For a long time, Beijing has been a city that people of different regions, nations and nationalities like to temporarily call home. Beijing has become a stage for different cultures to express themselves but not necessarily to clash with each other. After all, the city has never in its long history favored one culture or one race over others. Many experts say that Beijing has successfully absorbed an immigrant population

Some even go further to say that Beijing is the city with the most amicable environment for different cultures to prosper, whether they are popular culture or elite culture. That diversity has become a source of vigor for this ancient capital. While high-rise buildings are changing Beijing's skyline every day, Beijing's open attitude toward different cultures and unyielding faith in its traditional values will keep the city both ancient and young.

"Beijing people have always been so warm-hearted and amicable," said Tanaka In, a Japanese student of Peking University who has lived in the city for eight years. "The vista has been changing while people's kindness has never changed. This is the most charming part of Beijing."

City on axis

When Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), decided the site for his new capital city in 1264, he chose Yanjing in the country's north. He rebuilt the city, calling it Dadu, or Great Capital. That city was later named Beijing.

When Khan's subordinates planned the layout of his palace and the capital, they carefully chose a north-south axis for the palace complex, which could best take advantage of the sceneries of lakes and rivers on the property. The axis also became the axis for the city layout, which was prudently observed during the construction of the city. Today, Beijing's grandest ancient buildings, like the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, mostly stand on the axis.

Edmund Norwood Bacon, a noted American architect, urban planner, educator and author who led Philadelphia's renaissance as director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, traveled to China and worked as an architect there in the 1930s. He was struck by the Chinese sense of design and movement and especially influenced by the Forbidden City. Bacon later commented that his experiences in China greatly influenced his planning of spaces like Penn Center and Society Hill in Philadelphia.

Famous modern architect Mario Botta from Switzerland once told his Chinese colleagues to stop copying Western architecture styles and to study more about the architectural skills of the Forbidden City in using no more than three colors and three construction materials to create an architectural miracle.

Hutong (alley or lane) and siheyuan (Chinese quadrangle), though not as well known as the Forbidden City, are also indispensable parts of Beijing's city planning and architecture styles.

Originating in the 12th century, siheyuan, or courtyards with inward-facing houses on four sides, closed in by enclosure walls, is an architectural manifestation of Confucian thought on patriarchy. The lord and lady of the house lived in the sunny main building and their children in the side chambers. The southern row on the opposite side, those near to the entrance gate, were generally used as the study, the reception room, the man servants' dwelling or for sundry purposes. Such a residence offers space, comfort and quiet privacy. It is also good for security as well as protection against dust and storms.

Hutong is an ancient city alley or lane typical in Beijing, where the number of hutong ran into 7,000 in their prime. Surrounding the Forbidden City, hutong divided the residential areas according to the etiquette systems. Originating from the word "hottog" in Mongolian meaning "water well," hutong is in fact the passage formed by lines of siheyuan where most Beijing residents used to live. One hutong connects with another, and siheyuan connects with siheyuan, to form a block, and blocks join with blocks to form the whole city, with the royal palace, the Forbidden City, at the center.

Siheyuan was once de rigueur for Chinese nobility and courtiers. More recently many have been requisitioned and partitioned as family homes, often overcrowded and notorious for pungent communal toilets and dodgy coal-fired boilers. Until recently, thousands of siheyuan were demolished when city planners commandeered land for development, which at the same time destroyed a large number of hutong. With their destruction, a traditional lifestyle that local people have enjoyed for hundreds of years has been disappearing, to live on only in people's memory and artistic works.

"I often worry that my pen will not be fast enough to beat the bulldozers," said Xiao Fuxing, a renowned Beijing-based prose writer, who has immortalized Beijing's old lifestyle in his books.

In recent years, the Beijing Municipal Government's new strategies for protecting hutong and siheyuan have given preservationists hope. The government has listed hutong and siheyuan as cultural heritage sites and put 25 specified zones under special protection, a move that will save 37 percent of Beijing's inner city from demolition.