King Wu was the first to declare Beijing the capital city in 1057 BC. Subsequently, the city has gone by the names of Ji, Zhongdu, Dadu, and nally Beijing when the Ming Dynasty Emperor ChengZu chose the name in 1421. Before 1949, Beijing was known as Peking by the Western world.
HUTONG is a typical lane or small street in Beijing that originated during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). People say that the real culture of Beijing is "the culture of hutong" and "the culture of courtyard". Where there is a hutong, there is a story.
SUMMER PALACE is the largest royal park of the Key Cultural Relics Protection Sites of China. In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design.
BEIJING 798 ART ZONE was once occupied by a factory. Many art organizations and artists came to rent the vacant plants and transformed them, then gradually formed a district of galleries, art studios, cultural companies, fashion shops etc.
