Beijing layout is well organized, most roads follow either north-south or east-west routes and although the city is huge it's quite easy to find your way using just a map. This is especially true inside the second ring road where everything was build symmetrically according to the rules of fangshui. The ring roads are a system of circular freeways surrounding Beijing. There is no first ring road. The count starts from the second ring road surrounding the city center which contains the ancient parts of the city, then the third and fourth ring roads encircling most of urban Beijing and ending with the fifth, sixth and seventh(?) which are considered as the suburbs of Beijing. When giving the location of a place It's quite common to refer to the ring roads for instance "east third ring road" or "between the north of the second and the third ring".
Beijing is divided to X districts. The ones worth knowing are:
- DongCheng and XiCheng - (east city and west city respectively) - divide the area within the second ring road to east and west. At some points they go beyond the second ring but only by little).
- ChaoYang - Located in the north east of urban Beijing. This district is also known as the China Business District (CBD).
- HaiDian - Located in the north west of urban Beijing. Most of the universities of Beijing are located in this district.
- XuanWu and ChongWen districts - Two small districts between the south of the second and the third ring roads. XuanWu is to south west and ChongWen is to the south east.
- FuTai - Covers the southern parts of Beijing.
Tip
Beijing is located in the northern hemisphere, therefore at noon the sun indicates where the south is, and your shadow points toward the north. |