Beijing - a lovely city

Beijing literally means "Northern capital", in line with the common East Asian tradition whereby capital cities are explicitly named as such.
Other cities similarly named include Nanjing, China, meaning "southern capital"; Tokyo, Japan,, Vietnam, both meaning "eastern capital".

In China, the city has had many names.
Between 1368 and 1405, and again from 1928 and 1949, it was known as Beiping, literally "Northern Peace".
On both occasions, the name changed — with the removal of the element meaning "capital" (jing or king) — to reflect the fact the national capital had changed to Nanjing, the first time under the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and the second time with the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China, so that Peking was no longer the capital of China.
Beijing also suffers from heavy pollution and poor air quality from industry and traffic.
Dust from erosion of deserts in northern and northwestern China result in seasonal dust storms that plague the city.
In the first four months of 2006 alone, there were no fewer than eight such storms.
Efforts have been made of late to clean up Beijing in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics.