Read complete books and articles on: Beijing (Peking) History

Beijing - bā-jĭng or Pekingpē-kĭng, pā–, city (1994 est. urban pop. 6,093,300; 1994 est. total pop. 7,240,700), capital of the People's Republic of China. It is in central Hebei prov., but constitutes an independent unit (6,564 sq mi/17,000 sq km) administered directly by the national government. The second largest city in China (after Shanghai), Beijing

Economy and Transportation

Since the Communist victory in 1949, Beijing has become a great industrial area, the heart of a vast complex of textile mills, iron- and steelworks, railroad repair shops, machine shops, chemical plants, and factories manufacturing heavy machinery, electronic equipment, locomotives, plastics, synthetic fibers, and rolling stock. With the construction in the 1970s of a pipeline that links the city with the Daqing oil fields, Beijing has developed a sizable petrochemical industry. Service industries, mostly administered by the government, have also grown. New industrial development declined in the 1970s and 80s, mainly due to concerns over further pollution. The city is a rail hub, receiving lines from all sections of the country and linked directly with Vietnam and, through both Mongolia and Manchuria, with Russia. Its airport, greatly expanded in 1999, links it to all major Chinese cities and numerous foreign countries.

Cultural and Educational Institutions

The city has an opera, a ballet, and the impressive national library. It is the seat of many learned societies, research organizations, and academies of fine arts, drama, dance, and music. The more than 25 institutions of higher learning include Beijing Univ., the People's Univ. of China, China Univ. of Science and Technology, Qinghua Univ., the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages, two medical colleges, and many technical and scientific schools. The Beijing zoo is famous for its collection of pandas. The Workers' Stadium is the scene of the Pan-Chinese games, held every four years.

Points of Interest

Beijing in the main consists of two formerly walled districts, the Outer or Chinese City and the Inner or Tatar City. The 25 mi (40 km) of ramparts and monumental gates that once surrounded the cities have been razed and replaced by wide avenues to aid the traffic flow. Within the Tatar City is the Forbidden City (formerly the emperor's residence), the Imperial City (where his retinue was housed), and the Legation Quarter. The Imperial City is now the seat of the government.

On the southern edge of the Tatar City is Tiananmen Square, which contains the monument to the heroes of the revolution, the Great Hall of the People, and the museum of history and revolution. Celebrations held in the square include May Day and the founding date (Oct. 1) of the People's Republic. In June, 1989, the Square was the site of massive protests for democratic reform, which were violently suppressed by the military, resulting in thousands of deaths and many injuries.

Beijing is known for its artificial lakes and for its parks and temples. It contains many of the greatest examples of architecture of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties as well as remains from earlier times. The Temple of Heaven (15th cent.) is set in a large park and has a massive altar of white marble before which the emperors prayed at the summer solstice. In the temple of Confucius, built by Kublai Khan, are guarded incised boulders that date from the Chou dynasty. An ancient astronomical observatory, once used by Catholic missionaries, still functions. The Forbidden City, now a vast museum, contains the imperial palaces (two groups of three each) and smaller palaces, all replete with art treasures. Just outside Beijing, rivaling the beauties within, is the imperial summer palace with its lovely parks.

In addition to the many tourist attractions in the city, the Great Wall and the gigantic Ming tombs are easily accessible. At nearby Zhoukoudian were discovered several fossil bones of Sinanthropus pekinensis, or Peking man, an early example of prehistoric man.

History

Since 723 b.c. several cities, bearing various names, have existed at this site. The nucleus of the present city was Kublai Khan's capital, Cambuluc (constructed 1260–90). Under the name Beijing [Chin.,=northern capital] the city was the capital of China from 1421 until 1911. The gateway to Mongolia and Manchuria, it was often the prize of contending armies.

In 1860, Great Britain and France captured it after the battle of Baliqiao and forced the Chinese government to concede the Legation Quarter for foreign settlements. This cession was among the factors responsible for the Boxer Uprising (1900), in which the foreign colony was besieged until relieved by a combined expeditionary force of American, Japanese, and European troops. The foreign powers exacted a treaty that provided for the permanent garrisoning of foreign troops in Beijing.

The city changed hands repeatedly during the civil wars that followed the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911–12. From 1912 to 1927, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hankou alternated as centers of government. In 1928, when the seat of government was transferred to Nanjing [Chin.,=southern capital], the name Beiping (Pei-p'ing) [Chin.,=northern peace] was adopted. Japan occupied the city after the famous Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937 (see Sino-Japanese War, Second). The Japanese made the city the capital of a puppet state (Dec., 1937).

With the end of World War II and the abolition of the last foreign concessions (1946), the city was entirely restored to Chinese sovereignty. In Jan., 1949, it fell to the Communists, who later that year designated it the capital of the newly founded People's Republic of China and restored the name Beijing. Since 1949, Beijing has spread well beyond its two core cities, and hundreds of new buildings, hotels, and cultural centers now dot the city and its suburbs, and modern construction has increased since the 1990s. A subway was completed in 1969 and added to in the 1980s. Since the late 1970s the government has attempted to restore and preserve many of the country's important artistic and architectural works, many of which are in Beijing.

Bibliography

See R. MacFarquhar, The Forbidden City (1972); O. Cail, Peking (rev. ed. 1973); Zhou Shachen, Beijing—Old and New (1984); P. Fleming, The Siege at Peking (1986).

