farthest gates in only a few minutes.
- The Summer Palace, northwest of the city, is built around Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill. Its Long Corridor, about 728 metres long, is painted with thousands of scenes from history, legends and literature, and the paintings are traditionally said to have no exact repeats.
A capital built to a plan
Beijing, whose name means 'northern capital', has been China's capital for most of the time since the 13th century. The Forbidden City, built between 1406 and 1420, was home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and ordinary people could not enter it without permission. Today it is the Palace Museum, with a collection of more than a million objects. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and is one of the largest palace complexes in the world.
A city built on an axis
Old Beijing was planned around a north-south central axis about 7.8 kilometres long. Gates, palaces, temples and markets were lined up along it, with the emperor's throne near its centre and mirror-image buildings placed on either side. The idea came from ancient Chinese texts on how an ideal capital should be laid out. In 2024 the Beijing Central Axis was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, recognising the plan itself rather than a single building.
Life in the hutongs
Hutongs are lined with siheyuan, houses built around a central courtyard. The main rooms usually face south to catch the winter sun, and the entrance often sits in a corner of the wall. Carved stone blocks at the doors, called mendun, once hinted at the status of the family inside. Many hutongs were demolished as the city modernised, but others are now protected, and visitors explore them on foot or by bicycle rickshaw.
The Temple of Heaven
South of the old city lies the Temple of Heaven, where emperors performed ceremonies and prayed for a good harvest. Its best-known building, the round Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, has a triple roof of deep blue tiles representing the sky, and it was built of wood using interlocking joints rather than nails. The circular temple halls and square outer walls reflect an old belief that heaven was round and the earth was square. Today its park is popular with residents doing tai chi and dancing.