PEEKING AT BEIJING

BEIJING, China - Visiting China is nothing if not a lesson in history - and nowhere is that more evident than in Beijing, its capital.  Two thousand years ago, the Mongols established a strategic outpost on the vast plains of North China, just south of the great Gobi Desert. Known as Yanjing, which translates approximately as "city of swallows," the outpost gradually grew in importance. Fifteen centuries later, in the year 1420, the third Ming emperor, Yongle, moved his capital and entire court from the city of Nanjing to a sprawling, 200-acre, walled palace he had built at Yanjing.

Yongle proclaimed his city Beijing, or "northern capital," and for the next 500 years, the Imperial Palace inside his Forbidden City was home to 24 emperors, and the center of one of the world's greatest empires.  The main streets of the metropolis which grew up outside the walls were oriented along an axis that passed through the Dragon Throne in its center. Outside those walls, as an 18th-century English visitor observed, "small men built their houses like swallows nests around the place of princes."  The 20th century has put Beijing through incredible changes; revolution, war, foreign occupation, another revolution, followed by decades of stultifying repression. But like the celestial majesty of its imperial edifices, the city's raw energy endures.  Twenty years after the economic easing began, Beijing is bursting its ancient seams.  With its 14 million residents, its erratic architecture, its pallor of coal-smoke and gasoline-fume-filled air, its traffic chaos, and all the other excesses of over-population, modern Beijing remains a powerful and mysterious place, one intent on bull-dozing its way into both the 21st century.  New four-lane highways are being plowed arrow-straight through old hutongs, the low-roofed, narrow laned neighborhoods which characterized old Beijing. Freshly built, joint-venture factories sprawl across the city's suburbs. Towering apartment blocks have sprouted in former paddies, anticipating a rush of occupants now that, as of Jan. 1, the Chinese can finally own their homes.  Gone are Mao-suited citizens and shabby hotels. Keyed to the hard currency benefits of tourism, Western-style hotels have been built. Managed by the same chains which operate prime properties elsewhere, Beijing's newer hostelries are on a scale with those of Hong Kong and Singapore, with health clubs and helpful, multilingual concierges, not to mention marbled bathrooms, bagels at breakfast, along with room service and CNN available around the clock.  The '90s have also seen a surge of consumerism and haute cuisine. Much of Beijing's historic architecture, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Ming Tombs, is being renovated and re-gilded to heal decades of neglect and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Street signs carry English translations. A new airport terminal will be ready for this year's 50th anniversary of the "People's Republic." Tiananmen Square is being repaved.  Though Beijing is rapidly changing, for better and for worse, the old city's essence lingers around many corners. It's found in the hilly Jingshan Park where thousands of people gather in the morning mist for group exercises, which range from Tai Chi Chuan to aerobic cheerleading and ball-room dancing. Others practice calligraphy, using huge brushes to shape ancient ideographs in water on the flagstones, art that evaporates with the rising of the sun.  Adventurous visitors can explore the city by foot, bicycle or inexpensive taxis. Angry, horned traffic may jam Beijing's main boulevards from dawn to dark, but surprisingly good-natured pedestrians and cyclists still flow in a steady tide. And in the evening, night-market stalls appear on many streets, as hawkers of a wide variety of foods and goods arrive on pedi-carts to practice their ancient, capitalist skills.  China's new attitude toward visitors is evident northwest of the city, along a steep stretch of one of the many great walls built over the years to deter invaders. The hordes, both foreign and domestic, that now swarm over these formidable and refurbished fortifications carry cameras instead of weapons. And rather than keeping them out, a new superhighway has been built to accommodate their commerce.


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