As
the capital of China,
Beijing
is one of the world's truly imposing cities,
with a 3,000-year history and 15.3 million people
(2005). Covering 16,808
square kilometers in area, it
is the political, cultural and economic center of the People’s
Republic.
Situated in northeast
China, Beijing adjoins the Inner Mongolian Highland to the northwest and
the Great Northern Plain to the south. Five rivers run through the city,
connecting it to the eastern Bohai Sea. Administratively, the Beijing
municipality equals
the status
of a province, reporting directly to the central government.
Rich in history,
Beijing has been China’s primary capital for more than seven
centuries. China’s imperial past and political present meet at
Tiananmen square, where the Forbidden City palace of the emperors gives
way to the Great Hall of the People congress building and the mausoleum
of Chairman Mao Zedong. The old city walls have been replaced by ring
roads, and many of the old residential districts of alleys and courtyard
houses have been turned into high-rise hotels, office buildings, and
department stores. Beijing, a dynamic city where the old and new
intermingle, remains a magnet for visitors from inside and outside
China.
An Old
Street in
Downtown Beijing
Beijing is a city of
broad boulevards, now full of traffic and pulsating to the rhythms of
commerce and entertainment. Museums
and parks abound, including the Palace Museum of the Forbidden City and
Beihai Park in the center of town. Nearby, the China Fine Arts Museum (Zhongguo
meishuguan) exhibits the work of contemporary artists. China’s
ancient past and recent history are on view at the Museum of Chinese
History and Chinese Revolution at Tiananmen. Antiques, crafts, and books
can be found at Liulichang, an old antique market district remodeled in
the 1980’s to reflect the style of the old city. Some of the spirit of
Old Beijing is also preserved at Qianmen, south of Tiananmen, with
stores that date to the early 20th century and beyond, including the
Tongrentang Traditional Medicine Shop, first established in 1669.
Beijing Opera performances and acrobatic troupes keep those traditional
entertainment forms vital, while contemporary music
clubs and discos thrive in an era of liberalization and
prosperity.
Bird's View of
Forbidden City, Beijing
THE
FORBIDDEN CITY (Imperial Palace, Gugong)
At the city center is the
imperial palace complex of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty emperors. In
imperial times it was called as the Purple Forbidden City from the
association of the emperors with the color of the Pole Star. Surrounded
by 10 meter (32 feet) high walls and gates and a 50m (164 ft.) wide
moat, it was inaccessible to ordinary people, but well populated by
imperial family members, their servants and staffs, officials, and
guards.
The major ceremonial
buildings of the palace are aligned on a north-south axis that extends
beyond the walls toward the Temple
of Heaven complex and Yongding Gate in the south. The main
entrance to the palace complex is via the Meridian Gate (Wumen),
from which the New Year was announced each year by the emperor,
proclamations were read, and the fate of prisoners decided. Past five
white marble bridges and the Gate of Supreme Harmony, a great courtyard
could accommodate up to several thousand people for state ceremonies
such as the imperial weddings.
The three most
important ceremonial buildings are on the north-south axis, raised on a
high white marble terrace, and accessed by ramps carved with ornate
dragons over which the emperor was carried in a palanquin. The three
main halls and associated side buildings formed the outer courtyard of
the Forbidden City, devoted primarily to official and ceremonial
functions, but including imperial libraries and studies. The inner
chambers at the rear of the Forbidden City included private living and
sleeping quarters of the imperial family, divided into three palaces and
twelve courtyards. The Western Palaces were the residences of empresses,
concubines, and princes. The Eastern Palace halls are now used as museum
exhibition spaces,
devoted to ritual bronze vessels, ceramics, craft objects, antique
clocks, and paintings, including objects from the imperial collections
and archaeological finds. The back precincts include the Palace of Aging
Peacefully (Ningshou Gong) where the Qianlong Emperor of the late 18th
century spent his retirement years.
Tian'anmen Square - the world largest
TIANANMEN
SQUARE
Just south of the Forbidden
City is Tiananmen Square (The Gate of Heavenly Peace Square),
the largest inner-city square in the world that can hold up to a
million people.
It was cleared in 1958 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
founding of the People’s Republic, replacing an older open space in
front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main entrance to the imperial
city, that had a longer history of political importance. On May 4, 1919,
students demonstrated here against provisions of the Treaty of
Versailles following World War I that were considered unfair to China.
The May Fourth Movement spawned here was a widespread movement for
political and literary modernization that impacted the rest of the
century.
