Ever since Marco Polo published his wide-eyed report on Khanbaligh, or Cambaluc, the city of the Mongol khans, Peking—as Beijing has been known for most of the past 300 years—has captured the Western imagination as few other ancient cities have.
Beijing Walks presents six detailed walking tours of the most important historic quarters of the Chinese capitalthe Forbidden City, the former Legation Quarter, Beihai Park, the Temple of Heaven, the Confucius Temple, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Olympic Village. All tours are placed in their imperial contexts and enlivened with drawings and photographs. Cohn offers vital information on everything from feng shui, Pekingese dogs, and Peking duck to Peking Opera and the emperors' private lives, evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of old Peking, its pleasures and its grandeur. 115 full-color photos and 17 maps
Ever since Marco Polo published his wide-eyed report on Khanbaligh, or Cambaluc, the city of the Mongol khans, Peking—as Beijing has been known for most of the past 300 years—has captured the Western imagination as few other ancient cities have.
Beijing Walks presents six detailed walking tours of the most important historic quarters of the Chinese capitalthe Forbidden City, the former Legation Quarter, Beihai Park, the Temple of Heaven, the Confucius Temple, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Olympic Village. All tours are placed in their imperial contexts and enlivened with drawings and photographs. Cohn offers vital information on everything from feng shui, Pekingese dogs, and Peking duck to Peking Opera and the emperors' private lives, evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of old Peking, its pleasures and its grandeur. 115 full-color photos and 17 maps
Beijingwalks: Six Intimate Walking Tours of Beijing's Most Historic Districts
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Beijingwalks: Six Intimate Walking Tours of Beijing's Most Historic Districts
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Overview
Ever since Marco Polo published his wide-eyed report on Khanbaligh, or Cambaluc, the city of the Mongol khans, Peking—as Beijing has been known for most of the past 300 years—has captured the Western imagination as few other ancient cities have.
Beijing Walks presents six detailed walking tours of the most important historic quarters of the Chinese capitalthe Forbidden City, the former Legation Quarter, Beihai Park, the Temple of Heaven, the Confucius Temple, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Olympic Village. All tours are placed in their imperial contexts and enlivened with drawings and photographs. Cohn offers vital information on everything from feng shui, Pekingese dogs, and Peking duck to Peking Opera and the emperors' private lives, evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of old Peking, its pleasures and its grandeur. 115 full-color photos and 17 maps
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466861503 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt Paperbacks |
| Publication date: | 04/16/2025 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Beijingwalks
By Don J. Cohn, Zhang Jingqing
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1992 Don J. Cohn and Zhang JingqingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6150-3
CHAPTER 1
Walk • 1
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
Duration
Minimum six hours. If you have the time, divide this walk into two and go on different days. For example, on day one, start with Tiananmen Square and explore the south half of the Forbidden City. Go back to the Forbidden City a day or two later and see the living quarters and museums in the north section, and conclude by ascending Prospect Hill, an ideal place to contemplate the twilight of the empire.
Description
This walk provides an orientation to central Beijing beginning in Tiananmen Square, the world's largest public plaza, and takes you into the Forbidden City, the world's largest imperial palace. The Forbidden City is open from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. in winter and from 8.30 A.M. to 5 P.M. in summer.
Starting Point
Monument to the People's Heroes in the centre of Tiananmen Square.
How to Get There
Bus routes 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 52 and 57 stop near the square. If you take the Beijing underground, get off at Qianmen Station.
How to Get Away
Bus routes 101, 103 and 109 stop at the rear (north) gate of the Forbidden City.
Begin by making your way to the prominent Monument to the People's Heroes, erected in 1958 in the centre of Tiananmen Square. Six years of planning went into this monolithic political statement, and more than 10,000 people throughout China, including peasants, soldiers and factory workers were consulted to ensure that the edificatory carved panels on the base of the monument would be comprehensible to all. Climb the steps on the north side and face Tiananmen Gate to the north.
