Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Beijingers are a mixed bunch. Many are extraordinarily honest, friendly, and helpful;
others will lie through their teeth to make a buck. To get your head around the diversity of
the city and its people, it's important to know how it got here.
History
PRE-IMPERIAL BEIJING
Across hundreds of thousands of years, Beijing has been a suitable place to live and farm.
Separated by millennia and, eventually, by layers of soil, various groups have made it their
home.
The first group that appears to have lived here were our predecessors, a species of Homo
erectus locally referred to as Peking Man. They lived in the southwest of modern Beijing in
the area of Zhoukoudian, in Fangshan district. In the 1920s and '30s an international team
of archaeologists started digging around in the caves of Zhoukoudian, after having heard
reports of unusual bones being found in the area by local villagers. Often working in freez-
ing conditions down 40-meter-deep crevasses, they uncovered more than 200 bone frag-
ments, including skullcaps. The unearthed fossils indicated that at least 40 people had lived
at the site around 200,000-750,000 years ago. Unfortunately, during the Sino-Japanese war
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