Legation Quarter 东交民巷

Běijīng’s original foreign enclave, besieged in 1900
Part of A Better Guide to Beijing’s coverage of the Imperial City

I dined that evening in the stuffy atmosphere of the British Legation. The compound of the English Palace with its Chinese-style hall of ceremony, its low white houses and broad English lawns formed a spacious setting unsymbolic (except for the surrounding walls) of the legation officials’ narrow, cut-off lives.

John Blofeld, City of Lingering Splendour, London, 1961

They talked of racing and golf and shooting. They would have thought it bad form to touch upon the abstract and there were no politics for them to discuss. China bored them all, they did not want to speak of that; they only knew just so much about it as was necessary to their business, and they looked with distrust upon any man who studied the Chinese language. Why should he unless he were a missionary or a Chinese Secretary at the Legation? You could hire an interpreter for 25 dollars a month and it was well known that all those fellows who went in for Chinese grew queer in the head.

W. Somerset Maugham, On a Chinese Screen, New York, 1922

The Legation courtyards are being flooded with carts and packing-cases containing furniture, pianos, harmoniums, and games of croquet; the latter will be hard to use, for there is not a blade of grass nearer than the park round the Temple of Heaven.

Algernon B. Freeman-Mitford, The Attaché at Peking, London, 1900

Having examined the displays in the Zhèngyáng Mén, take the stairs just south of the National Museum of China which lead up into Dōng Jiāo Mín Xiàng (东交民巷), ‘Communicate with the People Lane East’, once known to its foreign residents as Legation Street. This was the lodging area for visiting tributaries to the Qīng state from Korea, Tibet, and Mongolia, long before the ‘Western Ocean barbarians’ appeared and forced the Qīng to accept the permanent residence of their representatives. The Qīng proposed to put the foreigners well out of the way at the Summer Palace, but they insisted on being much closer to the mechanisms of power.

It possibly amused Qīng vanity that the new arrivals were instead put in an area long reserved for barbarians. They also retaliated by placing the foreign office they were reluctantly forced to create, the Zǒnglǐ Yámen (总理衙门), inconveniently distant in the northeast of the Tartar City.

There was a foreign diplomatic presence here until the early 1950s; the premises of those countries that did not immediately recognize the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 were confiscated and handed to those that did, and the rest of what were then the capital’s best-constructed, most comfortable, and most hygienic buildings were taken over by top cadres for their own use.

The first foreign legations appeared in 1861, in what was then an area of temples, princely palaces, and more plebeian private dwellings as well as an open space famous for annual fairs held by Mongolian traders. After the widespread destruction caused by the siege of 1900 (see The Boxer Rebellion in A Brief History of Běijīng) there was extensive rebuilding, and the foreigners took control of a stretch of city wall running east of Qián Mén to Chóngwén Mén (today both metro stations) which bordered the area. They built walls around the other three sides with eight gated entrances, and surrounded this with an area cleared of buildings (a glacis) to prevent future surprise attacks. As tensions lessened, this was gradually given over to sporting activities, the last remaining part being now Dōng Dān Gōngyuán in the northeast corner of the quarter, which was used as a polo ground. Other leisure facilities eventually included even a licensed brothel.

Chinese were no longer allowed to live in the area, and some of the few buildings not destroyed or severely damaged by the attacking forces were pulled down to make space for new embassies, known as legations, since the ministers in charge of them did not have full ambassadorial status. Compensation was given to Chinese who could produce deeds to prove ownership of land inside the Legation Quarter, which started a brisk industry in manufacturing fake documents.

At first no Chinese could even enter without a pass or a formal letter of invitation, but as tensions eased, these rules were relaxed, although incidents were not uncommon. Time magazine reported in its issue of 16 June 1924 that a Chinese soldier had entered the quarter and attacked a British commercial traveller. He was detained by a US soldier and held until the Chinese authorities agreed to enforce treaty obligations to keep Chinese soldiers out. This provoked an anti-foreign demonstration that made several demands, including that the British minister apologize, that the Briton struck by the Chinese soldier be handed over for punishment, and that the Chinese government put up signs at various places of interest saying ‘Englishmen and dogs not allowed.’

By the 1920s, 20 countries maintained legations, and the day-to-day running of the quarter was handled by a committee of diplomatic and non-diplomatic representatives. This levied taxes to pay for, among other necessities, the maintenance of the roads inside the quarter, which were the only decent ones in the capital.

The Qīng tried to prevent the opening of shops to serve the foreign community, on the grounds that, unlike treaty ports such as Tiānjīn, Běijīng had not been opened for foreign trade. But Qīng princes and princesses were the first through the doors when the shops opened anyway. Towards the end of the Qīng and up until 1949, warlords and Nationalist Party officials often incited hatred of foreigners and adopted populist anti-foreign policies but came quickly through the gates for protection when their coups failed or they were defeated by a rival. Pǔyí, the last Qīng emperor, fled here shortly after being evicted from the Forbidden City in 1924. Warlords and other wealthy Chinese were also allowed to come and use the facilities of the German hospital.

