Beijing Webcam Live
Gubei Water Town at the foot of the Simatai Great Wall, plus real-time images from a 325-metre atmospheric research tower over Chaoyang District. Live 24/7.
Two very different windows on Beijing's surroundings
CCTV broadcasts a live view of Gubei Water Town, a resort town beneath the Simatai Great Wall about two hours from central Beijing; the Institute of Atmospheric Physics releases real-time images every 30 minutes from its 325-metre research tower over the Olympic Park in Chaoyang District.
A resort built from nothing at the foot of the Great Wall
Before 2006, the villages beneath the Simatai section of the Great Wall in Miyun District were largely hollowed out, their Great Wall backdrop drawing hikers but little tourism infrastructure. Developers spotted the gap, and between 2006 and 2014 rebuilt three original hamlets into Gubei Water Town, modelled on the southern water-town style of Wuzhen but rendered in Ming and Qing-dynasty northern architecture, complete with a reservoir known as Mandarin Duck Lake, hot springs, and stone-paved canals. The result, sometimes called "the Wuzhen of the north," now draws visitors mainly for its night tours of the illuminated Simatai wall — a section left deliberately less restored than Badaling, retaining a rougher, more original Ming-era profile.
Roughly 40 kilometres to the south, inside Beijing's built-up Chaoyang District, a very different kind of camera looks down on the city. The Institute of Atmospheric Physics built its meteorological observation tower in 1979, and at 325 metres it remains the tallest such tower in Asia, used ever since to study air pollution, the atmospheric boundary layer and turbulence over the capital. Since October 2015, the institute has published real-time photographs from cameras mounted on the tower every half hour, offering an unusually direct public window into ongoing atmospheric science rather than a typical tourist view.
What the two cameras show
Gubei Water Town
CCTV · Miyun DistrictLive view of Gubei Water Town, a reconstructed resort town at the foot of the Simatai Great Wall, roughly two hours from central Beijing.
Watch live →IAP Research Tower
Institute of Atmospheric Physics · Chaoyang DistrictReal-time images, updated every 30 minutes, from a 325-metre atmospheric research tower overlooking Beijing's Olympic Park Zone.
View real-time images →On one side of Simatai's western slope, a hot spring flows year-round; barely 100 metres away, a cold spring rises independently. Locals named the small lake fed by both "Yuanyang Lake," after the mandarin duck, a bird traditionally seen only in pairs — legend holds that soldiers who built this stretch of wall once bathed here to ease their exhaustion.
Beijing's surroundings beyond the webcams
Simatai Great Wall: a steep, less-restored section of the wall, celebrated for its illuminated night tours.
Jinshanling Great Wall: a neighbouring, similarly rugged section just north of Simatai.
Beijing Olympic Park: home to the Bird's Nest stadium and Water Cube, visible from the IAP tower's vantage point.
One camera looks at a town built from scratch to sell a memory of old China; the other looks down from a real scientific instrument measuring the air above the modern one. Between them, Beijing's surroundings hold both the reconstructed past and the monitored present, roughly forty kilometres apart.
When to watch
Gubei Water Town, after dark: for the illuminated Simatai wall and the town's night lantern displays.
Getting there: Gubei Water Town sits in Miyun District, about a two-to-three-hour drive from central Beijing; the IAP tower is within Chaoyang District, closer to the city centre, China.
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