Beijing, whence the land of splendor and magnificence?

Beijing, an ancient city of a long history, people enjoy not only her scenic attractions and historical sites but admire rather her picturesque landscape of beauty and magnificence as well. Edging the sea to the left and linking up with Taihang Mountains on the right Beijing is adjacent to the Inner Mongolian Grassland by the northwest while she gazes into the North China Plain in the due south. Near at hand, she's embraced on three sides by high mountains with peaks towering in the vicinities to help form a little plain in the middle, which shaping like a bay is known as "Beijing Bay". Flowing in the bosom of the bay are the three watercourses: the one on the west being called Yongding, the other by the east known as Chaobai while that flowing in the middle is the Wenyu River. Watering the expanse of fertile land, they are nourishing the diligent and wise people living here in the bosom of the bay. No wonder ever since ancient times Beijing has been eulogized as a "land of abundance" and a "sacred capital" with people of great intelligence and a charming landscape.

Whence the terrain of extreme beauty and splendid magnificence of Beijing? This must be dealt with by way of a strong movement of the earth's crust occurred from 170 to 90 million years ago, namely the "Orogeny of Yanshan" in topographical terms. It is the earth movement that has brought about the immense changes from the sea into the mulberry fields. The formerly depressed areas of lakes and rivers were suddenly turned into high mountains while the original mountains and highlands sank into depressions of lakes, rivers and wetlands with rocks being turned and twisted into folds and ruptures, forming a number of faults big and small on land, such as the faults of Changping and Niulanshan, Huangzhuang and Gaoliying and that of Nankou and Sunhe and the Beijing Depression as well. It was thus that the skeleton of Beijing terrain came by and by into being, forming the initial shape of a "Beijing Bay". Still later, about 40 million years afterwards, here Happened again another strong movement of the earth's crust, namely the "Himalaya Orogenesis", which made the Beijing depression to sink greatly downwards. However, in the meantime the great amount of sediments and sand soil brought over by the upheaval of the earth's crust and the influx of rivers and streams gradually leveled the undulating terrain of the "Beijing Bay". Up to the time of around 3 million year ago an inflow of the seawater from southeast to the northwest put the area once into a "Beijing Bay", thus making the terrain shaped by and large as what it is now.

With the gradual rise of the earth's crust later on, the "Beijing Sea" returned to the normal land-shelf again. Besides, the string erosion of the fourth glacier has left the area a topographical formation with many cirques and U-shaped valleys. All these, as time went on were wrought by nature into a picturesque landscape of magnificence as what we've seen today.