Tiān’ān Mén Square 天安门广场
A spur of the Imperial City walls once ran straight south from the Tiān’ān Mén to the Dà Míng Mén, the Gate of the Great Míng, renamed Gate of the Great Qīng after the fall of the Míng, and again as Zhōnghuá Mén (China Gate) after the creation of the Republic. This narrow stone-flagged way, known as the Thousand Steps Passage, was lined with imperial storehouses. Clearance of the surrounding buildings began after the end of the Qīng, and a space opened up in front of the Tiān’ān Mén gradually became recognized as a place for meetings and demonstrations, but was only known as ‘the space in front of the Tiā’ān Mén’. The vast 49-hectare expanse of Tiān’ān Mén Square visible today (or 44-hectare depending on who you read — it’s rare for any two sources to agree on anything in China) is a 1950s creation, intended to shift Běijīng’s central point from the Forbidden City to the flagpole in the square and provide a showplace for the images the Party would like you to believe. The square and its contents are fascinating as propaganda through town planning and offer lessons in modern Chinese history.
Since 4 June 1989 Tiān’ān Mén Square has become as famous outside China as the Great Wall, but not for reasons that give much pleasure to the Chinese authorities. The remainder of the Imperial City walls have mostly vanished, except those parts that still form the perimeter of the Zhōngnán Hǎi government compound to the west of the Forbidden City, and a little section to the east of the Tiān’ān Mén either side of the street called Nán Chízi Dàjiē, where an arch was put in during the Republic to allow traffic to enter from Dōng Cháng’ān Jiē.
An agoraphobic’s nightmare, the modern square is one of the world’s largest man-made open spaces, full for most of the day with happy holiday-making crowds flying kites, taking each other’s photographs and, in the case of those from out of town, marvelling to find themselves at the country’s very heart. A kite-tail of a queue to see China’s one-man Madame Tussaud’s, the embalmed Máo, edges slowly forward. Around its rim, crowds gape both at the grim buildings symbolizing the current ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and at the ornate relics of the imperial past.
Police are everywhere — in underground police stations around the square, patrolling at ground level, and in vehicles parked at various points. Access to the square is now only possible through pedestrian underpasses where, especially during government meetings in the Great Hall of the People, police wait with metal detectors and X-ray machines, and examine identity documents.
On the north side of the vast open space stands the Tiān’ān Mén (Gate of Heavenly Peace) after which the square is named, leading to the 800-year-old palace of the emperors. It was from the top of here that Máo Zédōng (毛泽东) declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949. On the west side lies the Great Hall of the People (Rénmín Dàhuìtáng), the venue for set-piece government meetings where, in a mockery of consultation and democracy, delegates largely rubber-stamp what has been decided for them. Along with the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Revolution, these were part of several grands projets celebrating the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic in 1959, which is when the modern square was created. These museums, enshrining the official view of what happened in Chinese ancient and modern history (subject to revision without notice), have now been joined together and expanded as the National Museum of China. The south end of the square has some remnants of the ancient city walls destroyed in the 1960s, in the form of the double towers of the Zhèngyáng Mén, more commonly known as the Qián Mén or ‘Front Gate’. Within the square are the Monument to the People’s Heroes (Rénmín Yīngxióng Jìniànbēi), an involuntary tribute to the manipulation of history, and the Chairman Máo Memorial Hall, containing the embalmed corpse of the ‘Great Helmsman’ who so often directed the ship of state onto the rocks.
Tiān’ān Mén Chénglóu 天安门城楼
On Cháng’ān Jiē at the north end of Tiān’ān Mén Square, 8.30am–4pm. ¥15. nb There’s a compulsory bag deposit for ¥1–5 just to the left of the ticket office. m Tiān’ān Mén East (Line 1) exit A. b See Tiān’ān Mén Sq.
The ticket staff will want to be sure that it’s the Gate of Heavenly Peace you want to see, and not the Palace Museum or ‘Forbidden City’, which doesn’t begin until the Wǔ Mén, through the Tiān’ān Mén and further north. Many visitors make this mistake.
Since the source of all power in China once resided behind this gate, it’s not surprising that it has become a symbol of power itself. At times of important celebrations edicts were promulgated from its terrace, placed in the mouth of a gilded wooden phoenix, and lowered to a waiting official, who took them away for copying and dispatch.
