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Ming City Wall park 2

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:50:02 +0000

This is my second time to the park, this time I took some more photos with snow. I walked through the park from west to east, as it was a very cold day, this way kept me a little more warmer with the strong wind went from my back. The park is free as a public park, but to climb up the wall, you will need to go to the ticket office at the east end, it is in the arcade way, the arcade was the passage way for the old railway which connected Beijing and Shenyang in the north-east of Beijing.

Click here for more my last visit to this place. The place is very close to the subway station at the Chongwenmen.

This is the Corner Tower from the Ming Dynasty.

The photo below was the Signal Station of the old railway to Shenyang, if you keep going about 2 KM west, then you will get to the Peking Railway Station, which today is very close to the Tian’anmen Square, and the station is now renovated into a railway museum.

I also made a very simple 3d sketch to the wall:

And here is the map of the park:

Temple of Heaven

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:36:30 +0000

Temple of Heaven, or “Tiantan”, “the Altar of Heaven” in Chinese, was built in 1420, same time as the Forbidden City. It was opened to public in 1918, after 1945, during the civil war of China, the wall at the south part of the park was destroyed to setup a small airport.

Temple of Heaven is not a single temple actually. There are many buildings, basically there are three parts inside, and there is an local axis going along with the most important buildings.

Large space in the park is just occupied by trees, most of them cypress. This design was based on the ancient thought, that the worship done in the forest wasthe most sacred and also the cleanest. Today if you visit here early in morning, like 6 am, you can see many people are here, not for praying…but for morning exercise.

Temple of Heaven was placed on the list of the World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 1998, as the “largest building complex for worshipping heaven in the world”.

South Part: the Circular Mound Altar and the Imperial Vault of Heaven.

The Emperor would visit the Circular Mound Altar every year on the day of winter solstice, this ceremony was called the “Worshipping to Heaven”. To the north, in the little round courtyard, there are three buildings, the middle one is the Vault of Heaven, it was the place for storing the tablets of God of Heaven and the ancestors of the royal family. There are two flank buildings, in the east is for the tablets of the Gods of Brightness and Stars, in the west is for the tablets of Gods of Wind, Thunder, Cloud and Rain.

Though it was not likely for the Emperor to go through all the buildings in one time, there is a bridge to connect the south part to the north part. The Red Stariway Bridge is about 3 meters above the ground.

North Part: the Altar for Praying for Grain and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest.

If we keep the south part in mind, it is easy to recoginzed the buildings in the north part, you can say that the same story repeated again, but note this time, the temple and the altar were built together, that is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest was built on the Altar for Praying Grain. In the Ming and Qing Dynasty, the Emperor would visit here on the 8th day after the Chinese New Year. In the sense of architecture, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is the crown of the whole complex, very likely you have seen it in some other places, in photos or maybe even in brand logos.

West Part: the Palace of Abstinence
Before any of the ceremony, the Emperor would have to go fast for 3 days, first 2 days in the Hall of Abstinence inside Forbidden City, and the last day here, therefore the palace is walled and moated like the Forbidden City, during the occupation of the Eight Allied Force in 1901, the British headquaters was here.

Interesting acoustics phenomenon can be found at the round shaped buildings. First spot locates at the Circular Mound Altar, there is a piece of stone in the center, on that piece of stone, your voice can be echoed loudly, I tried and it works most of the cases, even when there were many visitors around. The second spot (the Echo Wall) and third sport (the Triple Sound Stones) are both inside the courtyard of the Imperial Vault of Heaven, and both of them don’t work in the daytime.

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New Qianmen Street

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:22:29 +0000

Qianmen (Front Gate) Street named after the Zhengyangmen Gate (正阳门), alias of which was the Front Gate by the locals, the reason was simple, it was on the axis of the city, and was the formal entrance into the inner section of the old Peking, while the Qianmen Street was in the outer section of the City. The street also functioned as a passway when the Emperor was on his visit to the Temple of Heaven.

Due to its special location, it soon came to be a combination of every thing from the Ming Dynasty, little inns for the royal examinees and merchants, restaurants, in 1855 opened the first Pianyifang Roasted Duck (便宜坊), and in 1864 came the first shop of Quanjude Peking Duck (全聚德), and the famous steamed Dumpling restaurant Duyichu (都一处). Many famous Peking brands started their business around here, the famous Dashilan (大栅栏) locates just at the west side of the street in a wandering hutong alleyway, even today, it is still one of the major shopping streets for traditional Beijing stuff.

The Qianmen Street and Dashilan Street Area, was generally called as Qianmen Wai, or Ch’ien Men Wai (前门外), was a whole-sale trading market from the high-end jewellery, jade, banking, to daily stuff like fishes, coal, commissariat, pigs, even today the names of the closeby alley remind us its local history. By the way, the area was also famous for many other entertainments, opera houses, tea houses, night clubs …

In 1900, the north part of the street was destroyed in a big fire set by the Boxers.

From 1980s, some of the old shops kept and many new shops moved into the street, with more and more old buildings demolished, the street lost both its customers and most importantly original tastes gradually. In 2006, the area was in renovation, and it was almost ready done before the Olympic Games in 2008, sure, it regains attention, even now most of the buildings are still in decorations, many visitors come just for taking photos, fancy shops like H&M, Zara are already here, and more will move in.

