49 Fun Facts About Beijing

What does the name Beijing mean in Chinese?

Northern Capital sets it against Nanjing, the 'Southern Capital': the name was given in 1403 so that the two Ming seats of government could be told apart.

As of 2020, Beijing held which record among the world's national capitals?

Most populous national capital: more than 21 million people live in the municipality, against about 14 million in Tokyo's, yet Beijing is not even the biggest city in its own country.

Which Beijing skyscraper, a giant angular loop of glass and steel, do locals call 'Big Pants'?

CCTV Headquarters is not a tower but a loop: two leaning legs bridged at the top, which is why Beijingers gave it the trouser nickname.

The 'Peking Man' fossils found near Beijing belong to which early human species?

Homo erectus: villagers had long dug the hill's 'dragon bones' for medicine before scientists arrived, and the original fossils vanished during World War II while being sent abroad for safekeeping.

Which Mongol ruler built Dadu (Khanbaliq) on the site of Beijing as his Yuan dynasty capital?

Kublai Khan raised Dadu beside the ruins of Zhongdu, the Jin capital that his grandfather Genghis had besieged, looted and burned about fifty years earlier.

Which Ming emperor, sponsor of Zheng He's treasure fleets, moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City?

Yongle had seized the throne from his nephew after a three-year civil war fought from his northern base, then moved the court from Nanjing to the city where his own power lay.

Who was the last emperor to live in the Forbidden City, which he left in 1924?

Puyi had abdicated in 1912 at the age of six, but the new republic let him keep his title and live on in the palace for another twelve years.

Why was Beijing's palace called the Forbidden City?

Commoners were barred for the five centuries that emperors ruled from inside its walls; today tens of thousands of visitors walk through its gates every day.

Which institution has administered the Forbidden City since 1925?

The Palace Museum opened in 1925, the year after the imperial family moved out; the pick of its collection was shipped to Taiwan during the civil war, which is why Taipei has a National Palace Museum too.

Tiananmen Square is named after the gate on its north side, whose name means what?

Heavenly Peace is the usual English rendering of Tian'anmen, once the front gate of the imperial palace grounds; the square before it was enlarged to four times its original size in the 1950s.

On what date did Mao Zedong proclaim the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen?

1 October 1949 is still kept as China's National Day, and the square below the gate where Mao spoke fills each year for the anniversary.

China's national legislature meets each March in which building beside Tiananmen Square?

The Great Hall of the People was built for the People's Republic's tenth anniversary; its main auditorium seats more than 10,000 and its banquet hall 5,000.

Which walled compound west of Tian'anmen has housed China's top leadership since 1949?

Zhongnanhai was an imperial pleasure garden built around two lakes beside the Forbidden City; the emperors' lakeside retreat became the Communist Party's walled headquarters.

At the Temple of Heaven, Ming and Qing emperors performed annual ceremonies of prayer for what?

A good harvest was the emperor's own duty as the 'Son of Heaven', go-between for heaven and earth: he came in person and fasted in the temple's Hall of Abstinence.

The Temple of Heaven's layout reflects an old Chinese belief that the earth is a square and heaven is what shape?

A circle: that is why the great prayer hall is round yet stands inside a square yard, while its rings of wooden pillars count off the four seasons, twelve months and twelve traditional hours.

Kunming Lake at Beijing's Summer Palace was laid out in imitation of which famous lake in Hangzhou?

West Lake: the Qianlong Emperor had an old city reservoir enlarged in its image in the 1750s, with a long causeway and six bridges copied from Hangzhou's.

Empress Dowager Cixi reportedly diverted silver from what into rebuilding the Summer Palace?

Upgrading the Qing navy: she is said to have paid for the rebuilding with navy funds, and in the war of 1894-95 Japan routed China's fleet.

Anglo-French forces looted and burned the Old Summer Palace in 1860 during which conflict?

The Second Opium War ended with British and French troops in Beijing; Lord Elgin had the palace burned in reprisal for the torture and killing of captured envoys.

In 1900 an eight-nation army fought its way into Beijing to end which uprising?

The Boxer Rebellion took its name from the martial-arts drills its fighters believed made them invulnerable; they had besieged Beijing's foreign legations for 55 days when the relief force arrived.

An exchange of fire on 7 July 1937 at which bridge near Beijing triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War?

The Marco Polo Bridge owes its Western name to the Venetian's praise of it; the 1937 shooting began when Japanese troops demanded to search a nearby walled town for a missing soldier.

When the Kuomintang moved the capital to Nanjing in 1928, Beijing's name was changed to what?

The name means 'Northern Peace' and had also been used by the early Ming before Beijing was made capital in 1403.

Much of Beijing's Ming-era city wall was torn down in the 1960s to make way for what?

The first subway line was planned as much for civil defence as for commuters, and digging it where the wall and moat stood meant far fewer homes had to be cleared.

The switch in English from 'Peking' to 'Beijing' came with the adoption of which official romanization system?

Pinyin was approved by China in 1958 but little used abroad until 1979, and the old spelling died hard: The New York Times held out until 1986, and the duck is still Peking.

The Beijing district of Zhongguancun is often nicknamed China's what?

Silicon Valley fits: the high-tech district grew up from the 1980s with government backing, right beside the capital's two most famous universities.