Those who have replaced the emperors have felt the need to be seen here, and the gate appears on coins, official seals and insignia, and other symbols of power. It has a history similar to that of most of the wooden buildings in Běijīng (and indeed in China as a whole). Originally built in 1417 as the Chéng Tiān Mén (承天门, Gate of Receiving Heaven’s Mandate), it was rebuilt after a fire in 1456, and was set ablaze again in 1644 by the peasant armies who had ended the Míng even as they retreated from the Qīng advance.
Rebuilt in 1651 it went through numerous further restorations until in 1969 it was pulled down completely in total secrecy while entirely shrouded in scaffolding and matting, and rebuilt in reinforced concrete, reopening (to top cadres only) in May 1970.
It had further touch-ups in 1984, 1999, and again in 2007 ready for the Olympics. But in short, it’s a fake.
The usual translation of its name as ‘Gate of Heavenly Peace’ is equally misleading: the stress here is in fact on pacification of territory newly won by the Manchus when they renamed it in 1651, and as the original Manchu version of the name makes clear. Even tiān’ān is a compression of a more revealing if cumbersome Mandarin expression: Shòu mìng yú tiān, ān bāng zhì guó (受命于天安邦治国), receiving heaven’s mandate, pacifying the realm and ruling the people). Máo’s announcement of the formation of the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949 from atop the gate was thus entirely appropriate.
Of the five arched bridges leading to it from the square, the middle one was for the emperor alone, as was the central door, above which Máo’s portrait now hangs. This is quietly replaced annually towards the end of September some time in the middle of the night. In 1979 it was estimated that during the 1966–76 Cultural Revolution, 2.2 billion portraits of Máo were produced — about three for every citizen in China. A series of six artists has kept the Tiān’ān Mén portraits coming since 1949. At least four of them are now dead, including the original artist, Wáng Guódòng (王国栋), who died in 2019. The current office holder, once fully employed producing portraits of leaders, now has very little to do, but has an apprentice ready to take over nonetheless. There are two copies of the Tiān’ān Mén portrait, each being painted over with a fresh but identical version in the two months or so before it is swapped for the other. The studio, which more resembles a garage, is tucked away inside the square behind the gate, and regarded as top secret.
On 23 May 1989, during the student occupation of Tiān’ān Mén Square, three protestors flung highly appropriate blood-like red paint at the Máo portrait, but after negotiations between the student leaders and security forces, they were handed over with the intention of protecting the wider aims of the protest. The three men each served between ten and 17 years in prison, eventually being granted political asylum in the USA.
To the left through the gate is an office for tickets to climb it. You can then look across the square and pretend to be China’s first president Yuán Shìkǎi reviewing celebrations of his appointment in 1912. Alternatively, you can be Máo announcing the formation of the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949, although looking down over a much smaller square than today; or reviewing supposedly a million students on 17 August 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Many would become the Red Guards who would damage or destroy most of what you will want to see while in China.
Pairs of dragon-carved columns called huábiǎo (华表), one set moved backwards for the creation of Cháng’ān Jiē, stand in front of the gate and behind. You can examine these more closely on the way to the staircase to climb the gate. These are often to be found at important sites (there are two at the Marco Polo bridge, for instance) and imperial residences. Topped either with a mythical animal called a hǒu (犼) — one of the lesser-known sons of the dragon — or a lion, and with cloud-shaped projections, they are ornamental descendants of boards established by early emperors inviting criticism and comment on their policies, or to mark locations where debate on such matters might be held.
Here tradition has it that the animals facing south on top of the outer pair have their mouths open, supposedly to report to the emperor any misdeeds of his officials when he returned. The inner pair facing north to the interior of the palace have closed mouths to indicate the need for silence on the emperor’s whereabouts when he left the palace incognito. It is said that one of the last Qīng emperors, Tóngzhì (同治, reigned 1862–74), would go secretly to the pleasure quarters of the Chinese city and later died of syphilis, which was indeed hushed up. Another version of the pillar story has the inner pair watching the emperor to make sure that he did not spend too much time with his concubines rather than governing, and the outer pair watching that imperial tours did not last too long.
Inside the hall on top of the gate sit the chairs carved with dragons where the gerontocrats once rested between trips to the rostrum. The new technocrat leaders are seen up here less often than their predecessors. Historic footage of soldierly march-pasts plays on video screens, with optimistic swirling string accompaniment and heavenly choirs worthy of the Hollywood productions of the same period. Watch and you can clearly see the original outer walls of the smaller square and some of the older buildings later demolished to expand it and provide room for the construction of the Great Hall of the People and what is now the National Museum of China.
