Welcome to UM PKU

The University of Michigan/Peking University
Summer Undergraduate Exchange Program

Where is PKU?

(1) The dot is roughly the location of Beijing, in China.

(2) Here it is a littler closer. The fact that you can see the splotch of grey from this far away should tell you something about the size of the place.

(3) Now you can see the city.

(4) The small diamond shape is the location of the PKU campus. In the big square, to the left of that, is a large lake, on the north side of which is the Emperor's Summer Palace. In the circle, in the center, is the Forbidden City.

(5) The dotted line is the perimeter of the PKU campus. The little star sits at the west gate, where the chemistry department and the Joint Institute are located. The little circle, to the west, is the Summer Palace, sitting on the north shore of the lake.

(6) The dotted line, once again, is the PKU perimeter. The upper rectangle, inside the perimeter, is where the Joint Institute is located (the PKU Metro stop will be just south of this, when it is completed). The lower rectangle, just outside the west gate, is the chemistry complex. About a kilometer to the west, right along that east/west road, is the train station.

(7) Top arrow: location of Joint Institute. Bottom arrow: Chemistry.

(8) Top spot: location of student apartment. Middle area: PKU. Lower spot: where the Professors are staying.

(9) A close-up of the Forbidden City (the Emperor's Palace and city-center). The open-looking space to the south is Tian'anmen Square.

(10) And, of course, the one everyone wants to see: how does the Beijing area compare with the Ann Arbor/Detroit area. On the left image: Beijing in the big circle. On the right image, the little circle on the left is Ann Arbor, the half-circle on the right is Detroit, and the little circle in the middle is the location of the Detroit Metro airport.

One last fact. The number of people living in the circle that circumscribes Beijing is (by official count) roughly 16,000,000. The number of people in the state of Michigan is 10,000,000 (although, to be fair, about 50% of them are located in the "greater Detroit area," would you can see on the right hand image as the city-gray that surrounds what is circled for Detroit. In other words, if the greater Detroit area has the same population density as Beijing, there would be roughly 65,000,000 people living there (or, about 20% of the US population).