Beijing - better known to people of my generation as "Peking" - is the capital of China. Remoteness and, of course, the many years of the Bamboo Curtain, when paranoid communists ruled in China, means that most people have only the vaguest of ideas about the place. "Forbidden City" springs to mind - though what it is might be more difficult - and of course, Tienamen Square Massacre (an event, not a place!).
Inspired by Dawn Jones' eulogy of the wonders to be seen there, I paid a visit earlier this year, just before the Olympics, when the heat was terrible and smog shocking.