Oddly, there’s a post box at the foot of the opposite stairs. Perhaps, before mobile telephony and social media, the Party leaders got bored of the parades and sneaked off to write postcards.
Monument to the People’s Heroes 人民英雄纪念碑
Rénmín Yīngxióng Jìniànbēi, m Tiān’ān Mén Dōng (Line 1) exit D. b See Tiān’ān Mén Sq.
One of the first acts of the communists after they occupied Běijīng in 1949 was to ordain the construction of this 14.7m-high monument, although it took until 1958 to complete, partly due to bickering between architects and officials over what form it should take. Party policy says that the story of modern China is that of revolution and anti-imperialist struggle, but the government has had to distort history to find enough heroes to fill the monument’s eight relief panels.
One portrays the campaign to prevent the import of opium in 1840, seen as marking the beginning of modern history. The destruction of opium near Guǎngzhōu was undertaken by anti-opium commissioner Lín Zéxú (林则徐) on the orders of a Qīng emperor, member of a by then 200-year-old alien dynasty, and neither a revolutionary nor an anti-imperialist.
Another panel celebrates the Tàipíng Rebellion which, while certainly anti-Manchu, lacked populist revolutionary qualities. There was a pooling of funds and there were common granaries in the large areas of southern China that the Tàipíng ruled from Nánjīng between 1853 and 1864, but the movement was pseudo-Christian, founded by one Hóng Xiùquán (洪秀全), who claimed to be the younger son of Jesus Christ. It was led entirely by members of the Hakka (Kèjiā, 客家) minority, who often faced discrimination from the Hàn (汉, as the Chinese majority call themselves).
In the best imperial traditions, paranoid Hóng Xiùquán had his top advisers killed, and retired to a life of luxury with multiple concubines. The rebellion was crushed only when foreigners stepped in to help, training the ‘Ever-Victorious Army’ (which until then had been anything but) that was led first by an American and then by British General ‘Chinese’ Gordon (who was later to die a famous death at the siege of Khartoum, and who was played by Charlton Heston in the film of the same name in a spectacular case of Hollywood miscasting).
You are no longer allowed to mount the plinth and view the friezes close up, and signs make clear that you may not lay floral tributes here without special permission, presumably for fear of a replay of earlier events. The monument is suitably two-faced: lively characters on the north face are in the familiarly flamboyant calligraphy of Máo Zédōng, stating that the fame of the people’s heroes will last forever, and on the south are those of Premier Zhōu Ēnlái, pushing the date of revolutionary activity back to 1840 in order better to equate heroism with resistance to foreigners. Zhōu survived by bending to Máo’s every whim, and all the text is Máo’s.
Chairman Máo Memorial Hall 毛主席纪念堂
t 6513 2277, 8am–12pm; Tue–Sun. nb Entry free, but sight of your passport may be required; bags and cameras must be deposited. m Tiān’ān Mén East (Line 1) exit D or Qián Mén (Line 2) exit A. b See Tiān’ān Mén Sq.
Bags, cameras, water bottles, and dangerous articles (such as critical thinking) may not be taken in, so leave them at the bag deposit counter across the road to the east (¥1–5 depending on size and value of item) or on the south side of the Great Hall of the People, next to its ticket office.
The 450-year-old Zhōnghuá Mén (China Gate) was pulled down in 1957 for the expansion of the square and in 1976 replaced with the mausoleum to hold Máo. The building’s design matches the edifices to east and west, but with the same motif of vertical lines found in the tombs of Lenin in Moscow, Suk Bataar in Ulaan Bataar, and Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, although it dwarfs all of these.
The ‘Máo-soleum’ is grotesquely popular so go early. It’s a long slow shuffle to enter, which seems to turn into a brisker shuffle when you finally get to Máo, and you quickly find yourself out in the sunshine again with the souvenir vendors.
Born in 1893 and of the same rich peasant stock he felt it right to have murdered in large numbers after the revolution, Máo died in 1976 having caused at a conservative estimate nearly 38 million people to predecease him. Others put the figure at more than 70 million and still rising as more records come to light.
Either way, you might well wonder about a country whose education system teaches children to worship such a monster, which tolerates no public discussion of his failings, and whose political class claims legitimacy as heirs to both the man and his ideas.
Pumped with 22 litres of formaldehyde after his death and now kept underground and refrigerated, he’s hydraulically brought up for the adoration of the masses during opening hours, and visible through a crystal coffin, which is fortunately air-tight.
