Míng City Wall Ruins Park 明诚墙遗址公园

崇文门大街
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of North and East of the Imperial City

This last remaining stretch of city wall immediately south of Běijīng Station was until recently hidden behind relatively modern (20th century) hútòng housing and was visible only to those who knew it was there. Attempts to include it in a walking route for an earlier edition of this book were abandoned partly because of its popular use as a urinal and thoroughly malodorous state.

The housing has now been cleared and the residents driven away. (There were fantastical claims in the Chinese media that they happily returned bricks taken from the wall and used for their own purposes.) This has left a long strip of green at the base of the exposed wall just as still existed in the early 20th century between the wall and the moat, and along which the tracks for the line to Tiānjīn and a rail service around the outer wall of the Inner City were laid.

After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, there was much discussion about how the Party would put its stamp on the capital. Liáng Sīchéng (梁思成), the doyen of Chinese architectural historians, who was also involved in the design of the United Nations building in New York, proposed that the city walls should be entirely turned into a park such as this. This was known as the ’49 Proposal’ and was rejected by the Party leaders in 1952. In 1953 the mayor of Běijīng, Péng Zhēn (彭真), detecting that Máo wanted the walls pulled down, organised ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations in favour of their destruction. (See also The Shock of the New.)

For nearly a decade from the late ’50s, ‘volunteer’ parties of citizens, including schoolchildren, were mobilised to tear the walls down with their bare hands for the construction of metro Line 2 and the broad Chóngwén Mén Dàjiē, but the route of the metro deviated inside the walls to connect to Běijīng Station, and the avenue wriggled just outside, leaving a short isolated section connected to the bulky Dōng Nán Jiǎo Lóu (东南角楼, Southeast Corner Watchtower).

The now-vanished Chóngwén Mén, more commonly known while it stood as the Hata Men (哈大门, Hādà Mén), at the western end of the revealed section was last reconstructed during the Míng Zhèngtǒng reign (1436–49). For 400 years until about 1930 it was the point at which all imports to Běijīng were taxed (see Běijīng Taxation Museum). It was pulled down around 1960, the enceinte having been breached for the convenience of the Jīng–Fèng Railway when it came to join the foreign-built line from Lúgōu Qiáo in 1907.

The remaining wall stretches east from here at varying heights, little refurbished, pleasingly pitted, and already endearingly overgrown on top. Embrasures project at regular intervals, and according to some accounts this was the only section of wall to have these extra fortifications, although it separated only the Inner (Tartar) and Outer (Chinese) Cities, rather than having directly to withstand any external attacker. A winding path follows the base of the wall amidst pleasant lawns reasonably well supplied with benches.

▶ Míng Chéngqiáng Yízhǐ Gōngyuán, along Chóngwén Mén Dàjiē. Free. m Chóngwén Mén (Lines 2 & 5) exit B1. b to 崇文门东: 12(环行), 25, 39, 43, 44外环, 525, 610.

At the eastern end the Southeast Corner Watchtower is reached through a modern arch in the wall originally made to accommodate the railway. It offers views back along the top of the wall to the west, as well as of another short unrestored section running north across the busy railway lines running into Běijīng Station.

Graffiti carved in several parts of the tower are said to date in part to the foreign armies that came to relieve the Siege of the Legations in 1900, and the impressive red-painted interior once housed one of Běijīng’s first Western-run art galleries, the Red Gate (www.redgategallery.com), opened in 1991 but expelled from the tower in 2018.

▶ Dōng Nán Jiǎo Lóu, 10am–5pm. ¥10. m Běijīng Railway Station (Line 2). b to 东便门: 特2, 25, 29, 39, 43, 44外环, 44内环, 59, 434, 525, 610, 674.

Partway along the park is an old signal box for the Jīng-Fèng Railway, reportedly built by the same British engineer as the Zhèngyáng Mén Dōng Chēzhàn (station) at Qián Mén. It has one of the original railway signs on its side, and some original fragments of track and old sleepers. It emerged from obscurity in late 2007 to open as a café with a name that has no obvious railway connections, Hé Yǘ Zǐ (禾与紫), open 12pm–12am, coffee ¥25). From the west end of the park the east end of the former Legation Quarter is just across the road. From the east end you can walk southeast by an assortment of tangled hútòng routes to the minor Yuán Chónghuàn Ancestral Temple and Tomb.

See links below for other sights North and East of the Imperial City, or go to the Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing (home page).

Next in North and East of the Imperial City: Ancestral Temple of Wén Tiānxiáng
Previously: Imperial Granary
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.

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