Still in Beijing, this is the Central TV Tower, which (including its antennae) is 405 metres tall, and easily the tallest structure in the city. A race to the top of the tower is held annually, with two laps of the base followed by a climb of the 1484 steps leading up to the 238 metre-high observation deck. The Central TV Tower is also part of the World Federation of Great Towers, of which several have already featured on GgSs.

Check out all these brilliantly brightly-coloured cars on this highway in Beijing.

I’m not sure though why these cars seem quite so colourful, and perhaps it’s simply down to the combination of an over-saturated image and a very sunny day, but it sure looks cool However, there could be a clue further down the road, where it appears that the image’s colour channels aren’t properly aligned.

Actually, if you scroll north and south along the road, as well as hundreds of other similarly luminous cars, there’s also several quite cool looking intersections.

Thanks to Philip Ng.

It’s a very common misconception that the great wall of china is the only man made object visible from space (sometimes others say from the moon, or from a satellite). Apparently the rumour started long before anyone had even been to space to check and in fact you can see a lot more man made objects than just the great wall (otherwise this website would be quite dull!).

So here it is, part of the great wall of china. Not very exciting is it? If you don’t believe me this Space Radar Image from NASA confirm that this is indeed a bit of the great wall (bear in mind that the NASA image is slightly rotated).

You can scroll east or west to follow the wall’s path, it goes on for 3,946 miles so you’ll probably get bored before it runs out

Thanks to LJS for the links

The Temple of Heaven is a temple of Taoism in Beijing. If you zoom out a little you’ll see that the northern section is enclosed in a semi circular wall (representing heaven) while the southern section is within a rectangle (representing earth). The northern part is also higher for the same reason.

To the north is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which is connected to the Imperial Vault of Heaven by the Vermilion Steps Bridge, or “Sacred Way”. You can see that the sacred way is split into two halves, one side for emperors and the other for princes and high officials, although I think tourists now happily walk up either side. The circles to the south of the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the Circular Altar.

Surrounding the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the echo wall, where apparently if you whisper to the wall on one side the sound is echoed right around the wall to the other side, where you can be clearly heard.

Thanks: Feng Wu

Inside Beijing, lies the Forbidden City, the location of the Imperial Palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is the world’s largest palace and features a six meter deep moat, a ten meter high wall, five halls, seventeen palaces and 800 buildings with a total 9,999.5 rooms. Quite big then.

Tiananmen Square is just to the south of the Forbidden City and lies between two gates, the Tian’anmen to the north and the Qianmen to the south. This is of course the location of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 where hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred.

The black splodges all over the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square are the thousands or tourists who visit each day.

Thanks: Marc Armstrong, Nathaniel, Michel, Joseph Pantoga, Caius Toneriko, Keith T., Jaina Morgan, TOMHTML, Andrew Varvel, diz, Andy