Máo’s current status is ambiguous. The oft-parroted official position that Máo was 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong is incomprehensible. This is the nearest that there will probably ever be to public criticism of the Communist Party’s pin-up boy, a man whose social experiments caused so much misery, death, and destruction. Officially, Máo’s writings, once almost the only books in print in China, are still bestsellers. New editions are still being produced, although the emphasis is now on the poetry and the letters rather than on the political campaigns.
Today, Máo, the great suppressor of all who disagreed with him, has become a useful tool for dissent against his heirs. In Máo’s day there was little conventional crime, prostitution or drug use (or, at least, less than now), and jobs were guaranteed for life. There are those who loudly praise these achievements and express nostalgia for purer, simpler times: a safe way to criticize the current leaders for the rise in criminal activity, heroin addiction, unemployment, corruption, and naked greed.
It was notable that in 1999’s great celebrations of 50 years of communist rule Máo got only a passing mention, and he was invisible during the four-hour-long pageant of Chinese ‘history’ that opened the Olympic games in 2008. However, his chubby face triumphs over heroic workers and smiling minority peoples to dominate the front of every banknote for ¥1 or higher denomination.
There are restaurants named after or dedicated to him, and few that serve the peppery food of his home province, Húnán, fail to have a portrait on the wall. Indeed, there’s recently been a fad in Běijīng for restaurants that resurrect the pro-Máo musical propaganda of the Cultural Revolution era.
There’s always a chance you might bump into the man. A number of look-alikes make a handsome living from impersonating Máo for television, film, or factory openings, reproducing everything from his mannerisms to his calligraphy with remarkable fidelity.
There’s ghoulish comedy in the account of Máo’s doctor, Lǐ Zhìsuí (李志绥), of the panic amongst his medical staff when the politburo ordered that Máo’s body be preserved. As there was no longer any amity between the Chinese and Soviet Russian Communist Parties, it was impossible to ask how Lenin had been embalmed. Dr Lǐ had anyway visited the bodies of Lenin and Stalin on a trip to Moscow with Máo, where he had been told that their extremities had rotted and been patched with wax. Colleagues were sent to Hanoi, but were refused sight of Ho Chi Minh, being told, however, that both his nose and beard had fallen off.
Two researchers sent to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks in London concluded that in this area, at least, the Chinese were ahead of foreign science. (However, in 1999 during a state visit to Britain, then-President Jiāng Zémín found time to visit the famous tourist attraction to be photographed and measured up for an image, thus making perhaps the world’s first waxwork of a waxwork. A figure of the Dalai Lama was temporarily removed for the period of his visit, although any political motivation for this discretion was of course denied.)
Eventually a preservation method was concocted from readings in medical journals. Most of Máo’s organs were removed and he was pumped full of formaldehyde, but too much was injected and the body swelled grotesquely, the face and neck bulging and the ears sticking out. Careful massaging and the help of make-up sorted out the problem, but a wax copy of the body was also prepared just in case, and the two were kept underground and carefully monitored for more than a year while the mausoleum was prepared. You may find yourself asking after your visit, ‘Which of the two did I just see?’
National Museum of China 中国国家博物馆
Zhōnguó Guójiā Bówùguǎn, on the east side of Tiān’ān Mén Square, t 6511 6118, en.chnmuseum.cn, 9am–3.30pm, closed Mon. Free. nb Passport needed; bags must be deposited in cloakrooms after security check, ¥1 m Tiān’ān Mén Dōng (Line 1) exit D or Qián Mén (Line 2) exit A. b See Tiān’ān Mén Sq.
The vast complexes of the History Museum and the Museum of the Revolution were constructed, like the Great Hall of the People across the square, as part of the ‘celebrations’ of ten years of communist rule in 1959. However, in 2012 the National Museum, into which these two had recently been fused, claimed to be celebrating its centenary, perhaps seeing itself as descended from the Government Museum conceived in 1912 but only opened in halls at the Forbidden City in 1914.
The new National Museum opened in March 2011 after massive expansion and renovation. It claims to be the world’s largest museum, but those familiar with, say, the Louvre or the British Museum, need have no fear of exhaustion. The effect of the expansion has been to make the collection sometimes seem rather thinly spread, and much of the space is free of exhibits, although curatorial standards have been greatly improved, and there’s still much to see. There are also important temporary exhibitions from overseas — Renoir’s Bal du moulin de la Galette was among other French masterpieces making an appearance in 2014. Photography is permitted throughout most of the museum, but without tripod or flash.