When it opened in September 2019, Beijing Daxing International Airport was billed as the world's largest what?

Single-structure terminal: Zaha Hadid's firm drew it as a starfish, five arms of gates radiating from one central hall so that the farthest gate is under eight minutes' walk away.

The Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Olympics, is nicknamed what?

The Bird's Nest has no outer wall: a red concrete seating bowl stands inside a separate, free-standing tangle of silver-painted steel, and the gap between the two is left open to the air.

Which architecture firm won the 2003 competition to design Beijing's National Stadium?

Herzog & de Meuron, the Basel pair who had turned a London power station into Tate Modern, worked with a Chinese design institute and had the artist Ai Weiwei as artistic adviser.

By hosting the 2022 Games, Beijing became the first city to have done what?

Hosted both Summer and Winter Olympics: Beijing beat Almaty by just four votes, promising artificial snow to make up for mountains that see very little of the natural kind.

Which American swimmer won a record eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of seven golds at one Games, and he took the 100 m butterfly by a single hundredth of a second.

The 2008 Games were the third Summer Olympics held in Asia, after which two cities?

Tokyo and Seoul hosted in 1964 and 1988; Beijing's Games opened on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 because eight is a lucky number in Chinese tradition.

What are the narrow alleys formed by lines of traditional courtyard houses in Beijing called?

Hutongs were demolished in great numbers for new roads and buildings in the late 20th century, and only then did the city begin protecting the lanes that were left.

Peking duck is prized chiefly for which part, sliced before diners by the cook?

The thin crispy skin is why air is pumped between skin and flesh before roasting: the fat renders away, the skin puffs up and crisps, and it is served first as the choicest part of the dish.

Slices of Peking duck are traditionally rolled up in what?

Thin pancakes: the carved duck is rolled up in them with slivers of spring onion and a sweet sauce, and the bones come back at the end of the meal as a cabbage soup.

Which two Beijing universities placed 12th and 13th in the Times Higher Education world rankings for 2025?

Tsinghua and Peking held the same two places in the 2026 table; Peking's students took to the streets on 4 May 1919, the protest that gave the May Fourth Movement its name.

As of 2024, Beijing's tallest building, a 528-metre tower, is known as what?

China Zun takes its name and its outline from the zun, a Bronze Age ritual wine vessel: the tower is wide at the base, narrows to a waist and flares out again towards the top.

Which spring weather event blows into Beijing from the Gobi Desert across the Mongolian steppe?

Winter smog is the other notorious hazard; the city's first smog red alert shut most industry in December 2015.

Beijing sits at the northern end of which ancient waterway linking it with Hangzhou?

The Grand Canal is the world's longest man-made waterway, dug over many centuries to carry the south's surplus grain north to feed the capital and its armies.

Beijing is almost entirely surrounded by which province?

Hebei means 'north of the river', the river being the Yellow River; under the Ming and Qing it was Zhili, the 'directly ruled' province wrapped around the emperor's capital.

Which stretch of the Great Wall near Beijing was the first to be opened to tourists?

Badaling was the first stretch restored and opened to visitors and has been the showpiece ever since: visiting heads of state are taken there, and millions of tourists follow.

Which Beijing site became World Heritage in 2024?

The Central Axis runs from the Drum and Bell Towers south through the Forbidden City to the Yongding Gate, a layout drawn from an ancient craft manual's plan for the ideal capital.

Mei Lanfang became Peking opera's best-known star playing heroines, in casts that were traditionally what?

All male: men played the heroines, and Mei did it so well that he carried the art to Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Which thoroughfare between Tian'anmen and the square forms Beijing's main east–west axis?

Chang'an Avenue carries the capital's great military parades past the gate, and it was here that a lone man stood in front of a column of tanks in June 1989.

Which old factory complex is Beijing's best-known art district?

798 was the number of one of several state electronics factories built here in the 1950s to East German designs; when they fell empty, artists moved into the halls.

Which US president flew to Beijing in February 1972 to meet Mao Zedong after two decades of Cold War hostility?

Richard Nixon was the first sitting US president to visit mainland China; Henry Kissinger had cleared the way the year before, slipping into Beijing in secret during a trip to Pakistan.

Which people from the north-east took Beijing in 1644, weeks after rebels toppled the Ming, and ruled as the Qing?

The Manchus were invited in by a Ming frontier general to drive out the rebel Li Zicheng, who had walked into the capital as the last Ming emperor hanged himself; they stayed until 1912.

What were the student militants called who filled Tiananmen Square in 1966 for mass rallies with Mao Zedong?

Red Guards were school and university students in army-style green with red armbands; Mao received them by the million that autumn, and at the first rally a schoolgirl pinned an armband on him.

Which port city, about 120 km to the south-east, has long served as Beijing's gateway to the sea?

Tianjin was the capital's trading gateway, and from the 19th century Britain, France and other powers carved out concession districts there, building European-style quarters of their own.

Which numbered ring road roughly traces Beijing's demolished old city walls?

The 2nd passes the sites of the old city gates: only a few still stand, but the rest live on as the names of its junctions and nearby streets.

Beijing's oldest mosque, Niujie, is built in which style?

Chinese palace outside, Arabic calligraphy within: the timber halls follow local building custom, but the mosque itself is turned to face Mecca.