The History of Beijing

Adam and I began our 2nd day in Beijing with breakfast and a skype session with my family at a small cafe advertising American Breakfast.  It was just down the street from our hotel and the breakfast was as advertised - We ate Pancakes there 2 days in a row!  We headed back to the hotel to grab our jackets (it was overcast and chilly), where we were met by our tour guide, Skye.  A mid-20's Chinese girl who has been giving tours for about a year and a half.  Her "dream" as she put it was to be in Beijing giving tours - she was a pretty headstrong girl and I wasn't surprised that she was already living her dream at her age.  She shared a lot of great info with us and was very easy to get along with.

We started the day by alerting her that we had actually already been to the Temple of Heaven (oops!), so we didn't want to go back.  This made her really really nervous at first, but she made a few calls, and we decided to do the Hutong tour on the first morning, which would make our 2nd day more relaxed with the Great Wall trip.

So let the tour begin... Hutongs are a type of narrow street or alley, that is very typical in Beijing.  The hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, or traditional courtyard residences.  Many neighborhoods are formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. These are a maze of people living, working, cooking, and just enjoying each others company.  It was amazing to see such a different method of "city planning" or lack there of.  There certainly was a charm to it, but it was also very uninviting at times.  Plus, they mostly have common use toilets and showers - no thanks!

Adam and I in the rickshaw for Hutong Tour

Skye explaining the symbolism on doors in Hutongs

We had the opportunity to actually enter one of the Hutong homes and speak with the woman living there.  She was very nice and open to answering our questions about her daily life and home.  KungFu was very important in her family and her oldest son was in Houston, TX teaching kungfu.  She insisted we take his card in case we ever needed a good teacher in USA.  As you will see they even had a big screen TV and karaoke equipment in this small home - at least they are able to enjoy the kickbacks of opening their home to tourists!

Kung Fu supplies in the front room

Adam and I with Ms. Xu (i think)

Adam admiring the big screen

Ms. Xu outside her home

After exiting the Hutongs we stopped to learn about and take pictures of the Drum and Bell Towers of Beijing.  Basically, they were originally built as musical machines, but later were used by government and common people as time pieces.  In the Hutongs, the people would just listen for the sound for the towers to determine the time of day.  The Bell and Drum Towers continued to function as the official timepiece of China and government until 1924, when the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty was forced to leave the Forbidden City) and western-style clockwork was made the official means of time-keeping. 

Adam and I with Bell Tower

Shops at Houhai lake

Adam and I at Houhai lake in the morning

After the hutong tour and walk around Houhai lake, we headed down the the heart of Beijing, the old town.  The history tour began at Jingshan Park, also called Coal Hill.  Its actually an artificial hill, built just north of the Forbidden City on the central axis of Beijing.  The park was originally an imperial garden and now it is a public park (that charges admission, of course).

beautiful peonies!

Wikapedia gives a good recap of what Skye told us on the tour: 

The 45.7-metre high artificial hill was constructed in the Yongle era (1360-1424, third emperor) Ming Dynasty entirely from the soil excavated in forming the moats of the Imperial Palace and nearby canals - notice picture below of us in front of the moat! It is especially impressive when one considers that all of this material was moved only by manual labor and animal power. Jingshan consists of five individual peaks, and on the top of each peak there lies an elaborate pavilion. These pavilions were used by officials for gathering and leisure purposes. These five peaks also draws the approximate historical axis of central Beijing.

According to the dictates of Feng Shui, it is favorable to site a residence to the south of a nearby hill (and it is also practical, gaining protection from chilly northern winds). The imperial palaces in the other capitals of previous dynasties were situated to the south of a hill. When the capital was moved to Beijing, no such hill existed at this location, so one was constructed. It is popularly known as Feng Shui Hill. It is also known as Coal Hill, a direct translation of its old popular Chinese name.

views of Beijing from top of Coal Hill

Looking south towards the Forbidden City

outside Jingshan Park

Next, we headed south to Tiananmen Square.
The Tiananmen Gate to the Forbidden City was built in 1415 during the Ming Dynasty. The Tian'anmen square was designed and built in 1651, and has since enlarged four times its original size in the 1950s. Tiananmen Square is the largest city square in the world (440,000 m² - 880m by 500m). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. Notably, this was the site of the proclamation of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949.
Used as a massive meeting place since its creation, its flatness is contrasted by the 38-meter (125 ft) high Monument to the People's Heroes, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.  The square lies between two ancient, massive gates: the Tian'anmen to the north and the Zhengyangmen, better known as Qianmen to the south. Along the west side of the Square is the Great Hall of the People. Along the east side is the National Museum of China (dedicated to Chinese history predating 1919).


It was truly was a site to see, but like many other large city squares I've seeing throughout the world - it is just a big open space! Once you start to understand the history and some of the major historical events that occurred on the city it certainly brings life to square and you can almost picture history, if you can see around the hoards of Chinese tourists, that is...

Adam and I at Tianamen Square - Monument to the People's Heroes in the back

National Museum of China

The next few images are from the Forbidden City.  The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government. It took 14 years to building from 1406 to 1420, and the complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 m²(7,800,000 sq ft).

Entrance to the Forbidden City

According to Skye, the picture of Mao that hangs outside the Tiananmen Gate of Forbidden City is actually a painting and is replaced by a new one every year.  It is unveiled each year during the National Day Celebration on October 1.  On this day in 1949, Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China.  Think of this as similar to the 4th of July with celebrations and fireworks... but burgers on the grill, not so sure!

Inside Forbidden Cit, Hall of Supreme Harmony - see the dragon line

Construction lasted 15 years, and required more than a million workers. Material used include whole logs of precious Phoebe zhennan wood found in the jungles of south-western China, and large blocks of marble from quarries near Beijing. The floors of major halls were paved with "golden bricks" specially baked paving bricks from the nearby city, Suzhou.  The sheer size of this place was really amazing.  As we walked through all three major gates, I couldn't help but imagine a time in which this place was full of workers and concubines.  It was must have been a bustling, amazing site to see.

Crane for the lady

Turtle with Dragon head for the man

The Forbidden City remains important in the civic scheme of Beijing. The central north-south axis remains the central axis of Beijing, below is the Dragon Line that we saw starting at the Temple of Heaven. This axis extends to the south through Tiananmen gate to Tiananmen Square, the ceremonial centre of the People's Republic of China.  To the north, it extends through Jingshan Hill to the Bell and Drum Towers. This axis is not exactly aligned north-south, but is tilted by slightly more than two degrees. Researchers now believe that the axis was designed in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to be aligned with Xanadu, the other capital of their empire.

Dragon line in leading to Imperial Palace

Imperial Gardens

As we walked out of the north part of the Forbidden City, we were excited to Jingshan Park, or Coal Hill which we saw earlier that day.  That location truly had the best views of the the city below.

Adam and I with Jingshan Hill in background

Outside NE gate, check out that moat!

After a long day of site seeing we saw a really cool KungFu show...

We decided to end the day by returning to the Houhai lake area and hutong shoppes.  As we anticipated there was quite bit more going on than at 930am.  We were able to grab dinner and watch a beautiful sunset!

Hutong shops at dusk

Very direct advertising!

Beautiful Sunset of Houhai lake

Day 2 in the books....