According to abbreviationfinder.org, Beijing is commonly abbreviated as BJ.
Parks
Badaling-Shisanling
Badaling – a large community in the south of the Yanqing district of the Chinese capital Beijing – is the most frequently visited section of the Great Wall of China. The section of the Great Wall in question was built during the Ming Dynasty. Other exciting sights are the 13 tombs of the 16 emperors of the Ming Dynasty and a sea of granite rocks.
Beihai Gongyuan
The “North Sea Park” is located in the northwest of the “Forbidden City” and is one of the most typical gardens in China. It was laid out in the 10th century, and before the Qing Dynasty reached its final hours in 1911, the area was even part of the Forbidden City. The park has been open to the public since 1925. The park complex extends over a gigantic 700 km² and is home to a water area that takes up more than half of the entire park. In the center of the park is an island called Qionghua Island. Its highest point is 32 meters high. In the northern part of the island there is a large pond, the Taiye pond, which connects two other ponds.
Běijīng Zhíwùyuán (Botanical Garden)
The 56-hectare Botanical Garden of Beijing was established in 1955 and is located in the northwestern outskirts of the metropolis. Within the facility you can visit various exhibition areas and halls such as the tree garden, the rose garden, the traditional Chinese herb garden or the water plant district.
6,000 plant species are at home here, including around 2,000 bush species, more than 1,600 species of tropical and subtropical plants, 500 flower species and 1,900 fruit tree species.
The offer extends far beyond what is shown.
Park of the New Summer Palace
The gigantic park is unique and belongs to the New Summer Palace. It requires at least half a day to visit. It is littered with pavilions, temples and Kunming Lake. Once it was the place for the imperial court who wanted to escape the hot and humid summer. One of the most beautiful parts of the park is the 12-arch bridge that spans the Kunming Lake.
Yiheyuan
This park, two thirds of which consists of a lake, is counted among the most beautiful parks in Beijing and served the last Chinese emperors as a place for summer recreation. Almost the entire court withdrew here during the summer. The park is said to have existed since the 11th century; its current form, shaped by the Manchu emperor Qianlong, goes back above all to the 18th century.
Zoological Garden
Beijing Zoo, founded in 1906 but not opened to the public until 1908, is 90 hectares and welcomes 8-12 million visitors each year. You can see around 1,600 different animal species. After many difficulties in the first decades of its existence, the area of the Beijing Zoological Garden has been constantly expanding and expanding since the 1960s. In 1999 a new gigantic aquarium and various building complexes for elephants opened. The Beijing Zoo currently has more than 30 buildings.
Sports facilities
National stadium (bird’s nest)
This sports stadium was designed for the 2008 Olympics by the Basel / Switzerland architects Herzog & Meuron. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in December 2003 – the actual work did not begin until March 2004. The stadium was inaugurated on April 18, 2008 with a walking competition. It is around 330 m long, 220 m wide and 69 m high and can accommodate around 91,000 visitors. Its outer shell consists of around 42,000 tons of steel, which was processed in such a way that the stadium was named “Bird’s Nest”. At the Olympics, the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony as well as the athletics competitions and the soccer final took place here. From the US magazine “Time”
Other Olympic sites
For the 2008 Olympics, a total of 31 stadiums and sports facilities as well as 41 training centers were built in Beijing
Lakes, rivers, canals
Kunming Lake
Along the shores of this lake, which is located in the gardens of the New Summer Palace, there are buildings such as the East Gate, the Hall of Jade Waves or the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, where high diplomats used to be received. Many names of places in Beijing end with the syllable “hai”, which means “sea”. This suffix can be found, for example, in Zhonghai, Beihai, Nanhai, Xihai or Houhai. There are wonderful parks and bodies of water. These are not seas, but of course lakes. The Miyun and Huairou Reservoirs, which were built on the upper reaches of the Chaobai River, are considered to be Beijing’s important reservoirs and are of enormous importance for the water supply of the urban region.
The main rivers of the Beijing metropolitan area are the Yongding River and the Chaobai River. Both are part of the Hai River system and flow south.
Yongding River
This river flows down from the Taihang Mountains and used to have a tendency to change its flow direction when the water level was high, which is why it was also called the “Wuding River”, which roughly means “capricious river”. But people wanted a more constant flow, so they simply renamed it with its current name, which means “forever”. Due to major construction efforts, it no longer changes its direction of flow.
Chaobai River
This river flows to the east of Beijing. In the past, large dams were built to create the Miyan and Huairou Reservoirs.
Imperial Canal (Jing-Háng Dà Yùnhé)
It is also known as the “Great Canal” and, with a length of 1,794 km and a width of 40 meters, is the longest man-made waterway in the world. It starts in Hangzhou in east China and ends in Beijing. For more than 600 years this canal, which was built in the 5th century BC. It was started and twice expanded, for Beijing the most important supply artery for various trade goods and still today connects Beijing with the Hwangho, the Yellow River, and the Yangtze. The canal, which for centuries was the only waterway for south-north transport, lost its importance with the construction of the railway and especially in 1855 when the Hwangho had shifted its course to the south. The Great Canal was no longer navigable throughout. Today it is used as a regional shipping route and as an irrigation canal.