After the renovation, the street becomes a pedestrian street, the trolley bus is the only way to go through north to south, the ticket charge is 20yuan/person, and very likely that is only the one-way ticket.

Two comparison photos taken in Sep. 2006, and in Sep. 2009, roughly at the same spot.

Most of the buildings are renovated according to their historic records in the 1920s to 1930s, but as most of them came together in a “natural process”, to rebuild them overnight again, not surprisingly some of the details of the buildings are just handled in a much easy way.

A panaromatic view of the street.

A view from north looking to south.

A view to the north, the end building is the Arrow Tower of the Zhengyangmen Gate.

There are many Beijing elements to decorate the street, from the bench, trash bin to the design of the street lamp (in shape like a bird cage).

At the left side, the archway leads into the Quanjude Roast Duck restaurant (全聚德).

Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall

admin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:18:23 +0000

The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall is designed to introduce the long history of Beijing, and the modern urban planning and development. The 16,000 square-meter floor space is distributed on 4 floor levels in the Hall, with 8,000 square meters for exhibits.

On the second floor there is a bronze relief sculpture of The Old City of Beijing which fully depicts the overall layout and characteristics of Beijing in 1949. The sculpture features more than 118,000 houses and 60,000 trees and a large number of alleys, lakes and rivers.

The third floor features the evolution of the old city of Beijing with a large amount of photos, old maps, wells of the Han Dynasty and gate frusta and column heads of the Qing Dynasty, as well as models of courtyard houses and various gateways. The transformation of Beijing is traced from its primitive stage to the emergence of a city and eventually to a big metropolis and capital of a multi-nation state, as well as through the cultural and city planning characteristics.

On the forth floor there is a 3-D film cinema which covers a floor area of 400 square meters with a 120-degree arc screen and is able to show wide-screen movies and virtual-reality city animations. Available movies now include (1) The Immortal City, a 10-minute film about the 850-year history of Beijing as a capital city; (2) The New Beijing, a 3-D film lasting about 6 minutes, featuring current achievements in the development of Beijing and the progress towards 2008.

Addres: No 20, East Qianmen Avenue, Chongwen Disrict.
Opening hour: Tue-Sunday 9:00am –4:00pm ( closed on Monday )
Tel:010-67024559
http://www.bjghzl.com.cn/

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Oct.23, a visit to National Library and Qianmen Street

admin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:39:08 +0000

There was about a month since the National Library (New) put into operation, and it said to be the 3rd biggest in the world…

That is a big reading room, once check in from any entrance, you will be able to look around everywhere. The glass roof saves a lot of energy, and winter days should be very warm inside, just by sunshine.

Free water!

Laptops can be taken with you, and power outlets are available just close to the table.

And this tablet TV for reading some of the Chinese Newspaper.

The room for newspaper

A 5-minutes walk, just south of the New one, that is the old National Library building, where was built-up in 1990s.

And here is the lobby of the old library.

The old facilities.

And just before the Olympic games started, this just renovated Qianmen street was opened to public, and this is my first time to visit it, now it is not busy, and many of the buildings at the both side of the road are just empty, waiting someone to rent.

The new trolley, just going to be in operation someday.

Some places don’t match with its neighbour, so has to put a picture there to hide the behind.

A view from the south to the north.

and further going to the south

The shop of “Duyichu”, it is famous for making steamed Dumplings, or “Shaomai” (烧卖）.

A last-week photo, and a 100-year-old photo, below…

And after the Qianmen street, I walked into the Dashilan shopping street, see if there are some change there…

Always busy and noisy…

A photo in a small community close to Liulichang Street.

A little hostel in a hutong, below the room, on the ground floor, that is a public toilet.

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Oct 23, Temple of Heaven

admin — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:15:28 +0000

Calligraphy on the floor, free of charge, but last only a few minutes

The building of good harvest

Playing Chinese Chess

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Ming City Wall Park

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:57:51 +0000

I have some more photos can be found here.

The section of wall presented here, running a mile east-to-west from Dongbian Men to Chongwen Men, was originally built in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and reconstructed in the mid-1500s by the Ming. Modern restoration work on the section began in 2002 and is still in progress, using bricks from the original Ming reconstruction collected from nearby residents (some of whom employed them to build toilets after the wall was demolished in the 1950s). A pleasant park runs east along the length of the wall to the dramatic Dongnan Jiaolou (Southeast Corner Tower; daily 9am-5pm), with its dozens of arrow slots; a contemporary art gallery and interesting exhibition on the history of Chongwen can be found inside.

The Ming City Wall Park is the only part of the City Wall nowday, it is about 1540 meters long.

Originally, the whole wall of Beijing was about 40 KM long, with a history of 581 years.

Now, with a combination of trees and an underground service area, makes it a perfect relaxing park to pulbic.

In 1900, the Corner Tower was detroyed by the Eight Allied Forces, and in the Cutural Revolutiong (1966-1976) saw more deconstraction, many bricks was taken by locals for building small rooms in their courtyard houses. Things were much improved in 1981, when government invested lots of money to restore it.

The South-east Corner Tower was built in 1436, it is the only one and also the best preserved Corner Tower in Beijing.

The Corner Tower is 17 meters high, plus the wall, totally about 30 meters high. In the Ming and Qing Dynasty, it was very important for defense of the city.

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Ming City Wall park 2

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