Northwest Beyond the Zoo
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng
The northwest is the home of the Zhōng Guān Cūn high-tech high-investment area, intended to be China’s Silicon Valley, and offering incentives to encourage more than the usual handful of students to return from overseas and set up businesses.
The district also contains the most important of the capital’s more than 50 higher education institutions, including Běi Dà, China’s most prestigious university, the self-styled ‘Harvard of China’, which has recently decided to revert to its earlier name of Peking University (PKU). The student area does have lively bars, particularly around the west and south gates of Běi Dà, the east and south gates of the Language and Culture University, and in the Wǔ Dào Kǒu area, now easily reached by metro Line 13.
The Běijīng Zoo is of interest mainly as a major transport interchange in the northwest corner of the city, reached by several bus routes, and with suburban buses departing to several major sites to the northwest (see Běijīng Suburbs and Beyond). But the pandas at the zoo, together with the neighbouring Běijīng Aquarium, Běijīng Planetarium, and Paleozoological Museum of China (for dinosaur skeletons), make a rainy day destination for those with children and on longer visits to the city.
From Xī Zhí Mén, named for a gate which once stood at the northwest corner of the city walls, you can follow westwards the route of the imperial families of the Qīng period to the Summer Palace, passing a succession of gardens and temples they favoured, some of which are highly unusual and contain worthwhile museums. If you don’t wish to stop you can also do this by boat in summer, as they did.
Educating Emigrants
Běijīng Zoo 北京动物园
Běijīng Planetarium 北京天文馆
Paleozoological Museum of China 中国古动物馆
Five Padoga Temple 五塔寺
Purple Bamboo Park 紫竹院公园
Wànshòu Sì 万寿寺
Great Bell Temple 大钟寺
Next in Northwest Beyond the Zoo: Educating Emigrants
Previously in West of the Imperial City: Tiānníng Sì Pagoda
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