The foreign architects used representative national styles like an early Expo, and it’s startling so close to the heart of China to find alien neoclassical porticoes, brick arches, and wrought iron balconies. On every side, sometimes behind high brick walls, stand imposing façades, now housing assorted and mostly sinister government organs. Until recently this area was left blank on maps, and there are still suspiciously large areas of white space, indicating the offices of senior cadres and truly secret policemen.

The British did not build their own embassy but occupied the Liáng Gōngfǔ (梁公府), the palace of a Manchu duke who had fallen on hard times. They built some residences in the garden, and up until 1900 annually sent £500 in rent by horse cart to the Zǒnglǐ Yámen, accompanied by the legation’s Chinese-speaking secretary wearing a silk top hat. After 1949 the post-Siege additions were reclaimed by the new government for the Ministry of State Security (安全部, Ānquán Bù), a highly secret part of the security apparatus, sometimes known as ‘China’s KGB’, reporting directly to the President, and most of the site is now occupied by the modern Ministry of Public Security. Until 1959, when the embassy moved to its current Jiànguó Mén location, cricket matches between the staffs of Commonwealth embassies were played in the grounds, with the rule that if the ball was hit into the spies’ compound the whole side was declared out. The bell stuck to sound the alarm during the siege survives at the new embassy, and bizarrely, the original entrance gate was until recently a shop selling military and police equipment such as gas masks and uniforms.

As you walk east from Tiān’ān Mén Square, on the north side of the street is a handsome French hospital building, which became law offices and is now a hotel (which, ironically, doesn’t accept foreigners). On the corner of a north turning is the red-brick frontage and wrought iron balconies of what was once the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, later accommodation for the Public Security Bureau. The glacis and then the main wall were just beyond this turning, and on the right, behind high walls, stands the USA Legation, which is said to be the only remaining entirely intact legation building, dating from 1903. Entering by the rear gate you’ll see a rebuilt complex called Ch’ienmen 23 which includes the refurbished legation and newer glass-walled constructions around a central pond, all completed in 2008, and which return the foreign chattering classes to the Legation Quarter. These now house restaurants, discreet luxury shopping, and the Běijīng Center for the Arts (天按时间当代艺术中心, Tiān’ān Shíjiān Dāngdài Yìshù Zhōngxīn), with theatre, cinema, and a gallery. (See www.beijingcenterforthearts.com for programme.) Some of the older buildings have entirely converted interiors, but the main legation building has been preserved and was until recently the dignified and excellent Maison Boulud restaurant.

Further on down the lane on the right you can find the bricked-up gate to the Dutch Legation, and beyond are the colonnaded frontage of the former National City Bank of New York and the neoclassical pile of the Banque de l’Indochine et de Suez.

Běijīng Police Museum 北京警察博物馆
东交民巷36号

Běijīng Jǐngchá Bówùguǎn, Dōng Jiāo Mín Xiàng 36, t 8522 5018/9, Tue–Sun, 9am–3.30pm. ¥5. m & b See Legation Quarter, above.

The police themselves are obviously proud of this homage to their history, which occupies the former National City Bank of New York. If the man in front of you going in sets off the metal detector it can be because he’s a plain-clothes cop with a concealed weapon.

The lobby is dominated by a 6m-high bronze column to the ‘soul of police’, but the remainder of the displays, which have some of the best English labels of any museum in Běijīng, are mostly less whimsical. They begin with material on the capture of Běijīng in 1949 and on the security arrangements for Máo’s announcement of the formation of the People’s Republic on 1 October that year. Duties then, as now, included suppressing counter-revolutionaries and closing brothels, although these days that’s only temporarily during Party meetings and large-scale public events like the Olympics (effectively the same thing), or if the owners have failed to pay kickbacks.

Higher floors have historical items such as early badges of office, a Hàn dynasty tombstone detailing a criminal’s deeds, and opium pipes. More modern displays show primitive finger-printing sets and electronic lie detector. There are displays on VIP security and traffic control (with a live feed from one camera), but unsurprisingly nothing on detention without trial or the routine use of torture. If you want to pretend to be a member of Běijīng’s finest you can visit a laser rifle range for an extra ¥20.

The rest of the block on the north side was taken up with the Russian barracks and Russian Legation, razed in the 1980s to build a courthouse. (CAUTION: the guards outside here will be very unhappy if you produce a camera.) A passage between them once ran up to the British Legation, the largest of all, whose main entrance was to the left in the next turning, Zhèngyì Lù (正义路). The near lane of this was renamed British Road and the far one the Rue Meiji, which bordered the Japanese barracks and Legation, and whose gatehouse still stands and is now the entrance to the Běijīng city government offices. The ornate building on the corner on the Japanese side was the Yokohama Specie Bank. Having recently served as a different bank, when some of its original interior could still be seen, at the time of writing it was closed again. Opposite on the south side was the Grand Hôtel des Wagons-lits, which was seen as a barometer of political unrest — wealthier Chinese and their families would suddenly move in whenever some upheaval was in the air, such as the departure of one warlord ruler and the arrival of another.

