From Peking to Beijing

While Beijing's name "??" has had the same characters and pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese for centuries, the initial Romanized spelling of Beijing as "Peking" has caused some confusion for English speakers.  While the issue has been pretty much resolved, with the exceptions of Peking Duck and Peking University, there isn't much continuity throughout the Life magazine archive.  Some photos are labeled "Peking," whereas others labeled "Beijing" depict the exact same city, and possibly even the same time period.

In any case, as Dmitri Kessel's 1946 image of the Forbidden City rooftops indicates, Beijing remains a remarkable city.