Displays in the original museums had very low curatorial, security, and environmental standards and were mostly of replicas rather than originals, although this wasn’t publicly admitted. There was very little in English, and much of that was thoroughly dishonest. In that, at least, the museum hasn’t changed.
Chinese citizens use their identity cards at electronic terminals to obtain a free entrance ticket, but foreign nationals must show their passports at a window. Tickets are then punched as you enter, and there’s a line-up for the X-ray machine and a full-scale airport-style wanding. If you’re asked something in Mandarin, it’s probably, ‘Dài huǒji ma?’ — ‘Are you carrying a cigarette lighter?’ Larger bags must be left in cloakrooms.
There’s an information desk ahead on the left where you can buy a useful booklet (¥1) that has maps of each floor and tells you about current exhibitions. These include those of foreign art imported from overseas, which have separate entrance charges, although typically far less than you’d expect to pay at home (usually under ¥20).
A sea of polished marble stretches away to right and left, lined with bookshops and gift shops, and, at the south end, a café with tea, coffee, and pastries for surprisingly reasonable prices. Audio tours are ¥40 plus ¥100 deposit. Stairs and escalators lead upwards in assorted directions, and there’s a lift round to the left behind the information desk.
Among the magnificent artefacts on diplay are a 12-branched Hàn dynasty lamp, a replica of what is supposed to be the world’s earliest seismometer, and funerary objects that include clay figurines and a burial suit of jade plaques sewn together with gold wire that looks ready to rise and walk about by itself. Elaborate jewellery includes items retrieved from the Míng Tombs in the 1950s.
Táng ceramics include tri-coloured horses and a particularly fine camel, and 12 unusual animal-headed figurines from the Chinese zodiac about one foot high, among them a chicken, goat, duck and horse, each with a half-pensive, half-quizzical expression on its face which probably reflects your own reaction. There are other fine figurines of a fish with the head of a man, musicians, and many more.
Other items of interest in the collection include an early photograph of the Marco Polo Bridge (Lúgōu Qiáo) looking particularly dilapidated, and fine examples of ancient cloisonné to compare with what’s offered to you for sale in souvenir shops.
There are whole galleries of bronzes, jade, gold and silver items, ancient coinage, painting, calligraphy, and carved brick, and displays of oracle bones, lacquerware, and seals. English explanations are patchy, but if you’ve any interest in Chinese art at all, allow at least half a day.
If your preferences is for politics and propaganda, what was the Museum of the Revolution is now the Road to Rejuvenation, a separate display area at the north end of the ground floor, to the left as you enter.
This exhibition is mainly for domestic rather than foreign comsumption, and after brief introductions to each section the English peters out whenever there are important details to present. But you’ll learn at the beginning that the Chinese are ‘industrious, courageous, intelligent, and peace-loving’ and have made ‘indelible contributions to the progress of human civilization’, and who, ‘after being reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society since the Opium War of 1840’ by foreigners like you and me, ‘rose in resistance against humiliation and misery, and tried in every way possible to rejuvenate the nation.’
The exhibition ‘highlights the glorious history of China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in which all the ethnic groups joined forces to achieve national independence and liberation and strove to build a strong prosperous country for the well-being of its people. The exhibition therefore clearly demonstrates the historical course of the Chinese people of choosing Marxism, the CPC, the Socialist Road, and the reform and opening up policy, and China’s further determination in building socialism with Chinese characteristics through adherence to this great banner, this special road, and this theoretical system.’
If that isn’t enough to keep you out, inside you’ll find early photography from the British and French forces involved in the Opium Wars, and from assorted allied foreign armies during the relief of the siege of the Legation Quarter (which is just behind the museum. See A Brief History of Běijīng and Legation Quarter). There’s an image of a gormless foreigner seated on a throne in the Forbidden City, the identification card of a Chinese policeman employed by the allied forces, and a map of the occupation zones in 1900.
An animated display shows the turning back of the foreign fleet at Dàgū in 1859, which re-animated the Arrow War, or Second Opium War. A section on the Tàipíng Rebellion co-opts the pseudo-Christian rebels as proto-revolutionaries, despite the fact they formed their own imperial dynasty and massacred the peasantry that disagreed with them. It then goes on to a highly questionable account of the 1911 revolution. By now the English has almost vanished altogether, pausing only to vilify Yuán Shìkǎi for hijacking the revolution.
