Beijing is definitely a much more interesting city if only because it is has a greater historical context when it comes to China but I'd never want to live here. It has a long way to go before it even begins to be at the level of modernization of Shanghai.
When visiting Beijing, or Peking of old, there are many places to visit. Of those several sights are a must see, at least for me. These were the Forbidden Palace, The Great Wall which has close proximity to Beijing, Olympic Village and Tiananmen Square.
The Forbidden City is vast. You'll only really understand how big if you've been there. You can get lost very easily. It kind of reminded me of how I felt when I visited the UCLA campus when I went there right out of high school. I couldn't believe how big it was at the time. Now compared to so many other campuses it doesn't seem so big. This, I can't imagine another "inner city" being so big. It truly was built and is a city within a city, meant solely to keep the outside world from seeing in as much as to keep the Emperor isolated from the outside world.
I've attached a picture of one of the roof corners of the center palace. If you count the number of smaller dragons you'll count 11, the most any building in China has signifying its importance. The most I've counted in other buildings I think is 9 and that was only once in the Bell Tower in Chengdu (I think).
One of the more interesting buildings in the Forbidden City is the The Hall of Clocks and Watches. Inside you will find an enormous collect of clocks from all over the world as it was known then. The most fascinating of all the clocks is the Water Clock made in 1799. The clock is made up of four bronze pots, all identical in size and arranged vertically. The water in one pot drops into each succeeding pot with the water level gathering at the bottom indicating what time it is by a float placed in the bottom bath.
One of the more beautiful sights was the Nine Dragon Wall. You can find "nine dragon walls" in several places in China but I think this or the one in Behai Park is the original. Here is the story:
The screen was erected in 1771. The third dragon from the left is a different color from the others. According to one story the tile that contained this dragon was not ready when the screen was scheduled to be unveiled. Since the craftsmen were told they would be beheaded if the project wasn’t done in time a carpenter made a wooden dragon that looked like the original and glued it into place. Fortunately the Emperor didn’t notice and no one lost their head."
The Great Wall I must say was my biggest disappointment. Not only was the weather really, really crappy during the couple of days I had planned on seeing the "wall" but there was trash everywhere. I can imagine a group boy scouts making this a major undertaking for someone's Eagle Scout Project. Ha! Now if they only had Boy Scouts in China?!?
Olympic Village was interesting and except for the Track Stadium, the Water Cube and the garden area its not much more than an empty sports complex. Makes you wonder whether hosting an Olympics is worth all of the effort. I suppose in the end if you made money during the Olympics then it all works out and you now have a vast tourist attraction. The Water Cube is really neat though.
Tiananmen Square obviously has the most modern historical meaning to the Chinese people than anything else you can see here in China. If you can remember the scene where the tank was about to run down a Chinese dissident then you'll remember why there square holds so deep a meaning for those fighting for a freer political system here in China. Here's the story in case you missed it taken from Wikepedia:
"The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in much of the world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China (PRC) beginning on 14 April 1989. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
The protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang, an official known for tolerating dissent, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu's funeral, 100,000 people had gathered at Tiananmen Square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included Communist Party of China members and Trotskyists as well as liberal reformers, who were generally against the government's authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered in Tiananmen Square to begin with but then later in the streets around the square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.
The movement lasted seven weeks after Hu's death on 15 April. In early June, the People's Liberation Army moved into the streets of Beijing with troops and tanks and cleared the square with live fire. The exact number of deaths is not known. According to an analysis by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times, "The true number of deaths will probably never be known, and it is possible that thousands of people were killed without leaving evidence behind. But based on the evidence that is now available, it seems plausible that about fifty soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians." Globe and Mail correspondent Jan Wong placed the death toll at approximately 3,000, based on initial reports by the Red Cross and analysis on the crowd size, density, and the volume of firing.
Following the conflict, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. There was widespread international condemnation of the PRC government's use of force against the protesters."
A lot has changed in China since that day in 1989.
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