Beijing hotels collection

Beijing is built on an axis, north to south, and everything falls into line with it: the Forbidden City and its yellow-tiled roofs, the Temple of Heaven and its round marbles, the gates, the drums. Beside the axis, the hutongs, grey lanes where courtyard houses hide a jujube tree and a birdcage, and the lakes of Houhai where people skate in winter. The Summer Palace keeps its lake and its painted galleries. The city is vast, dry, swept by the wind off the steppes; it is done by bicycle, early in the morning, when the elderly do their exercises beneath the willows.