beijing city guide: Orientation
The Enjoying Jasper Temple at The Old Summer Palace. © Glenn Beanland Lonely Planet Images
Beijing is located in the north-eastern corner of China. The city limits of Beijing extend some 80 km (50 mi), including the urban and the suburban areas and the nine counties under its administration. Mountainous along the north and west, and flat in the south-east, Beijing municipality has a total area of 16,800 sq km (6552 sq mi).
Though it may not appear so in the shambles of arrival, Beijing is a place of very orderly design. Long, straight boulevards and avenues are crisscrossed by a network of lanes. Places of interest are either very easy to find if they're on the avenues, or impossible to find if they're buried down the narrow alleys. The Forbidden City acts like a bull's-eye, surrounded by a chessboard of roads.
Then there are the 'villages' (li). Beijing was once surrounded by many tiny villages, though over time these have in fact become neighborhoods within the megalopolis. The Beijing Municipality is carved up into 10 districts and eight counties.
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