Eventually it becomes wall-to-wall Máo and cronies, glorious socialism leading the well-being of the people to ever new heights with railway lines, satellites, and atomic bombs, and the ethnic minorities all happy, singing and dancing, and loving the Hàn.
Asking where you can find displays on, for instance, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, will only embarrass the attendants.
‘Um… Try the second floor.’ No, not there either. Tens of millions of deaths in the largest man-made famine ever have simply been edited out of history.
And so it ends: ‘Standing on this new historic point and facing the future one cannot but feel the weight of mission on our shoulders. We shall closely unite around the CPC’s central leadership with Hú Jǐntāo as its General Secretary, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, follow the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Máo Zédōng thought, Dèng Xiǎopíng theory, and the important thought of Three Represents, carry out the scientific outlook of development thoroughly, join efforts to forge ahead and consistently strive for the great goal of implementing the Twelfth Five-Year Programme and building a moderately prosperous society.’
Eventually you’ll find it rewritten to include mention of current president Xí Jìnpíng.
Great Hall of the People 人民大会堂
Rénmín Dàhuìtáng, on the west side of Tiān’ān Mén Sq., Jan–Mar & Dec, 9am–2pm; Apr–Jun, 8.15am–3pm; Jul & Aug, 7.30am–4pm; Sep–Nov, 8.30am–3pm. Open longer on national holidays. Closed during the ‘two meetings’. ¥30. nb Sight of passport may be required. Bags must be deposited at a window to the left of the ticket office, ¥2–5. m Tiān’ān Mén West (line 1) exit C. b See Tiān’ān Mén Sq.
This vast hall on the west side of the square was constructed in 1958/9 as one of ten mega-projects that included the museums opposite and the establishment of Tiān’ān Mén Square in its modern form. The Chinese seem to come here because the building has an ‘as seen on TV’ fame but would admit that, despite the cavernous interior spaces, the modern palaces to commerce, culture, and sport are now far more impressive. Not that commerce has been expelled from this supposed bastion of public ownership — you can pay to have your photograph taken in front of a mural in one room, and a café on the balcony of the entrance hall sells the Coca-Cola of the hated imperialists. Perhaps a resurrected Máo would storm across the road to drive the moneylenders from the temple.
A clear roped route takes you around the building, and you may not wander at will. There’s a whiff of left-over communism in the antimacassared armchairs, broad staircases with slightly tatty red carpets, vast marbled interior spaces, and inadequate lighting. There’s one hall for every province, one for each of the cities reporting directly to Běijīng, and one for each of the two Special Administrative Regions — Hong Kong and Macau. One has a large mural showing Máo with representatives of every minority and attempting to look jolly (which he doesn’t do very well), and large Chinese ceramics and screens standing around in various corners. It’s all a colossal exercise in bad taste, with shoddy chandeliers and other thin glitz.
Upstairs there’s a huge red relief of the minorities being positively frisky in their joy at uniting with the Hàn. After this you pass the Běijīng hall with its mural of the Great Wall, before entering the banqueting hall, a large gloomy space where set meals are available for modest price.
In the Shànghǎi room the mural of the skyline is subject to constant revision. Returning to the ground floor, the route passes a large model in oxidised green copper of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests from the Temple of Heaven.
The exit is down the main stairs, but then passes through a tunnel full of souvenir stalls and other merchandise to the main square. Presumably on your way to see Máo, perhaps having acquired fake jade or a souvenir polyester raincoat en route.
Grand National Theatre 国家大剧院
Guójiā Dà Jùyuàn, Xī Cháng’ān Jiē, or reached by any route west off Tiān’ān Mén Square, t 6655 0000 (box office), www.chncpa.org, 9.30am–6pm. m Tiān’ān Mén West (Line 1) exit C. b to 天安门西: 1, 专1, 专2, 5, 10, 22, 52, 90电车外环, 90电车内环, 728.
It may not be in Tiān’ān Mén Square itself, but such a vast and extraordinary presence just behind the Great Hall of the People cannot be avoided (and that’s the source of much local criticism of it). There’s no doubt that Frenchman Paul Andreu’s ¥2.7 billion (at least) complex, four auditoriums lodged beneath a giant titanium and glass dome in the middle of an artificial lake, deserves a visit. Even if you’re not planning to see a performance, the effect of the light bouncing off the UFO-like exterior is memorable, particularly in the late afternoon.