After
the founding of the People’s Republic,
Tiananmen
Square became symbolic of the socialist state through the construction
in 1959 of the Great Hall of the People
on its western side, and the Museums of Chinese History and the
Chinese Revolution on its eastern edge. In the same period, a Monument
to the People’s Heroes was erected in the center of the square. In
addition, following Chairman Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, a Chairman
Mao Mausoleum building was erected directly on the main north-south axis
of the square. It contains the preserved body of Mao in a crystal
sarcophagus, along with a standing marble statue of the Chairman.
China’s imperial past, revolutionary history, and political present
are all represented vividly in Tiananmen Square.
TEMPLE
OF HEAVEN
Located in the southern part
of the city, close to the main north-south axis leading to the Forbidden
City, is the Temple of Heaven complex of ritual buildings. The halls and
altars here are round, symbolic of heaven.
A counterpart Earth Altar in the north of the city uses the
square profile symbolic of earth; temples of the sun (in the east) and
moon (west) complete a ceremonial surround for Beijing that made it not
only a political capital but also a ritual center, shaped in the form of
a cosmic diagram.
The emperor, as Son of
Heaven, performed priestly as well as ruling functions. Each year on the
day of the winter solstice, following three days of fasting and
meditation, the emperor would offer sacrifices and pray for a good
harvest at the Altar of Heaven, a three-tiered round white marble
structure, built in 1530 and reconstructed in 1740. The round altar sits
on a square base, symbolic of the meeting of heaven and earth, a theme
carried through in the shape of the complex as a whole, a semicircle
atop a square.
Just north of the Altar
of Heaven is the octagonal Imperial Vault of Heaven building, which
contained tablets of the imperial ancestors and astronomical plaques of
the constellations and meteorological occurrences. The outer wall of the
Vault of Heaven Hall is known as the Echo Wall, from its ability to
transmit even whispered voices around its length. Farther north is the
Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, originally built in 1420, remodeled in
1545, destroyed by lightning in 1889, and rebuilt in the following year,
in part using Oregon fir wood for the supporting pillars.
West of these buildings
is the Altar of Farming, where each year in spring the emperor
personally ploughed eight furrows to symbolically assure a good harvest.
The Hall of the Year Gods (now housing the Museum of Chinese
Architecture) was where the emperor sacrificed to the gods of the year
and asked for a good harvest.
Summer Palace
SUMMER
PALACE
Fifteen
kilometers (9 miles) to the northwest of Beijing is the Summer
Palace. Now a large park of 716 acres, it was formerly the imperial
garden retreat from the summer heat of Beijing. Surrounding hills
shelter the site, and the Kunming Lake provides a cooling effect. The
site was used as an imperial park as early as the mid-12th century, and
continued as an imperial garden in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1860
Anglo-French forces burned the site to the ground.
It was reconstructed by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888, using
funds that had been reserved for building a modern naval force. The
large marble boat that sits immobile by the edge of the lake is an
ironic reminder of the waste and mismanagement that led to the decline
of the imperial state.
THE
GREAT WALL
The Great Wall is perhaps
China’s most famous and most mythologized site. Several sections are
conveniently visited from Beijing, including at Badaling, the most
popular site, about 70 km (43 mi.) northwest of Beijing and at Mutianyu,
90 km (56 mi.) northeast of Beijing. These impressive brick and earth
structures date from the Ming dynasty, when the wall was fortified
against Mongol forces to the north. The Ming wall is about 26 feet tall
and 23 feet wide at the base, and could accommodate up to six horsemen
riding abreast. Watch towers were built on high points every 200-300
meters or so with small garrison forces that could communicate with fire
signals or fireworks. These stretches of the wall are part of a system
that extends from the Shanhaiguan fortress on the Bohai Gulf
in the east to the Jiayuguan fortress in the
west, altogether some 6000 km (3700 mi).
The Ming sections of
the wall are only a late stage in a long history, much of which has
little to do with the present structures.
The wall is most often associated with the First Emperor of China
(Qin Shi Huangdi, reigned 221-210 BC),
who after unifying China by conquest undertook to link up previously
existing sections of walls belonging to conquered states, but on a
course far to the north of the present wall. The First Emperor mobilized
massive conscripted labor forces, including convicts and prisoners, by
some accounts up to a million strong, to conduct this building campaign.
While
the Great Wall in its various versions had real military defensive
functions, it also served symbolic purposes. For long periods Chinese
populations lived north of the wall and nomads or semi-nomads lived
south of it. The wall served as a symbolic reminder of dynastic
authority and also of cultural distinction between settled agrarian
culture and cities
on the Chinese side and pastoral horsemen on the other. It
continues today to serve as a marker of cultural and national identity.
