Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall - The past, present and future of a Chinese megalopolis

When a person visits Beijing for the first time, the initial reaction tends to be one of awe regarding the enormity of the city. The main street traversing the city has six lanes going in both directions and is forty-two kilometers long. The city maps often lack indications of distance, which makes it even harder to estimate how far away places are. For this reason, one should use the taxis or the subway for convenient moving about in the city. However, seeing Beijing from the ground level does not really give one the right sense of the immense proportions of the city. If you want to get a true picture of just how big the city is, I suggest you pay a visit to the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall located close to Tiananmen Square and the city's old railway station.

In this impressive building tourists can view different displays and photographs tracing the city's development, enhanced with light and sound effects. All museumgoers will undoubtedly find the place interesting, but it is particularly fascinating for those interested in architecture. Here you can get an idea of how the city is changing with time and what the city will look like in the future. Bronze reliefs lining the stairway between the second and the third floors show Beijing in 1949. The city's focal point, the gilded Forbidden City can be easily spotted from the impressive ten-meter high and nine-meter wide reliefs.

Beijing from past to present

I myself was impressed by the museum's layout and by all the finely detailed miniature models on display. One helpful tip to make the visit even more enjoyable is to start the tour from the third floor. Here you can find models and historical photographs of old Beijing packed with many interesting details. One of them is a round wall boasting paintings depicting historical Beijing which took the architects five years to realize! On this floor you can also find very nice pictures of the city with clear and concise explanations in both Chinese and English indicating which temple or other historical building is shown.

It may be a good idea to start your entire visit to Beijing from this general information center, so you can map out the sights and sites that you would be most interested to see. In addition to displaying historical Beijing, the museum also reveals how all the valuable cultural heritage sites of the city will be preserved for future generations as the city continues to grow. The general plan showing the transformations that have taken place from 1953 onwards gives a clear indication of the conservation measures that have been taken in the city.

The entire city in miniature!

A lot of effort has been put into creating interesting and esthetically pleasing spaces in the museum. On the third floor you can find a very impressive glass floor covering half of the entire hall, under which a scale model and aerial photographs of the city are exhibited! The sound and light show that helps to highlight different parts of the city in sequence is a must-see for tourists. When I visited the museum, an accompanying English language audio presentation echoed in the hall. From the fourth floor, you can view miniature models from a higher point of view and here at least you get a feeling of the incredible size of the metropolis! Here you can also find an entire section dedicated to presenting the different Olympic buildings and venues. One of the scale models is a representation of the new Bird's Nest stadium lit up with red and white lights. There is also another one of the aquatic stadium Watercube which is naturally illuminated with blue lights. The fourth floor also houses a lot of information on Beijing's infrastructure, water services, parks and emergency services. In this area all the descriptions are only in Chinese, but once you enter the section presenting the Olympics, all the information is again available in the two languages.

Modern multimedia presentations

The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall offers visitors a wide selection of high quality exhibits and multimedia presentations. To me, the most memorable parts of the museum were the scale model of the city and an electronic book that turned the page at the wave of the hand. There are also multimedia screens on which a visitor can plan his or her own city with the help of the Master and Urban planning program.

One interesting detail was also the black-and-white plastic home designed by the renowned British architect Zaha Hadid. The model offers a vision of what homes of the future might look like.

On the second floor of the building you can find information about Beijing's transportation network and issues related to energy and the environment. Here can also be found descriptions of how Beijing plans to organize green Olympics and how it will handle the city's growing traffic without endangering the city's valuable cultural heritage. Here too you can find a floor display of maps showing the location of all the bodies of water around the city.

With or without a guide?

Admission to the museum costs 30 yuan, which is about 3 euros. When I visited the museum, a tour of the exhibitions in the company of an English-speaking guide cost 200 yuan or 20 euros. A guide, however, is not a must, as all the information about the displays is given in English, and with any luck, you can also try and learn more about them by inconspicuously following a group of tourists on a guided tour. During my visit to the museum, I saw tourist groups being led by the establishment's own staff guides, as well as by the tourists' own travel guides, and the hall echoed with chatter mixing English, German and even Swedish! A guided tour of the museum is naturally more informative. The museum staff will for example tell you that the new Bird's Nest Olympic stadium seats a whopping 91,000 spectators.

If you are interested in Beijing's past, its present day and its future plans, I can highly recommend setting a few hours aside for visiting the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall conveniently located right in the heart of the city.

The museum is open Tuesday - Sunday from 9.00 to 16.00.