Travelogue of Famous Scenic Spots in China

Author: Lu Mingsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: A Tour of Beijing, the Capital City
Beijing is the capital of China, the center of national politics, culture, and foreign exchanges. Beijing's earliest name was Ji. During the Tang Dynasty, the city was also known as Youzhou. With the decline of the Tang Dynasty, in 936 AD, the Khitan ethnic group in the northeast established the Liao Dynasty and established a secondary capital in Youzhou, also known as Yanjing. In 1153 AD, the Jurchen ethnic group in the Songhua River Basin grew increasingly powerful and established the Jin Dynasty, officially making Ji City its capital and renaming it Zhongdu. From this point on, Beijing became the capital of China's successive feudal dynasties. During the Zhongdu era, Beijing was already a beautiful city with magnificent imperial palaces, tall walls, and picturesque gardens. When the Yuan Dynasty rose, Genghis Khan's Mongol cavalry broke through Zhongdu and turned it into a wasteland of ruins. After establishing a vast empire, the Yuan Dynasty moved its capital from the Mongolian grasslands to Beijing and built a grand city called Dadu. The Dadu of the Yuan Dynasty was the most beautiful city in the world at that time. The Ming Dynasty originally made Nanjing its capital and renamed Yuan Dynasty's Dadu as Beiping. In 1402 AD, Zhu Di, the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, usurped the throne and became the Yongle Emperor. He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beiping and renamed it Beijing. The capital of the Qing Dynasty was originally in Shenyang in the northeast. After the Qing army entered the Central Plains, they also moved the capital to Beijing. The name Beijing has been used ever since, with a history of nearly six hundred years. Beijing is a historic and culturally rich city with numerous ancient palaces, royal gardens, temple complexes, and religious shrines, with over 200 famous historical sites. The Forbidden City, the world's largest palace, was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is the largest, most complete, and best-preserved ancient palace complex in China and the world. Because the emperor's power was considered to be "divinely ordained," and the emperor was considered the "Son of Heaven," the emperor's palace was seen as a sacred "Purple Forbidden City," hence its other name. It is located in the center of Beijing, like a city within a city. The construction of the Forbidden City began in the fourth year of the Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty (1406 AD) and took fourteen years to complete, with basic construction finished in the eighteenth year of the Yongle era. Its scale is vast, covering an area of 720,000 square meters, with a building area of about 150,000 square meters, and a total of 9,999 rooms. In ancient China, "nine" was considered the "supreme number of heaven and earth." Many buildings in the Forbidden City contain the numbers "nine" and "five," which the emperor used to deify and reinforce his supreme rule. For defensive purposes, high walls over 10 meters tall and more than 3,400 meters long were built around the Forbidden City. Four corner towers were constructed at each corner of the walls, and a wide moat over 52 meters wide surrounded the walls, forming a majestic and heavily fortified imperial city. The architecture of the Forbidden City is divided into two parts: the front and the back, arranged along a central axis running from south to north through the palace city. The front part is called the Front Court, centered around the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony, and the Hall of Preserving Harmony. This is the symbolic center of the regime, commonly referred to as