Beijing

Beijing’s 21 million inhabitants live on a permanent construction site, and no building, with the exception of national icons such as the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, seems entirely safe from demolition. Huge, concentric ring roads now divide up the city. The giant painting of Mao still gazes down over Tiananmen Square from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, but the scene below is doubtless rather different from the one that the Great Helmsman originally envisioned. 

Beijing is an ancient city, with a history dating back three millennia. (It is one of the “Four Great Ancient Capitals of China,” the others being Nanjing, Luoyang and Xi’an.) However, much of old Beijing has disappeared. Only recently has some effort been made to preserve the last of the traditional neighborhoods, or hutongs. The word literally means “an alley,” and they are formed by lines of siheyuan, or traditional courtyard residences. Some hutongs are now crowded with tourists — especially in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower — but elsewhere it is still possible to experience those with unique and timeless atmospheres.