Beijing from above

[hauchyi]

Went to the CCTV Tower today for Beijing skyline yesterday. Gosh I really care about my forum (and you guys), hehe...

This is the tower:


The tower has an outdoor observatory deck at 238m in the sky. Ticket price is only 75 RMB. If you want to go, though, be prepared for lots of local tourists that may surprise you.

Skyline of the east side: the weather is fantastic. It's mostly sunny with periodic clouds providing fantastic shadows. This view faces east (the Chaoyang borough) with the forbidden city in the shadow.


Skyscraper fans' wet dream: the city actually has already grown a quite decent skyline:


A longer version:


Summer Palace and Jade Spring Mountain are located at the northwest side of the city. This area is historically the summer resort of the Qing emperors. Even now, the jade spring mountain (the hill with a pagoda) still houses the villas of the communist party officials.

The river in the bottom half of the picture provides water to every single park in Beijing. In the old days, the empress dowager (Cixi) would go to the summer palace by boat from the Beijing Zoo near XiZiMen

Speaking of XiZhiMen, Xi means "west", Zhi is "straight", and Men is "gate" in Chinese). It is called the straight gate not because old Chinese people wanted to make their sexuality clear (actually it is quite common for higher society Chinese to have gay lovers), but because there is a straight road within the old city connecting XiZhiMen and DongZhiMen (Dong means east in Chinese).

The three identical oval shaped building is where the old XiZhiMen located. Now it is another train station and an important transportation hub with several subway lines intersect.
The green area beside XiZhiMen is the zoo. It has been there since Qing dynasty, when it housed animals given by then China's affiliated countries.



XiZhiMen closeup:

Many more to come later..

[mthq]

great pics! glad you shared them as we don't get much of Beijing around here.

[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

thanks for these photos. they remind me i have a bunch of year-old beijing shots that i need to get around to posting.

i really did not expect to like beijing, so i was very much surprised when i visited. the old hutong neighbourhoods inside the second ring road are fascinating to wander around and much more expansive than i assumed. and while the newer parts of the city are vast and built on a gigantic scale, they don't feel oppressive, partly because there are so many human-scaled elements: small shops, street hawkers, tree-lined promenades, small alleys between the mega-blocks.

i think i also like it because, after having lived in hong kong for awhile now, i have come to realize there is some intangible quality about northern cities that i really enjoy. maybe it's the light.

To me, Beijing's intangible quality is that, despite being at the educational, cultural and political heart of Chinese Civilization (on and off) for the last 2,400 years, it still feels like it is on the frontier. I this arises mostly from geography: a close proximity to the Jundu mountains, the great wall of China, the Gobi desert, and the Mongol hordes. However, I think there is a cultural element as well: for example, Beijing is the cutting edge of the Chinese art (and, at least it was a couple of years ago, a darling of the international scene as well) and cuisine scenes.

Anyway, this is an outstanding thread. One of my favourite threads of the year so far (and, in light of the truly extraordinary number of amazing photo threads we are treated to on SSP, I mean this as high praise indeed.) Finally shows off the scale of Beijing, ancient capital of the world's oldest and largest civilization, modern megalopolis of 20 million people. I really appreciate the effort you've made in capturing Beijing from this rare and very suitable perspective. Thank you and I can't wait to see more.

I would just add: although Beijing is ringed and crossed by freeways and boulevards, the side streets and neighborhoods are a cacophony of restaurants, vegetable markets, shopping streets, street vendors, and of course throngs of people, like all of Asia's metropolises.

[hauchyi]

Originally Posted by Reesonov

To me, Beijing's intangible quality is that, despite being at the educational, cultural and political heart of Chinese Civilization (on and off) for the last 2,400 years, it still feels like it is on the frontier. I this arises mostly from geography: a close proximity to the Jundu mountains, the great wall of China, the Gobi desert, and the Mongol hordes. However, I think there is a cultural element as well: for example, Beijing is the cutting edge of the Chinese art (and, at least it was a couple of years ago, a darling of the international scene as well) and cuisine scenes.

