If you want to know China, Beijing is a place where you must visit first, you could find the footprints of Chinese history over centuries in this city, from arts to ordinary people's house, from food to drink, from what they wear to what for their leisure…
Beijing is a famous, beautiful and modern capital city. Beijing has over 1,000 year of history, many historic artifacts and places has left us with many unforgettable memory. It is indeed worth your time to visit there.
The quadrangle were the unique and traditional style house in Beijing. The four-sided enclosed courtyards, and alleys in the city tell more about ordinary people’s life and legends. The quadrangle has a medium sized yard for outdoor activities. The center room is built and decorated nicer than other rooms in quadrangle. The center room usually kept for elderly, because it is cool in summer and warm in winter, but children will only have rights to choose the side rooms to live. Normally, women will settle in inner rooms, male servants and guests will be put in the outer room. The same structures are being passed down with the rites and traditional custom of ancient China.
Alleys connected every part of the city in old days. And most of them were from the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, It is about 800 years back from now. When entered those small alley, I was filled with a lot wonders and curiosities of how ancient people lived here and who were they, what have they done. It seems that the history is just a distance away from us. Because, most tourists prefer the history of alley, thus alley tour are getting hotter and hotter in the last few years.
Their something very special in Beijing that you cannot miss, it is the Peking opera and teahouse. In China, the national opera is Peking opera. Qing Dynasty has it first played. The opera performers will have very colorful costumes and bright color make up on their face, looks funny. According to the role personal characters, good people will make up red face, bad people is white. Even if you can't understand the full story from the show, well you still get some clue after watching. Teahouse as the most important information exchanging places were visited by publications and bureaucrats so frequently in Qing Dynasties. Today, Beijing people still like to hang out in teahouse as well as the tourists.
ancient Chinese are always mysterious, and modern Chinese has lost a lot of Chinese tradition, but the only thing which hasn't been changed is the characters of their language, it is difficult, but it is interesting, learn Chinese is a long term progress, speak Chinese is really challenging.
