5th Ring Road

Being a ring road, it has no natural start or end point, although the "0 km" mark is found near the northeastern stretch at Laiguangying, at the intersection with the Jingcheng Expressway.

By mid-2003, half of the ring road was open, from the western end connecting the West Chang'an Avenue to the interchange in the southeast with the Jingjintang Expressway.

Previously, traffic used to clog up the entire ring road (at around 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. local time every workday) near that exit, as it is very close to Wangjing.

Further protests derived from the apparent fact that drivers were being charged the full CNY 5 for just one kilometre of the road, from Yizhuang to the Jingjintang Expressway.

Meanwhile, it became a kind of an unofficial test track for new drivers, who racked up spectacular (and, strictly speaking, illegal) speeds on the nearly empty expressway.

With Shoufa, the company running the expressway, unwilling to budge, standing firm to its view that the prices were authorised by the local Price Bureau, and with enough disgruntled Beijingers posting on message boards demanding the removal of the tolls, the authorities stepped in at the end of December 2003 and decreed that the road be made free on the first day of 2004.

The expressway ring road, even without the charges, remains uncrowded today, except for any occurrence of a serious accident.

This section has, unusually, a much higher risk for congestion than the 4th Ring Road (both directions) during rush hour, despite the section past the Wuyuan Bridge (inner ring direction) having a speed limit of 100 km/h and the expressway being more distant from the city centre.

The most famous cover of this song was performed by MC HotDog and Yue Yunpeng, used as an interlude of the movie Jian Bing Man.