New Qianmen Street
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).