The building is possibly the least popular of all the foreigner-designed Běijīng mega-projects (see The Shock of the New), and often called the yā dàn (鸭蛋, duck egg), or worse. Show those two characters to a taxi driver and he’ll know where to take you.
Pick up a leaflet while there. It’s occasionally possible to see major companies from overseas, particularly ballet, dance, and opera, more cheaply than at home.
China Numismatic Museum 中国钱币博物馆
人民大会堂的南边
Zhōngguó Qiánbì Bówùguǎn, Xī Jiāomín Xiàng 17, t 6602 4178, www.cnm.com.cn, 9am–3.30pm, Tue–Sat. ¥10. nb Bags must be deposited. m Qián Mén (Line 2) exit C. b to 天安门广场西: 2, 5, 22, 120, 126.
This is in what appears to be a very Western-influenced Republican-era building just south of the Great Hall of the People on the corner of Xī Jiāo Mín Xiàng (西角门象). It’s the modern counterpart of the former Ancient Coin Exhibition Hall in the Déshèng Mén Jiàn Lóu, which is also now sometimes calls itself the China Numismatic Museum. It has changing exhibitions dealing with post-revolutionary money, such as the release of the current fifth series of notes, which in 1999 introduced the first ever ¥20 and placed Máo by himself on the front of bills of every denomination.
Zhèngyáng Mén 正阳门
At the south end of Tiān’ān Mén Sq, t 6511 8110, 9am–3.30pm, Tue–Sun. ¥20. m Qián Mén (Line 2) exit A. b to 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.
The ‘Straight Towards the Sun Gate’, more commonly known as the Qián Mén or ‘Front Gate’, survives as a pair of towers, and was once part of the Tartar City wall separating the north and south sections of Běijīng. The outer Jiàn Lóu, or Arrow Tower, stood on a semi-circular projection or enceinte, which had side gates for the common people and a central gate for the emperor’s use only. Any invader fighting his way into the enclosure would face fire from both towers while he attempted to break down the second gate.
The existing Qián Mén road loop was the result of Qián Mén Dàjiē splitting into two roads that ran round either side of the semi-circular enceinte and turned into the lesser gates. The two towers still stand in line with Tiān’ān Mén and the key buildings of the Forbidden City, and formed one of three entrances from the Chinese City to the Tartar City.
The originals were constructed in 1420 and 1439, but the outer Jiàn Lóu was burned down by the Boxers in 1900 as the result of setting fire to a shop with foreign connections in the Dà Zhàlàn (Dà Shílànr in local dialect) shopping street, which reduced shop, gate, and everything in between to ashes.
The Zhèngyáng Mén looked down into the besieged part of the Legation Quarter, and in the final hours of the battle, the glint of brass mountings was spotted at one of its windows. The defenders took bearings, and when a field gun opened up from the tower that night it was silenced after only its seventh round. The tower was later accidentally burned down by relieving forces as they drove out a last pocket of resistance.
Since the Qián Mén was the main gate of the Tartar City, the towers were rebuilt within a few years, but increasing motor traffic led to adjustments in 1915. The outer enceinte was completely torn down by the German architect Curt Rothkegel, who also added the white eyebrow-like decorative details that are unique to this arrow tower, but which he thought looked appropriate. The former Beijing International Club in Jiànguó Mén Wài and a temporary National Assembly Building from the days of the Republic, now in the Xuānwǔ compound of the Xīnhuá ‘News Agency’ are also his, as is some modest remodelling of the Forbidden City’s Wǔyīng Diàn (武英殿, Hall of Martial Valour), and Jìngsī Diàn (敬思殿, Hall of Respectful Thought). He apparently turned his hand to anything, as a church of his still standing in the former German treaty port enclave of Qīngdǎo aspires to Jugenstil. Apparently it is not only in modern times that the civilian contractors of invading powers get the juicy contracts and carte blanche.
In the ’30s the now isolated Arrow Tower was being used to display local handicrafts, but is now closed to the public. By that time, too, railway termini had been built by foreign companies on either side of Qián Mén, which were in use until the construction of Běijīng Zhàn with Soviet help in 1959. The noose of railway track the foreigners built around the outside of the Tartar City in 1911 is gone (the enceintes at other gates were also destroyed), but the route now taken underground by the modern metro’s circle line is similar. One signal box still standing next to a recently exposed section of city wall east of Chóngwén Mén has now been opened as a café.
