Part of A Better Guide to Beijing’s coverage of the Imperial City
After his abdication, the Xuāntǒng emperor Pǔyí was left with the enormous financial burden of the Imperial…
The death of the Pearl Concubine
It was in these northeast halls that the hurried conferences of Cíxǐ and her court took place as the foreign armies approached Běijīng during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.
Since the end of the Qīng dynasty Běijīng has suffered a long series of architectural disasters at the hands of planners with political goals, property developers solely interested in lining their own pockets, and corrupt alliances of the two. The area surrounding the northwest corner of…
西长安街
The park offers a pleasant alternative route from Tiān’ān Mén Square to the Forbidden City’s main entrance. It was the site of a Liáo dynasty temple, and then from 1421 the Altar of Land and Grain (社稷坛, Shèjì Tán), where the emperors made important sacrifices in…
东长安街Substantial temple much older than most of the Forbidden City offers quieter means of approach to the palace
The Tiān’ān Mén is flanked by two parks that are almost always overlooked by visitors, particularly the one containing the Tài Miào or…
景山前街Part of A Better Guide to Beijing’s coverage of the Imperial City
Until last century this mound was directly accessible from the palace, but walls were pulled down and a road (Jǐng Shān Qián Jiē) driven through during the Republic…
Imperial tutor Reginald Johnston, played unforgettably by Peter O’Toole in Bertolucci’s bowdlerized film The Last Emperor, was an Oxford-educated Scot turned Confucian, with fluent Mandarin and a deep love of China. He had worked in the British administration…
The Dowager Empress Cíxǐ (慈禧太后) was born in 1835, the daughter of a minor Qīng official, and was one of 28 Manchu girls selected for the Xiánfēng emperor (reigned 1851–61).
She was made a concubine of the fifth rank at the age of 17, eventually giving birth to…
Part of A Better Guide to Beijing
Tiān’ān Mén Square has been the venue both for carefully staged political set pieces (military reviews, demonstrations in support of Máo, celebrations of National Day, choreographed enthusiasm for the 2008 Olympics) and…
