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I’m happy to introduce our new personal tour “To Be a Beijinger for a Day”. This 1 day tour focuses on the axis of Beijing. The tour will guide you through the various periods of Beijing’s history, from the 1400’s to present day.

The itinerary includes:

1. Temple of Heaven
2. Tian’anmen Square
3. Forbidden City
4. Olympic Park

Transportation: Taxi

Price: USD $60 per person, including transportation by taxi. I can pick you up from your hotel or meet at another rendezvous point. The price doesn’t include lunch and entrance fees to the attractions on the tour.

The price is on sale now, takes at 20% off, the promotion price is USD $48 per person, group price is also avaible, contact with me for further information.

Entrance Ticket :

Temple of Heaven: RMB 35 Yuan per Person;
Forbidden City: RMB 60 Yuan per Person.

Notes: There is about 3.3 miles of walking distance in the tour. You can have lunch around Di’anmen Street (Marked on the Map), as there are restaurants big or small, or if you like, KFC and McDonald’s are near by as well.

For more details of the tour, please check the Map and download the Brochure in PDF.

Preview of the PDF Brochure:

For booking please contact with me at: waddebye at gmail.com, or feedback me here:

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As I just mentioned, the courtyard with 3 layers was for rich family, while normal family will have smaller ones, here are some examples.

A two yard house

A courtyard house with front yard and middle yard is called a 2-layer-courtyard. It is smaller in size, most of the case, there is no corridor to connect the houses, and the second gate in the middle is simple, not very much decorated, this type of house is suit to a business man, without many servants. But in today’s standard, it is still much too big in size.

An one yard house

For most of the houses in the Hutong, for average family, a courtyard would be like this way, just a square shaped yard, everything concentrated into just one yard. That is 80% of the cases you will see, if you have a chance to visit a courtyard. Even a courtyard at this size has to house at least 4 families from 1900s, as the Beijing population boomed, today sometime the number of families is even more than this, every family will build an extension just outside their room.

There were a very detailed stipulation on the size, design and building materials of the courtyard house from the Ming Dyansty, for example, the color of courtyard house was to be painted into grey color, the use of expensive timber was forbidden.

Main Room

The level of a house could be classified not only on the location or size (best location in the east or west of the Fobidden City), but also from the design of the Main Room. The main room, normally is the best room in the whole complex, peole would like to build it 3 units in the middle (pillar to pillar) and 2 ear-rooms, and sometimes in case of space limitatiom, even they would skip the plan of the ear-rooms, but the total number of units should make into odd numbers. average family is 3 (shown in the model), very rich family upto 5, prince level the number could be 7, only the Emperor had the priviledge of 9, and in some extreme cases, like the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City and the LingEn Hall at the Changling Tombs, the number is 11.

Orientation of the Buildings

Most of the courtyard are in North and South orientated, preferentially facing to the south, as the house will get more sunshine, and better in the sense of FengShui, while facing to north, some adjustments has to be done to balance. Anyway in a city most of the buildings are in north and south layouted, the city is in grid structure, and a Hutong is to connect a cluster of the entrance of courtyard houses, and by this reason, the Hutongs mostly run from west to east, as you can see from the top satellite image.

Download the PDF file of A Brief Introduction of Beijing Courtyard

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As we say the Hutong area of Beijing, that is refer to this kind of building, like it or not, this courtyard style of living is dying out day to day from Beijing, as you can see, it takes a lots of space, and just in one floor, take this one for instance, the total space is 28 X 52 = 1456 square meters, but just good for one family, an 3-4 generation extended family, 30 persons roughly. From 1900s, as the Berijing population boomed, this type of courtyard house is beginning to be rushed into different families, 5-10 or even more is very common, people have to go out for toilet or shower. It is not a suprise that local some of the local habitants are not very happy about this, and the real estate developers are just very happy to knock it down and replace it with several floor buildings.

But as more and more people, organizaions aware the importance of keeping hutongs, there are more voices about this, somewhere of the city, goverment is providing more infras-structure, such as running water, heating, gas pipe lines, and a lot of works have to done to repopulate the habitants. Keep if not, it is a problem.

The picture I show you, was for a rich family for sure, and today it is very very hard to find such a big courtyard, and if it is occupied by just one family, that must be a very very rich family, so I put a garage in the model.

The life inside a courtyard is very natural and could be quiet romatic in some way, especially in the late spring and summer time, family members have lots of chance to be together, and lots of activities in the open space.

The front yard was for servants or younger generation due to its location near to the public.

The Middle yard definately for the most important figures in the family, note the main room is bigger compared with the west and east side room, that is the Hall of Supreme Harmony of the Forbidden City in the family. So you can figure out, this type of house is in the same idea with the Emperor’s Forbidden City, and it is the same idea based on Confucius thoughts.

The back yard was for girls and lady serverts, because it is the most private part of the house.

