Beijing

Beijing — capital and one of cities of the central submission of the Chinese National Republic.

The city of Beijing (Бэйцзин) — the second city in China by quantity of inhabitants after Shanghai. The amazing and contrast capital of China surprises travellers in the scales and rates of growth. The city population has passed for 9 million persons, the area — 17,8 thousand км2 (for comparison, the area of Moscow — 0,9 thousand км2). Works on building and a city accomplishment do not stop all day and night: holes on roads "are tightened" for a night, high-speed highways are laid for some weeks. For example, for five summer months 1992 in Beijing it has been constructed nine new high-speed motorways. And still Beijing — a city of bicyclists. The bicycle has come from Europe, but how much it became Chinese, it is possible to judge on the Chinese joke: the Chinese child is born sitting on a bicycle.

In Beijing more than two hundred large (with number of the persons occupied over thousand) the enterprises, including the coal industry, ferrous metallurgy, motor industry, chemical, light industry. As well as the majority of large industrial cities all over the world, Beijing faces an environmental contamination problem. It is especially strongly felt запыление atmospheres — result of use of coal for heating of dwellings. It is possible to judge quantity of a dust at least on a light collar which by the evening becomes black.

Sights of Beijing have got for a long time world popularity and it is not vain. To tourists hardly there will be somewhere such set of monuments of the culture collected in one place: here and the Imperial palace, and the Sky temple, both the Summer palace, and the Great wall, and tombs of emperors of a dynasty of Mines, and the well-known Peking opera.

Now Beijing is a big modern city with the population more than 11 million persons in which are surprisingly combined new and old China. Last years the stream of tourists to Beijing has increased. For them in a city it has been erected a number of new modern hotels. In total in Beijing now is more than 150 hotels. In Beijing is about 200 basic objects of tourism, however the majority of tourists gets acquainted only with the most known sights.