All the main gates were built with the same arrangement of two towers and an enceinte, and within the enclosure each had a daoist temple, except the Zhèngyáng Mén which had two, always visited by the emperors when they returned to Běijīng this way or came back from ceremonies at the Temple of Heaven or Altar of Agriculture. These were pulled down in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution.
Běijīng’s gates were closed at dusk with the beating of gongs and loud cries from the guards to alert those who wanted to pass through. Alone among them, the Zhèngyáng Mén was reopened for a few minutes after midnight to allow officials to return from the theatres, tea houses, and more sensual pleasures of the Dà Zhàlán (Dà Shílànr) area in time for the imperial audience, which would take place in the small hours of the morning. (That later emperor, Máo, also often summoned his subordinates at 2 or 3am.)
A 1999 refurbishment cleared away an electronic rifle range and other amusements at gallery level and thoroughly modernized the interior, which contains models of various towers and gates, and an illuminated table plan of the Qiánlóng’s emperor’s Běijīng of 1750. This shows the city walls intact as well as many long-since disappeared temples. (The largest and most detailed model of ancient Běijīng of this kind is at the Museum of Ancient Architecture.) Black and white photos, some labelled in English, show Běijīng before its destruction in the modern era, also serving as an introduction to a much more Chinese Běijīng many visitors would like to find now.
There’s a view of the Zhèngyáng Mén at the conclusion of the Boxer Rebellion with its top missing (again exclusively blamed on the Eight Allied Powers), a view to the west of the other railway station, which has now disappeared, and a picture of the Eight Allied Powers marching into the city. One aerial photo shows the time when the enceinte had been torn down but the rest of the walls still existed, and a wall map compares clearly the layout of Jīn dynasty Zhōngdū, Yuán Dàdū, Míng, and subsequently Qīng Běijīng, including the wall and layout of the Imperial City.
There’s a picture of the first locomotive to reach the heart of Běijīng at Zhèngyáng Mén on 1 November 1901, one of Chinese officials wearing the top-hatted costume of the hated capitalists at the Dōngbiān Mén station, and a picture of a level crossing by Déshèng Mén from the line that the foreigners built around the city. Upstairs is an exhibition of long-vanished streetlife of Běijīng, the vigour of which has only recently returned: shop signs, photos of hútòng and their occupants, and samples of street vendor wares.
The 38m-high Jiàn Lóu just to the south, with its 94 windows for shooting arrows, gives you better views over the Qián Mén area but has now closed to the public again. It spent much of the 1930s as a shop, and then became a cinema until 1945. The ground around its base was a bus station until 1999, when it was turfed with what was then claimed to be Běijīng’s largest ever lawn, although not of any great size.
The eaves and narrow brick windows were the favoured homes of so many swallows that some wondered whether they supplied the nests for the soup of local restaurants, but the birds have now been driven away (and the genuine nest is actually that of a kind of sea swallow and usually imported from Malaysia.)
▶ Tiān’ān Mén Guǎngchǎng, m Tiān’ān Mén East exit D, Tiān’ān Mén West exit C (Line 1), Qián Mén (Line 2). b to stop 天安门东 (east of the gate): 1, 专1, 2, 专2, 10, 52, 59, 82, 90电车外环, 90电车内环, 99, 120, 126, 728. 天安门广场东 (east side of square) and 天安门广场西 (west side of square): 2, 5, 22, 120, 126. 天安门西 (west of the gate); 1, 专1, 专2, 5, 10, 22, 52, 90电车外环, 90电车内环, 728. Other remaining fragments of the city walls include the now uncovered section along the north side of Chóngwén Mén Dōng Dàjiē south of Běijīng Station, the Míng City Wall Ruins Park, which leads to the Southeast Corner Watchtower, clearly visible from trains coming to Běijīng Station. Another fragment mirrors this at Xī Biàn Mén, the Míng Běijīng Chéng Qiáng Yízhǐ (明北京城墙遗址) passed on the way into town from Běijīng West Station. You can also climb the Déshèng Mén Arrow Tower housing the Beijing Ancient Coin Museum.
The Legation Quarter walk begins from the southeast side of the square, the Běijīng Planning Exhibition Hall is just off the southeast corner and the China Railway Museum (Zhèngyáng Mén Branch) is immediately south on the east side. Now-Disneyfied Qián Mén Dàjiè stretches away to the south. See South of Qián Mén Index.
Tiān’ān Mén stories: Square of Heavenly Discord, Miraculous Máo, The Shock of the New.
Next in Imperial City: Legation Quarter (walk)
Previous: Forward to the Past (walk)
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
