General

Modern Beijing is a cosmopolitan city full of smartly-dressed citizens, seemingly always on the move. Well-stocked supermarkets can be found very easily. Cars are everywhere, for better or for worse. Personal computers are almost commonplace and almost every Beijinger seems to possess a mobile phone. But the high-rise office buildings which line many of the broad streets look down on tile-roofed courtyard houses built before the last Manchu Emperor's abdication. In the last 50 years, the face of Beijing has changed dramatically. In the 1950s, the old city walls were at last torn down to make way for the roadway that would become today's Second Ring Road. Many of Beijing's architectural treasures--its temples and older traditional-style estates were damaged during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Concrete apartment blocks sprung up all over the city to accommodate a population which grew rapidly during the 1960s.Transportation was also greatly expanded: The first lines of a modern subway system were opened in 1969, and roadways were widened Beijing's real boom began, of course, with the opening and reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. The decade of the 1980s saw high sustained annual growth which continued with the return of Hong Kong in 1997, and in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.

Weather

Beijing is very cold in winter and very hot in summer. In spring there can be dust storms blown in off the deserts of Inner Mongolia, so be prepared for rather cool windy weather at the end of April. To find out what today's weather in Beijing is like, click here.

Food

There are many many good restaurants, with every type of Chinese cookery--Sichuan, Shanghai, Hunan, Cantonese, Chaozhou. Other Asian cuisines also abound: there are a good half-dozen Thai places around town, as well as many Indian restaurants. In the last couple of years, three excellent Middle Eastern restaurants have opened. The sushi bars are too numerous to count. Burmese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Vietnamese as well as every kind of Western food you can name, too, from bagels to burgers, bratwurst to burritos, Continental to Cajun, pasta to piroshkis, Tapas to tamales, and Angus steaks to apple strudels. There are many art galleries, theaters, and concert halls featuring exhibitions and performances by Chinese and international artists, but also to jazz , blues, pop, punk, funk, reggae, rhythm-n-blues, or heavy metal.