A gateway to the history of Beijing – Zhengyangmen Museum
- By Brian Salter
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E-mail China Today, February 14, 2017
I must have been there dozens of times; yet it was only recently that I discovered that Zhengyangmen ( “Gate of the Zenith Sun” ) has a museum inside showing a fascinating perspective of old Beijing, together with a good collection of photographs, some dating back a century or more.
Not familiar with Zhengyangmen? Maybe you know it by its more familiar name of Qianmen (meaning front gate), which is the gate just south of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square; though strictly speaking, “Qianmen” consists of the gate – Zhengyangmen – together with its Arrow Tower, or Jianlou.
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Zhengyangmen early on a Sunday morning, before the crowds gather. |
The main entrance of the gatehouse is aligned with Beijing’s major north-south axis, which includes Yongdingmen Gate to the south, the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong and the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, Tiananmen Gate, the Meridian Gate, the imperial throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, the city’s Drum Tower and Bell Tower, and the entrance to Olympic Park out near the Fourth Ring Road.
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The gatehouse and archery tower were once connected by side walls. |
Zhengyangmen was the gate through which the emperor passed whenever he went to the Temple of Heaven, in the outer city, to make offerings. In fact the gateway would only be opened when emperors were passing through to give offerings or to carry out imperial inspections. Funeral vehicles were never allowed to pass through Zhengyangmen during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911).
Zhengyangmen was first built in 1419 and once consisted of the gatehouse proper and an archery tower, which were connected by side walls with side gates, to form a large barbican.
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Before the 1914 rebuilding the barbican incorporated the two towers. |
During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the gate sustained considerable damage but it was extensively reconstructed in 1914, only to have the Barbican’s side gates torn down the next year.
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The People’s Liberation Army marched into the city through the gate in a grand ceremony after Beijing was peacefully liberated in 1949. |
In 1949, the Zhengyangmen gatehouse was occupied by the Beijing garrison of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), who only vacated it in 1980; but now it has rightly become a popular tourist attraction.
Unfortunately, “progress” waits for no man, and Zhengyangmen was one of only a handful of gates that survived the demolition of city walls in the late 1960s and ’70s during the building of the Beijing Subway. (Line 2’s Qianmen Station is actually located between the two structures inside the space once surrounded by the barbican).
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