Anyway, this is an outstanding thread. One of my favourite threads of the year so far (and, in light of the truly extraordinary number of amazing photo threads we are treated to on SSP, I mean this as high praise indeed.) Finally shows off the scale of Beijing, ancient capital of the world's oldest and largest civilization, modern megalopolis of 20 million people. I really appreciate the effort you've made in capturing Beijing from this rare and very suitable perspective. Thank you and I can't wait to see more.

I would just add: although Beijing is ringed and crossed by freeways and boulevards, the side streets and neighborhoods are a cacophony of restaurants, vegetable markets, shopping streets, street vendors, and of course throngs of people, like all of Asia's metropolises.

Thanks for your nice words, Reesonov..

One can write many essays discussing how China or Beijing has become such. I wish Chinese the best. Although annoyed by many of them many times, they are indeed smart and hard working and deserve more than what they have right now.

Starting from next post, I will show closeups of interesting or important buildings in Beijing. Beijing is, after all, the capital city of a country that disproportionately puts bureaucrats and businessmen in front of ordinary people. The focus will inevitably reflect that.

[hauchyi]

National Library Building and the Capital Stadium:
The green roofed building with two wings is the national library. The fancy slate looking building next to (the north of) it is the new wing. Of course it has to be the largest in Asia.
The park to the left (west) is the purple bamboo park with the first big lake after the river flows past the summer palace into the city. It takes about an hour and half hiking along the river to the summer palace.

That big green area in the upper part of the picture is not the edge of the city. It is the old summer palace (that was burned down by Brits and French in the late 19th century) that is now Peking University, Tsinghua University and YuanMinYuan Park.

In the center of the picture, the modern Chinese building is the Ministry of Finance of China. It was supposedly built in the early days of the PRC. Of course, one can't ignore the egg shaped building in the upper part of the picture, the national center for the performing arts.

In case you are wondering what is going on in the dried part of the lake, it is the subway line 9 that is supposed to operate in 2012.

[hauchyi]

Pano of the southwest side looking southeast:
Saved for the important buildings along the ChangAn Street (the East-west thoroughfare of the central Beijing), south side is generally a poorer area of Beijing.


Beijing West Station, built in 1996. Beijing West Station used to be the largest station in the city, until the new Beijing South Station, opened in 2008, took its crown.

This area is said to be the lowest area in Beijing. It has a serious flood problem. In the short year that I've been living here, it has been flooded twice.
Many buildings built in the 1990s have a what locals call "Chinese hat." It is enforced by the then mayor (who was later put into prison for 16 years for corruption).

The soviet-era building is the national military museum, a boring/bizzare/lots of propaganda/cool place that I hope one day Chinese can laugh about.
The big modern building to its left is the Ministry of National Defense, a place that is not marked on Chinese map.
I am not sure if you've notcied the round structure by the lake with a niddle pointing towards the sky. It's the China Millennium Monument (or Altar of the New Millennium), built in 2000. Don't go there even though some tourist books recommend. It's boring with nothing to see (but a cool place to take picture of the ginormous west station).


That boring tall, white builing to the right of the National Military Museum is the old CCTV Headquarter. Speaking of improvement of office space....

[ColDayMan]

Amazing stuff.

[Tom In Chicago]

I like tall buildings. . . thanks for sharing. . .

. . .

[kel]

Wow great photo's. I love Beijing, i find it more peaceful and a little more ethentic then Shanghai.

[wisla_krakow]

unbelievable photos. i'm having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around the scale of beijing. the city looks immense to say the least!

[whiteford]

massive and awesome. what a fantastic place.

[hauchyi]

I have since left Beijing and am now residing in Chicago...

This is the CBD from the Westin Hotel. The highway is the East Third Ring, and the greenery is the embassy area.



Pano view:


This window is not clean! But you can see the Olympic Park Obs. Tower sticking out in the foreground.

[hauchyi]

This is the Beihai Park view of the city



Forbidden city

[hauchyi]