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China Information » Places in China » Beijing Province
Places in China: Beijing Province
Beijing, the city province and capital of the Peoples Republic of China, is the twenty-ninth largest among the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities of China. It stands at the northern tip of the North China Plain and covers 6490 square miles or 16,800 square kilometres. The population of the region is nearly eighteen million with a population density of 888 persons per square kilometre. That is the second highest in China.
The city is home to many well-known sites such as the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square as well as other world-recognized historic architecture. More information about the city of Beijing can be found at the Beijing City site.
The region in which Beijing is located is in the northern part of the temperate zone, at about the same latitude as Madrid, Spain. Beijing faces the Bohai Sea which is also known as the Beijing Bay. Cold and dry winters predominate while summers are hot and humid due to monsoon winds. The coldest month in the year in Beijing is January with July being the warmest month. Most people feel that the best time to visit Beijing is in the autumn of the year when there are fewer tourists, and the weather is more ideal. Locals say that in the autumn 'the sky is high, and the air is fresh'. In the spring, there are not many tourists although the 'sky is not high' due to dust storms. From June to August, an influx of tourists makes the city/province less attractive, and the hotels' rates go up. Beijing experiences between 600 to 700 millimetres of rainfall annually.
Beijing has served as the country's capital for over eight hundred years, since the Yuan Dynasty. It has served as the transportation hub, political centre and the heart of China's educational, cultural and scientific endeavours for some time. The city opened up in 1978, and the world has been eagerly visiting.
This ancient city is now a showplace for both the ancient ways of life and the ultra-modern China. It is the second largest city in China (Shanghai being the largest city) and has also been known as Peking. The people are around ninety-six percent Han Chinese with the other four percent made up of other ethnic groups. The language used in Beijing is the standard Mandarin dialect of the country.
The city province of Beijing is sixty-one percent mountainous with the other thirty-nine percent being flat land. The mountains are on the north, east and west sides of the city with the southeast side being the alluvial plain of the Yongding River.
Beijing is one of three mega-cities in China under the direct jurisdiction of the central government of the country.
Forty years of construction has helped Beijing to become much more than a consumer city. Wide highways now link Beijing with much of the rest of the country. Over seventy institutions of higher learning now enhance Beijing's importance in world affairs. The province has over three hundred publishing houses and move than five hundred institutions for scientific research.
Legal holidays in China include the famous Chinese New Year which takes place in January or February each year, Qing Ming which is the tomb sweeping festival, Labour Day in May, the July 1 anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party founding, a mid-autumn harvest festival and the National Day in October to commemorate the Communist victory in 1949. The various provinces and cities also have some additional festivals and holidays besides those Chinese legal holidays. Beijing has some of its own festivals as well.
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