If you can see only one city in China, it should be Beijing, because many of the capital's "bests" are also China's "bests." Best known among these are the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tian'an Mén Square, and the Great Wall -- bedazzling and symbolic structures without which no trip to the country would be complete.

But grandiose emblems are not the only reason to visit Beijing. Scattered through the city’s sprawl are a number of temples, museums, gardens, and other attractions that only grow in charm as they decrease in size. This principle culminates in the hútòng, narrow lanes that twist through older sections and form an open-air museum where you can happily wander for hours without aim.

It is easy, however, to overemphasize the transformations of the past few decades in a city with so many centuries under its belt. To many observers, Beijing has hardly changed at all. People smoke in elevators, spit in the streets, fly kites, and practice tai chi (tàijíquán) in the mornings, just as they always have. And perhaps most important, the Great Wall continues to snake along the city’s northern border while the Forbidden City gleams at its center.

Present-day Beijing is a vast municipality with a population of roughly 15 million. Roads that once swarmed with bicycles have been taken over by automobiles. Swaths of hútòng have been leveled to make way for office towers. And children whose parents hid tapes of Beethoven during the Cultural Revolution now have easy access to DVDs, iPods, double-tall lattes, plastic surgery, and other previously unthinkable bourgeois luxuries.

Beijing has come a long way from the dusty communist capital of the seventies and eighties to a modern city with the usual high rising buildings and shopping malls. Modern China can be seen all around Beijing. The city is always growing and evolving, new buildings are constantly being built, the subway is forever expanding and the people are always on the move. Beijing is a true metropolis with every modern convenience one could hope for.

The nightlife and restaurant offerings continue to surprise new arrivals. There are numerous bars and clubs which cater for all tastes. Locals and the foreigners can be seen partying together like in no other Chinese city. The number of bars and clubs are too many to list with more being built all the time. As for restaurants, every cuisine imaginable is well represented, with numerous foreign restaurants and an uncountable number of Chinese restaurants serving food from all regions of the world.