By tradition, Beijing is a city of walls, sheltering its intrigues and ambitions behind a series of concentric barriers from the Great Wall down to courtyard homes that draw sunlight only from the gardens at their core.
In the final years of his life, when former Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang lived under house arrest, in Beijing, his aging friends resorted to donning white doctors' coats in order to slip past the guards stationed outside his home.