Grand Hôtel des Wagons-lits (120 beds), Legation Street and Congress Quay, 3 min. from Ch’ien-mên “East” Station; English, French and German spoken. Single-b. r. with meals 10 to 12 dollars (Mexican); double-b. r. 20 dollars (Mexican). Meals: tea 7 a.m.; break. 8 to 10; lunch 12.30; din. 8 p.m. Modern comforts; central heating apparatus; hair-dressing saloon.

Claudius Madrolle, Northern China, the valley of the Blue River, Korea, Paris, 1912

The site is now occupied by the Huáfēng Bīnguǎn, another hotel.

A drainage channel of Yuán dynasty construction, the Jade Canal, ran down the middle of the street carrying noisome waste from the heart of Běijīng to the ‘water gate’ in the base of the city wall, which was the point of access for the relieving forces at the end of the siege in 1900. Later the foreigners covered it over to stop the smell, and breached the city walls to give themselves more direct access to the railway station they had built at Qián Mén.

This breach was said by some to have contributed to the downfall of Běijīng. The city was seen as a dragon, with the Xuānwǔ Mén to the west and the Chóngwén Mén to the east as its eyes and the Zhèngyáng Mén in the middle as its mouth. The holes punched through these walls allowed the dragon’s blood to ooze out and, along with it, the city’s wealth and power.

Beyond, on the north side, the former French Post Office (at one time three different legations ran postal services) has become a Sìchuān restaurant, its interior now revamped. On the south side the Capital Hotel (Dōngdū Bīnguǎn) sprawls across a large area once occupied by the German Legation and two banks, both pulled down in the mid-’80s. After the siege, legations on this side were supposed to take responsibility for the upkeep of a section of now-vanished city wall — the only one kept in good repair and a favourite promenade of foreign residents. There was some bickering between the Germans and the Belgians, further east, as to whether the latter were making a fair contribution to defence efforts.

Further on, across Táijīchǎng Dàjiē (台基厂大街), which the foreigners named the Rue Marco Polo, the Belgian Legation, a self-conciously Flemish pile, was until the revamping of the USA Legation the last of the originals to be easily accessible to foreigners. It was handed over to the Burmese after the revolution and later become a hotel, standing in a square with later buildings imitating the same style. It’s a perfect example of the approach taken by all nationalities in construction: they used local brick and stone but imported all interior fittings directly from home. Entrance is now refused.

Although the authorities have done nothing to preserve this enclave of alien architecture, pulling much of it down or turning it to their own immediate needs, a neo-Gothic Catholic church opposite the Belgian Legation, built as part of the reparations after the siege, was restored (less its organ) and reopened in 1989. During the Cultural Revolution the street was renamed Anti-Imperialism Street, and the church was a favourite subject for attack by Red Guards. Formerly St. Michael’s and now the Dōng Jiāo Mín Xiàng Tiānzhǔ Táng (东交民巷天主堂), it looks like a refugee from the suburban wasteland of some harsh manufacturing town — in Britain it would by now have become an arts centre or flats. Niched saints, their Chinese names incongruous and bright in gold, look down on a scruffy courtyard. The interior is at first just as expected: antique radiators, dark pews and confessional, small painted and stained panels in the otherwise clear windows, and the aromas of floor polish, dust, and incense. Yet the pillars are tinted red in a reminder of Chinese temples, and long white banners to either side of the altar carry the creed in strong red Chinese characters. Its cool interior welcomes more than 300 members of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Church on Sundays; under firm government control, it does not recognize the authority of the Pope.

Walking up the north turnings, taking other side streets and peering over walls will reveal the remains of many other legation and trade buildings, as well as small details such as the original cement nameplate saying ‘Rue Hart’, named for the foreign head of the Imperial Customs, Sir Robert Hart, at the junction of Táijīchǎng Dàjiē and Táijīchǎng Tóu Tiáo.

▶ m Qián Mén exit A (west end, Line 2) or Chóngwén Mén exit B2 (east end, Lines 2 & 5). b to the west end of the street, 天安门广场东: 2, 5, 22, 120, 126, and 前门: 快速工交1窟 专1, 专2, 特4, 5, 特7, 8, 特11, 17, 20, 22, 48, 59, 66, 67, 69, 71, 82, 93, 120, 126, 301, 723, 729. To the east end 崇文门西: 特2, 8, 9, 20, 41, 44内环, 59, 60, 103电车, 104电车, 110, 673, 692, 723, 729, and 崇文门内: 25, 39, 41, 106电车, 108电车, 110, 111电车, 116. 684, 685.

Continue east past Chóngwén Mén to the Míng City Wall Ruins Park, the last remaining section of city wall, similar to that once forming the south border to the Legation Quarter. Several of the restaurants in the Chi’enmen 23 complex, not all of which are top-end, offer lunches at lower prices.

See The Boxer Rebellion in A Brief History of Běijīng for an account of 1900’s Siege of the Legations.

See Hútòng Walking, and other Běijing walks: In Search of the Ice Houses, Out Clubbing, In the Depths of Many Flowers, and Forward to the Past. Click links below for other sights around the Imperial City and Tiān’ān Mén Sq, or go to the Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing (home page).

For lively moderated discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.

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