Thursday · October · 1 · 2026
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”
— Leo Tolstoy
Sun & daylight
The sun rises at 06:10 and sets at 18:01 in Beijing today, giving 11h 51m of daylight. Solar noon is at 12:05.
06:10
Sunrise
12:05
Noon
18:01
Sunset
Midnight
00:05
Sunrise
06:10
Solar noon
12:05
Sunset
18:01
Solar midnight
00:05
Daylight
11h 51m
Daylight runs about 15h 0m around the June solstice and 9h 20m around the December solstice.
Daylight saving time
Beijing does not observe daylight saving time. Clocks stay on UTC+8 all year, so the local time never shifts with the seasons.
Public holidays
China has 3 public holidays in October 2026.
Architecture
Beijing is planned on an axis and built in rings, and the last two decades put foreign offices to work on the outer ones. An imperial plan and a corporate skyline are legible from the same point.
Completed 2017
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
An office tower in Dawangjing, between the centre and the airport. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill wrapped it in a diagonal steel frame that carries the entire perimeter, so there are no columns along the glass. The diagrid is grouped into four storey modules, sized for the seismic loads the region requires. The lantern it resembles is a consequence of the structure rather than a shape applied over one.
Completed 2012
Rem Koolhaas · Ole Scheeren
The state broadcaster's headquarters in the eastern business district. Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren bent the tower into a closed loop, two leaning shafts joined by a cantilever at the top and a base below. The diagonal bracing on the facade thickens where the loads concentrate, so the pattern is a picture of the forces. Making a skyscraper a continuous circuit was a deliberate refusal of the tower as a contest of height.
Completed 2012
Zaha Hadid
A mixed-use complex just inside the second ring road. Zaha Hadid built four rounded volumes joined by bridges at several levels, with no sharp corner anywhere on the elevations. The gaps between them work as courtyards, which is the one part of the old fabric the design keeps. It replaced a block of hutong, and those courtyards are the claim that it replaced them with something equivalent.
Completed 1982
I. M. Pei
A hotel in the wooded hills north west of the city. I. M. Pei worked from courtyard houses rather than from palaces, so the rooms wrap a sequence of gardens and the building never rises above the trees. Walls are whitewashed with grey tile borders, and openings are cut as diamonds and circles taken from garden pavilions. He built it to argue that modern Chinese architecture need not choose between imported towers and imperial roofs.
Completed 1420
Ming court
The imperial palace at the centre of the city, built for the Ming court. The plan runs strictly north to south, with the principal halls raised on marble terraces and the roofs graded by rank in colour and ornament. Timber frames carry those roofs on bracket sets, so the walls are infill and hold nothing up. It is the reference the rest of Beijing is still measured against, including the axis the Olympic grounds extended north.