If you can see only one city in China, it should be Beijing, because many of the capital's "bests" are also China's "bests." Best known among these are the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tian'an Mén Square, and the Great Wall -- bedazzling and symbolic structures without which no trip to the country would be complete.
But grandiose emblems are not the only reason to visit Beijing. Scattered through the city's sprawl are a number of temples, museums, gardens, and other attractions that only grow in charm as they decrease in size. This principle culminates in the hútòng, narrow lanes that twist through older sections and form an open-air museum where you can happily wander for hours without aim.
Present-day Beijing is a vast municipality with a population of roughly 15 million. Roads that once swarmed with bicycles have been taken over by automobiles. Swaths of hútòng have been leveled to make way for office towers. And children whose parents hid tapes of Beethoven during the Cultural Revolution now have easy access to DVDs, iPods, double-tall lattes, plastic surgery, and other previously unthinkable bourgeois luxuries.
It is easy, however, to overemphasize the transformations of the past few decades in a city with so many centuries under its belt. To many observers, Beijing has hardly changed at all. People smoke in elevators, spit in the streets, fly kites, and practice tai chi (tàijíquán) in the mornings, just as they always have. And perhaps most important, the Great Wall continues to snake along the city's northern border while the Forbidden City gleams at its center.