First a bit of background. Here on the night of 4 April 1976, during the Qingming festival, a traditional holiday when Chinese people sweep the graves of their dead relatives, wreathes commemorating the recently-deceased Premier Zhou Enlai were removed from the monument by the police. The response to this act of official desecration was a popular protest on 5 April that led to mass arrests and the death of hundreds at the hands of armed troops over the next few days. In the aftermath Deng Xiaoping was dismissed from his posts in the Chinese Communist Party and government by the Gang of Four, a leftist junta headed by Mao's widow Jiang Qing, who blamed Deng for the breakdown of public order. The government's original verdict that the Tiananmen Incident of 5 April was 'counterrevolutionary' in nature was reversed in 1978 following the fall of the Gang of Four, whereupon it can to be known as 'a completely revolutionary event.' Deng Xiaoping's subsequent rehabilitation and the legitimization of what came to be called the April Fifth Movement prepared the ground for the birth of the Chinese democracy movement in the late 1970s.
In China, history has a bad habit of repeating itself with a vengeance. On 4 May 1919, patriotic university students and intellectuals had gathered in front of Tiananmen Gate, the large edifice at the north end of the Square, to protest the Versailles Treaty and the occupation of Shandong Province by the Japanese. The May Fourth Movement that arose from this event, with its slogan 'Democracy and Science,' paved the way for the acceptance of Marxism in China and the birth of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Anti-imperialist and other public demonstrations of a patriotic nature were also held in Tiananmen Square in 1925, 1926, 1938 and 1947.
And then in the first days of June 1989, yet another generation of Chinese martyrs was created in the proximity of Tiananmen Square. A few hours before sunrise on 4 June 1989, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (P.L.A.) shot and/or crushed to death with tanks hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed students and other citizens who had been demonstrating for democratic reforms in defiance of martial law that had been imposed in parts of Beijing in late April. As in several anti-government protests in Tibet since the mid-1980s, the P.L.A. had turned its weapons against the Chinese people. One tragic irony is that the massacre was ordered, or at least condoned, by Deng Xiaoping who ten years earlier had given the green light to post- Cultural Revolution reforms.
In June 4 there are additional parallels with the April Fifth Movement. The 1989 demonstrations began on the Qingming Festival with students mourning the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, who had earlier been dismissed from his post as Party Secretary for, among other things, refraining from cracking down on student protests. The 1989 demonstrations coincided with official celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. After the 4 June massacre, Hu Yaobang's successor as Party Secretary, Zhao Ziyang, was dismissed from his official posts and blamed in part for the chaos, just as Deng had been in 1976. The government justified the use of military force by insisting that the demonstrations joined by millions of Chinese citizens throughout the country (and 1.5 million more in Hong Kong) had become a 'counter-revolutionary insurrection' that had to be suppressed to save China.
From your vantage point on the Monument to the People's Heroes you will be looking at a color portrait of Mao Zedong straight in the eye. On 1 October 1949, the real Mao stood a few feet above his air-brushed forehead with its receding hairline which hangs on Tiananmen Gate, the principal entrance to the Forbidden City, and declared, 'The Chinese people have stood up.' This is the same spot where the warlord Yuan Shikai made a public appearance in 1912 after being inaugurated the first President of the Republic of China. Now, for 30 yuan, foreigners can mount the gate and declare whatever they please; Chinese peasants, who pay 10 yuan for the same privilege, enjoy being photographed here from below with their arm raised in a dramatic gesture.
Mao's portrait, occupying what must be the primest bit of wall space in China, was not always a permanent fixture here. In the early 1950s the Beijing Mona Lisa was only put up on 1 October, China's National Day, and 1 May, International Labour Day. In the early years of the Republican Period (1911–49), the spot was occupied by a blue and white (the Kuomintang colors) portrait of Sun Yat-sen, and later by one of Chiang Kai-shek.
Tiananmen Square is reputed to be the largest urban plaza in the world, with a stated capacity of 500,000 people, each to his own chequerboard brick. Curiously, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, a Hong Kong magazine published a letter in which the writer took the Chinese government to task for having built a square so large that a huge mob might take it over and use it for anti- government protests.
But the creation of Tiananmen Square was part of a greater strategic urban plan. Thirty years earlier, in 1958, C.P. Fitzgerald had observed prophetically in his Flood Tide in China:
The purpose of an imperial city was to enshrine the palace, which indeed occupied a very large part of the whole walled enclosure ... Wide straight streets ran from north to south and east to west, streets far wider than the traffic of the age required, a fact which has fortunately saved Peking from the sad necessity of demolishing many ancient buildings to accommodate the traffic of modern times. The purpose of this design was probably not so much a geomantic requirement as a measure of military precaution. The wide streets giving unhindered access to all parts of the city enabled troops to move swiftly to any point threatened by riot or rebellion.
