Location: at the northern tip of North China Plain, the city of Beijing lies at approximately the same latitude as Philadelphia in the U.S. and Madrid in Spain. With a total area of 16,800 sq. kilometers, Beijing Municipality is roughly the size of Belgium.

Physical Features: surrounded on the west, north and east by the Yanshan Mountains. The small alluvial plain of the Yongding River lies to its southeast. Beijing faces the Bohai Sea, which is also called the Beijing Bay. The city is 39% flat land and 61% mountainous area.

Climate: moderate continental climate, with an average yearly rainfall of about 600-700 millimetres. Late June, July and August is the rainy season, while spring in Beijing is dry and dusty and the winter is long, sunny and dry. Many people consider the best season in Beijing, as in many other parts of China, to be autumn.

Beijing enjoys a history that goes back 500,000 years to the days when Peking man lived in Zhoukoudian in what is now the southwestern suburbs of the city. Then, some 5,000 years ago, during a time when agricultural communities were thriving, the legends of Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor) arose. According to one of the stories, Huang Di battled another tribal leader named Chiyou "in the wilderness of the prefecture of Zhou." It's possible that this refers to an early predecessor of Zhoulu, a town to the west of modern day Beijing, which may have been the first city in the area. Huang Di's successor Yao is said to have established his capital Youdu (City of Quietude) on the spot where Beijing now stands.

The Warring States period (475-221 BCE) was an era of constant brutual warfare caused by conflicts among the seven states of Han, Wu, Zhao, Chu, Qi, Yan and Qin. At one point, the leader of the Yan annexed the territory of the Ji and made his new capital Ji, the first name of the city that is now known as Beijing. The end of the Warring States period came when the Qin—who initially had not only not been considered a contender in the wars for domination, but wasn't even considered entirely Chinese—managed to defeat the other six states and unified all of China for the first time in her history.

Qin Shihuang-di of the Qin Dynasty (521-506 BCE), named Ji the administrative center of Guangyang Commandery, one of 36 prefectures in China's first feudal empire, but created his own capital in Chang'an. For the next thousand years, Beijing was used as either a capital or a strategic regional trading and military center. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE) used the city as a gathering point for amassing troups to send against Korea. And Emperor Taidong used it as a military training center. He also built the Temple for Minzhongsi (Compassion for the Loyal) dedicated to troops who died in battle.

At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE), Beijing (still called Ji at this time) was no different than any other large feudal city. When the dynasty collapsed, however, the Qidans (Khitans) moved in from the north and made it their second capital. They renamed it Yanjing. Emperor Taizong of the Liao Dynasty commenced a massive building project, adding palaces which he used as strongholds during his wars to conquer the central China plains.

In the early 12th Century, the Nuzhen conquered the Liao and established the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). In 1153, Wan Yanliang moved the Jin capital from Huiningfu to Yanjing, which he called Zhongdu (Central Capital) as a challenge to the Southern Sung Dynasty (1127-1279). The city was rebuilt once again beginning in 1151 and was expanded to a scale matching that of the Northern Sung capital at Bianlang. The registered population at the time was 225,942 households or approximately one million people.

Genghis Khan's Mongol armies seized and occupied Yanjing in 1215 CE. Shangdu (modern day Kaiping in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region) was made the principal Mongolian capital with Yanjing relegated to provincial status. But in 1271 Kublai Khan adopted the Chinese dynasty name of Yuan and decided to move his capital to a more central location. Most of the magnificient Jin palaces of the old Zhongdu times had been destroyed by fire during the Mongol invasion, and so Kublai chose to rebuild the city on an even grander scale. He renamed it once more, calling it Dadu (Great Capital) — although it was known in Mongolia as Khanbaliq, the City of the Great Khan.

The Mongolian hold on China was not to last however, and on August 2, 1368, Ming troops seized Dadu. Under the new Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the capital was moved to Nanjing (which means Southern Capital), and Dadu — now renamed Beiping — was once more given the status of a provincial city. Then, beginning in 1406, the Yongle emperor Zhu Di (Yuanzhang's son) order the construction of walls 12 meters high and 10 meters thick at their base around the city of Beiping. The addition of more palace buildings and gardens began in 1417 and the project was completed in 1420. The capital was formally moved from Nanjing that year to the new city, which was finally given its modern-day name of Beijing (meaning Northern Capital). It was during the Ming Dynasty that Kublai Khan's Imperial Palace at the center of Dadu, formerly known as Danei (The Great Within), was expanded and renamed Zijincheng (The Forbidden City). Designed with thousands of halls and gates arranged symmetrically around a north-south axis, its dimensions and luxuriance are a fitting symbol of the power and greatness of traditional China.

When the Manchus ended the Ming Dynasty in 1644 and established the Chi'ng (Qing) Dynasty they commenced even more building projects, including suburban gardens, columned palaces, and open-air pavilions. Although a city plan has been laid out as far back as the Yuan Dynasty, it wasn't until the completion of the Ming and Ch'ing building projects that Beijing emerged as the architectural wonder it is today. The Manchu Dynasty collapsed in 1911 and shortly after the Republic of China was founded.

The structure of our city of Beijing is roughly that of the Ming Dynasty. During that period, great city walls rose on all sides, deliniating the inner and outer cities. Basically, the inner city is a square and the outer city, lying to the south of the inner city, is a rectangle. The inner city surrounds the Imperial City or the district of Dongcheng, at the heart of which lies Zijincheng — the Forbidden City of our Divine Emperor Jot.

Both the Forbidden City and the inner city are surrounded by deep, wide moats. The outer city has seven gates, the inner has nine. The Chinese word for gate is "men" — so the Yongdingmen means the Yongding gate. Most of the streets run north to south; the hutongs run east to west. If you would like to know more about the layout of Chinese cities and their hutongs, you can read about them in Chinese Cities and Feng Shui.