The way of expanding a Chinese courtyard house style from a simple one to a very complicated one in a same idea, that is along with the axe line, I will show you some other types of courtyard some other day.

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Mouth of a turtle, who is carrying a stele. His name is BiXi (赑屃), the 6th son of the dragon.

A Panaroma view of the Confucius Temple and the Imperial College.

As the two places are just by neighbour, they just share the same entrance at the of Confucius Temple, it costs 20 yuan.

Confucius Temple

The Beijing Confucius Temple was built in 1302 in the Yuan Dynasty, just outside of the temple, and the two sides of the entrance, there are two steles to order every visitors to dismount from horse or off the sedan chair.

Confucius (Chinese: 孔子; Kǒng zǐ; K’ung-tzu). “Master Kong,” (551 BC – 479 BC) was a thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese culture.

His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism (法家) or Taoism (道家) during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Confucius’ thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism (儒家). It was introduced to Europe by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first to Latinise the name as “Confucius.”

His teachings may be found in the Analects of Confucius (論語), a collection of “brief aphoristic fragments”, which was compiled many years after his death. Modern historians do not believe that any specific documents can be said to have been written by Confucius, but he was thought to be many of the First, the first editor or author of sorting and passing on the literature of the ancient China, the first to extend cultural education to the common people.

Confucius believed in that human society was a systematic collective body, which could be held together only by some norms (Rites and Decorum) of conduct so that only by this way, that peace and happiness could be brought to the people. “Once you have restrained your personal desires and made your words and deeds conform to decorum, you will be universally acknowledged as bearing the virtue of humanity” (克己复礼，天下归仁者), here includes a couple points of moral cultivation, such as: Loyalty or Faithfulness(忠), Filial Piety(孝), Respect(悌), Wisdom(智), Courage(勇), Honesty(诚) and Forbearance(恕). No wonder one of his disciples said “Our master’s doctrine is simply this: faithfulness and forbearance.”

Though he was not turn out to be successful in his own political life, his idea shaped shaped Chinese and China’s politics till now.

Duke of Yansheng (衍聖公 Yan Shenggong) was created as a marquisate for the direct descendent of Confucius from the Western Han dynasty. The last Duke Yansheng, K’ung Te-ch’eng (孔德成), 77th generation of Confucius died in 2008 in Taiwan. More of Confucius family tree at Wiki in Chinese.

The complex aligned along a central axis. From south to north, noteworthy structures includes the Xianshi Gate (先师门), Dacheng Gate (大成门), Dacheng Hall (大成殿) and Chongshengci (崇圣祠, not opened to public yet).

Inside the temple there are 198 stone tablets positioned on either side of the front courtyard, and they contains more than 51,624 names of Jinshi (the advanced scholars) of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and 14 stone stele pavilions of the Ming and Qing dynasties that hold the precious historical information of ancient China.The temple also contains stone tablets recording the names of many generations of scholars who passed the Imperial Examination, a reproduction of a Western Zhou period stone drum made during the reign of Qianlong (1735-96), and 189 stone steles containing the Thirteen Confucian Classics, presented by the city of Jintan in Jiangsu Province.

The Temple has many old trees, including one Cypress tree known as the “Touch Evil Cypress” (除奸柏). Its name derives from a story that when a famously corrupt official passed by, the tree knocked off his hat.

Guozijian or Imperial College

The Guozijian (國子監), the School of the Sons of State sometimes called the Imperial Central School, Imperial Academy or Imperial College was the national central institute of learning in the capital of each dynasty, it was the highest institute of learning in China’s traditional educational system.

Formerly it was called the Taixue for noble students. The central schools of taixue were established as far back as 3 CE, when a standard nationwide school system was established and funded during the reign of Emperor Ping of Han.When disbanded during the 1898 reform of the Qing Dynasty, the Guozijian was replaced by the Imperial Capital Academy.

Guozijian were located in the national capital of each dynasty — Chang’an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, and Nanjing. In Ming there were two capitals; thus there were two Guozijian, one in Nanjing and one in Beijing. The Guozijian, located in the Guozijian Street (or Chengxian street) in the Dongcheng District, Beijing, the imperial college during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (although most of its buildings were built during the Ming Dynasty) was the last Guozijian in China and is an important national cultural asset.

“辟雍”：“辟，璧也，像璧圆以法天也。雍者，雍之以水，像教化流行也。”《白虎通》

Emperor Tongzhi’s Imperial edict on the final result of the Imperial Examination in the year of 1868, 270 past it in the first class.

View TouchBeijing in a larger map

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Situated in Jingsheng Town, 12 km east of Lingshi County, the Wang’s Grand Courtyard is only 35 km from Pingyao.

This luxurious residence covers about 45,000 square meters with 123 compounds and 1,118 rooms and took about half a century (1762-1811) to build.

View Larger Map

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