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11 of the Best Books and Articles on: Beijing (Peking) History

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories » Read Now
by Madeleine Yue Dong. 380 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Old Beijing has become a subject of growing fascination in contemporary China since the 1980s. While physical remnants from the past are being bulldozed every day to make space for glass-walled skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings, nostalgia for the old city is booming. Madeleine Yue Dong...
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Old Beijing has become a subject of growing fascination in contemporary China since the 1980s. While physical remnants from the past are being bulldozed every day to make space for glass-walled skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings, nostalgia for the old city is booming. Madeleine Yue Dong offers the first comprehensive history of Republican Beijing, examining how the capital acquired its identity as a consummately "traditional" Chinese city.
For residents of Beijing, the heart of the city lay in the labor-intensive activities of "recycling," a primary mode of material and cultural production and circulation that came to characterize Republican Beijing. An omnipresent process of recycling and re-use unified Beijing's fragmented and stratified markets into one circulation system. These material practices evoked an air of nostalgia that permeated daily life. Paradoxically, the "old Beijing" toward which this nostalgia was directed was not the imperial capital of the past, but the living Republican city. Such nostalgia toward the present, the author argues, was not an empty sentiment, but an essential characteristic of Chinese modernity.
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2.

Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing, 1420-1911 » Read Now
by Jianfei Zhu. 282 pgs.

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Presents a study of social spaces of the capital of Ming Qing China (1420-1911). Focusing on early Ming and early and middle Qing, it explores architectural, urban and geographical space of Beijing.
3.

Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China » Read Now
by Yutang Lin. 232 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
4.

The Years That Were Fat: Peking: 1933-1940 » Read Now
by George N. Kates. 292 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
5.

The Man Who Died Twice: The Life and Adventures of Morrison of Peking » Read Now
by Peter Thompson, Robert Macklin. 380 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This biography tells the story of George Morrison, an Australian journalist who reported on China for the London Times during the era of the Boxer Rebellion. This is both the personal story of an intrepid journalist who became a national hero and the broader story of the emergence of China onto the...
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This biography tells the story of George Morrison, an Australian journalist who reported on China for the London Times during the era of the Boxer Rebellion. This is both the personal story of an intrepid journalist who became a national hero and the broader story of the emergence of China onto the world stage. Morrison's involvement in the behind-the-scenes power struggles and his role as advisor to the fledgling government are covered in detail.
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6.

The Guilds of Peking » Read Now
by John Stewart Burgess (1928). 270 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...background already described. The history of Peking extends back for more than...thousand rickshaw coolies in Peking 1924-1925, and the history of building material...
7.

Changing Beijing, in The Geographical Review » Read Now
by Piper Gaubatz. 18 pgs.

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...Changing Beijing. by Piper Gaubatz Since...socialist ideology and state power imposed on Beijing during the Mao era has been transformed...despite rapid change that is...
8.

Two Years in the Forbidden City (1917) » Read Now
by Princess Der Ling. 383 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...most of my life had been spent out of Peking, -- in fact, out of China. Another reason...afterwards told me she had been reading a history of the different countries, which...
9.

The Forbidden City in Beijing: China's Hidden Heart, in The Architectural Review » Read Now
by Jim Antoniou. 6 pgs.

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...THE FORBIDDEN CITY IN BEIJING: CHINAS HIDDEN HEART. by JIM...encrusted in the centre of Chinas capital Beijing, displays an extraordinarily harmonious...human scale...
10.

The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 » Read Now
by Diana Preston. 436 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

In the final years of the 19th century, China was in grave danger of becoming a colony of the West. While various powers bickered over how to slice the pie, their very presence in China, like their new technologies and Christian missions, undermined the people's traditional ways. A strange...
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In the final years of the 19th century, China was in grave danger of becoming a colony of the West. While various powers bickered over how to slice the pie, their very presence in China, like their new technologies and Christian missions, undermined the people's traditional ways. A strange, reactionary movement—mystical, nationalistic and virulently anti Christian—began to spread like wildfire among the Chinese peasants. The contemptuous foreigners, snickering at their martial-arts routines, nicknamed them "The Boxers." Few could imagine that the Boxers would receive backing from China's Empress Dowager, herself eager for a showdown with the foreigners, and would soon terrorize them and the world. The Boxer Rebellion is a panoramic chronicle of the uprising and ensuing two-month siege of the 11 foreign ministries in Peking (now Beijing), and of the foreign community in Tientsin (now Tianjin) during the summer of 1900—an event whose repercussions have echoed throughout the intervening century. It left tens of thousands of Chinese dead, precipitated the end of dynastic rule in China, and has tainted China’s relationship with the wider world to this day. It is also a richly human story. Relying on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of the defenders, and on her own extensive research from both Chinese and western perspectives, Diana Preston portrays the dramatic human experience of the Boxer rising: in the diplomatic district of Peking, cut off from the outside world during the desperate weeks of the siege; behind the high, byzantine walls of Peking’s Inner City, where decisions were made that forever changed Chinese society; among the allied relief forces struggling to lift the siege; in the aftermath when the great city was savagely looted and despoiled. Here is young Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer, patrolling the barricades of Tientsin at night on bicycle; British admiral Sir Edward Seymour, whose aborted rescue mission became itself a survival story; Polly Condit Smith, the observant young Boston guest of American first secretary Herbert Squiers, who was besieged in Peking; the French Bishop Auguste Favier, whose successful defense of Peking's Peitang Cathedral was nothing short of a Christian miracle; and Tzu Hsi, the fabled Empress Dowager who had held power for nearly forty years, fighting to preserve her own throne and a dynastic way of life that had lasted for centuries. Placing readers squarely in the middle of events as they unfolded, Diana Preston proves herself a master of narrative history, a writer who brings the past alive with style and freshness. Offering a view through the lens of the rapid changes in society and culture at the time, The Boxer Rebellion broadens our knowledge of the 20th century.
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11.

Beijing Spring, 1989: Confrontation and Conflict: The Basic Documents » Read Now
by Michel Oksenberg, Lawrence R. Sullivan, Marc Lambert, H. R. Lan, Jerry Dennerline. 448 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library