The two top-heavy buildings flanking the square, the Great Hall of the People to the west (left), and the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution to the east (right), were completed in 1959 during the final days of China's ideological tryst with Russia, and exude the gruff charm of Stalinesque neo-classicism. The Chairman Mao Mausoleum behind you was completed in 1977, a year after Mao died in September 1976. Architecturally it represents an attempt to harmonize with the other buildings flanking the square, but it somehow gives an impression of being temporary. To tone down the deification of Mao, a Museum of Revolutionary Heroes devoted to the exploits of Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi and Mao himself (the four worthies on the 100-yuan banknote, China's biggest) has been installed on one of the upper floors. The museum features such tricks of the trade as air-brushed photos of the Communist leadership and the toothbrush and towel Chairman Mao used in Yenan. Worthwhile stuff for revolution buffs, but not regularly open to the public.
If you wish to view Old Mao's embalmed remains, and are a foreigner or a 'compatriot' from Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, you can cut into the usually long queue by approaching the mausoleum entrance in the square from the west. No cameras or handbags are allowed inside. If you don't have a taxi or bus to put them in, there is a checkroom service on the east side of the mausoleum. Mao's body lies sequestered in a discreetly lit crystal coffin that is supposedly lowered into an underground fridge during off-duty hours. One curious rumour has it that Mao's left ear nearly fell off and had to be replaced because of shoddy workmanship by Vietnamese embalmers. In fact the lighting in the mortuary has become dimmer and dimmer over the years. The mausoleum is open every morning at 8:30 and most afternoons.
Now back to the monument. You, the megalith behind you and Mao's mausoleum further to the south are all standing on the semi-sacred north–south central axis of Old Peking. Before the Monument to the People's Heroes was built and Mao laid to rest, it was theoretically possible for the emperor seated upon his throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, to have an uninterrupted view of the south gate of the city, the Gate of Eternal Stability (Yong ding men), as all the gates on the axis were arranged in a perfectly straight lane.
The Museum of Chinese History, nearly as spacious as Tiananmen Square itself, is worthwhile for its extraordinary art collection and exhibits of early Chinese scientific achievements. Plan at least two hours. The Great Hall of the People, the venue for important Party and Government conferences and meetings between Chinese and foreign heads of state, is open to the public several days of the week and has a room dedicated to each province and autonomous region, including Taiwan and Tibet. It has facilities for serving 5,000 guests at State banquets and 10,000 at cocktail parties.
Before 1949, Tiananmen Square was a narrow corridor on the central axis of the city, which took the form of a T-square, with its top abutting on. Tiananmen Gate and its bottom coinciding with the Zhonghua (central flowery) Gate that was demolished in the early 1950s. During the Qing dynasty, the T-shaped area was off limits to all but high-ranking officials, and was a major obstacle to east–west traffic. On the east and west sides of this corridor on the land now given over to by the square stood the civil and military ministries or boards, respectively, of the Ming and Qing dynasties. This pattern of east/military, west/civil segregation is repeated in the palace gates: only the emperor could use the central entranceway; military officials, the west entrance and civil officials, the east. Now everyone entering the Forbidden City passes through the central gate of Tiananmen.
It is an open secret that there is a network of underground tunnels beneath Tiananmen Square (and other parts of the city) that date from the late 1950s and 1960, when Sino-Soviet relations had deteriorated to a point where the Chinese leadership feared Moscow would drop an atomic bomb on Beijing. (Similarly it is said that Shanghai long remained underdeveloped because Mao feared a U.S. naval attack via Taiwan on the once-great port city.) The tunnels were dug by teams of local youth and peasants from the Beijing suburbs who worked for brief stints on small sections of the project in order to prevent anyone from gaining an understanding of the entire system. Many of the resulting fallout shelters have been turned into restaurants, shops and hotels. In June 1989, when soldiers of the People's Liberation Army attempted to gain access to Tiananmen Square through air vents connected to these shelters, they were foiled by the demonstrators.
Rumour has it that there is an automobile tunnel linking the Great Hall of the People with Zhongnanhai, where the top Chinese leaders live, work and play. Another tunnel supposedly connects Zhongnanhai with the east–west line of the Beijing underground metro, facilitating a quick getaway in a private subway car to the 'secret' military airport in the western suburbs.
