Alyona and Bao Shi

My name’s Alyona. I live in Moscow, the capital of Russia. It’s a very large and old city. Almost 17 million people live here. My favourite area is the Red Square. All the buildings are red there. There are some famous places, like St. Basil’s Cathedral. It’s very colourful. It was built in 1561. My other favourite place is the Bolshoi Theatre. It was built with marble. You can watch many ballet shows and operas there.

My name is Bao Shi. I live in Beijing, China. It means ‘the northern capital’. Beijing has a lot of historical places. Tourists like to visit the Great Wall of China. It was built with large stones in 220 BCE by the first emperor of China. It’s 8,850 kilometres long. The Forbidden City is the old home of past Chinese emperors. There are 980 wooden buildings in it, and many of them are big palaces. Today, it’s a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s the largest museum in the world.