The shear size of Beijing

We are continually fascinated by the massive size of the city. Assuming Wikipedia is correct, Beijing is 6,487 square miles and NYC (all 5 boroughs) is 468 sq miles. It's incredible how much area theMetro covers - as we blogged about yesterday transit between venues can take hours and require walking, bus, and metro. Language issues aside, you can generally get from venue to venue as long as you leave plenty of time to navigate (for example, it's sometimes a complete mystery where an Olympic bus stop is actually located outside a metro).