The Forbidden City
Only about one third of the buildings in the Forbidden City are now open to the public, many fewer than in the 1930s. And as of 1 January 1989, only 30,000 tourists (20,000 Chinese and 10,000 foreigners) are permitted to visit the Forbidden City each day. This decision was based on the urgent need to preserve the steps, pathways, buildings and decorations that are gradually being worn away by millions of hands and feet every year. Entry is through the Meridian Gate (Wu men) in the south part of the complex, or the Gate of Martial Virtue (Shen wu men) in the north.
The Forbidden City served as both residence and court for 24 Ming and Qing emperors over the course of five centuries, from its grand opening in 1421 until 1924, when Puyi, the deposed last emperor who in 1912 had relinquished the throne, was rudely kicked out of his own home. Portions of the palace were converted into an art museum in 1914 to display a small selection of objects from the imperial collections, and the Palace Museum (Gu gong bo wu yuan), which comprises both the palace and the art collections, formally opened in 1926.
On the eve of the Japanese occupation in 1937, the most valuable works of Chinese art were crated and transported to Nanjing and Shanghai for safekeeping. When these cities were on the verge of falling to the Japanese, the crates were shipped to the inland provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou. In the late 1940s they were returned to Peiping, as the city was then called, and in 1948 as Chiang Kai-Shek retreated from the mainland with the remnants of the Kuomintang troops, a total of 2,972 crates of the finest jades, bronzes and paintings were transported by military planes and ships to the island of Taiwan, where they now make up the bulk of the magnificent collection of the fortress-like Palace Museum, built into the side of a mountain in the suburbs of Taipei. In Chinese political parlance and echoing the promise made to Hong Kong, 'One country, two systems,' this situation can be called, 'One museum, two collections.'
Beginning in 1952, the People's Government, carried out a major palace-cleaning, during which 250,000 cubic meters of rubbish was discarded. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) Zhou Enlai is credited with having extended his personal protection to the Forbidden City when the Red Guards threatened to destroy it.
The Beijing Palace Museum still has one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world, and has replenished its earlier depleted holdings with donations from China and overseas as well as through 'acquisitions' or acts of 'liberation' from 'reactionary' private collections during the Cultural Revolution. Thousands of items in the museum remain uncatalogued, among them some 150,000 paintings and tonnes of precious Qing-dynasty documents in Manchu, a language understood by only a small handful of scholars in China. The museum displays in the Forbidden City are minimally labelled and poorly lit: surly guards refuse to turn on the lights (after telling you there are none) out of fear of fire.
Pyrophobia is nothing new in the Forbidden City; large sections of the palace have gone up in flames in the Ming, Qing and Republican periods. The worst fire in modern times took place in 1923 and resulted in the loss of many valuable antiques. The former emperor, Puyi, had ordered his eunuchs to make an inventory of the works of art in the Palace of Establishing Happiness (Jian fu gong) in the northwest section of the palace. A number of these devious non-men who had been spiriting away priceless treasures from this palace over the years panicked when they received their orders and set the fire to destroy all evidence of their transgressions. The fire was extinguished by soldiers from the Italian legation guard only after extensive damage had been done. At the suggestion of Puyi's English tutor, Reginald Johnston, a tennis court was built in the freshly cleared rectangle. Henry (the English name Johnston conferred on Puyi) and his brother William (Pujie) also learned to ride a bicycle here, and had some of the original high thresholds in the Inner Court removed or provided with ramps to facilitate his movements.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beijingwalks by Don J. Cohn, Zhang Jingqing. Copyright © 1992 Don J. Cohn and Zhang Jingqing. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
Information and Advice,
Walk 1: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City,
Walk 2: The Former Legation Quarter, Dazhalan, Liulichang,
Walk 3: Beihai Park and the Three Rear Lakes — Shi Cha Hai,
Walk 4: Temple of Heaven, Temple of Sky,
Walk 5: Confucian Temple, Imperial Academy Lama Temple,
Walk 6: Yi He Yuan, The Summer Palace,
Notes,
Recommended Establishments,
Hotels • Restaurants • Shopping • Antiques and Curios Market,
Bibliography,
Index,
Series Card,
Copyright,