After writing about Detroit and Rochester, NY, I figured it was time to up my game. And I opted to go really big, as in the capital of the most-populated country in the world. Here are 10 facts about Beijing, just in case the city hosts any international events that pique your curiosity.
1
The population of Beijing is in the range of 21 million, making it the second most-populated city in China behind Shanghai and one of the 10 most-populated urban areas in the world.
2
Any list of facts about Beijing is unlikely to highlight diversity, as 96 percent of the population belongs to the Han Chinese ethnic majority. The remaining four percent consists of ethnic minorities and a small number of foreigners.
3
Standard Chinese is actually the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, just one of many different Mandarin dialects. (And Mandarin itself is just one of many language groups in China.) Thanks to a concerted effort on the part of the government, Standard Chinese serves as the nation’s lingua franca and enjoys official status (as it does in Taiwan, Singapore, and the United Nations).
4
With a latitude of 39.9042° N, Beijing is approximately the same distance north of the equator as Denver, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia. As is true for those other cities, the summers are hot and the winters are cold, making the Chinese capital perfectly suited to be the only city to host both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics.
5
Beijing has been around for a while—as in something like 3000 years—earning it the label as one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. (Of course, well prior to the beginning of that window, the area saw activity in the form of Homo erectus—think Peking Man—and then nonurban Homo sapiens.) The city witnessed a few thousand years of imperial rule before the rise of the Communist Party in the 1900s and has been the capital for the greater part of eight centuries. All that history provides a few things for tourists to see including the Great Wall of China (built to protect against invasion), the Forbidden City (a massive imperial palace complex), and the Grand Canal (which connects the Yellow River to the Yangtze River and, at over 1,100 miles in length, is the longest man-made waterway in the world).
6
Beijing’s lengthy story also includes multiple name changes. The current name took hold in 1403, with the two Chinese characters used to write the name meaning north and capital, i.e. Northern Capital. The romanization of those two characters as they are pronounced in certain dialects is Peking, though the romanization of the pronunciation in Standard Chinese is the now more common Beijing. As pointed out by Wikipedia, Peking still makes an appearance in the code of the major airport (PEK), the name of a world-renowned university (see below), and the name of a culinary delight that involves duck.
7
Beijing has the ninth-largest PPP-adjusted GDP among all cities, and it is home to the most Fortune Global 500 companies (many state owned) and billionaires in the world.
8
It follows that in pre-pandemic times, Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) was the second busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In 2019, a second international airport was added.
9
While Beijing has a bad rap regarding air pollution, it is actually only number 241 on a list of the world’s most polluted cities as measured by the concentration of PM2.5 (particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter). With an average PM2.5 reading of 37.5 micrograms per cubic meter in 2020, Beijing is still well above the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 10 micrograms per cubic meter but far below the value of 104 in 2010 that helped earn the city its reputation in the first place.
10
Beijing has carved out a niche as an intellectual hot spot—Peking University and Tsinghua University are both ranked among the top 20 universities in the world by Times Higher Education. The city has also been recognized by the Nature Index as publishing the most scientific papers in high-quality journals of any city in the world.
As these facts about Beijing show, the city is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with. It’s no Detroit, but I’m impressed nonetheless.
