Dynasties and Republics in Beijing

Several dynasties and imperial reigns figure prominently in the city's history. The bone structure of Beijing is predominantly Ming, laid over a Yuan blueprint; most of the vital architectural organs are Qing; the city's complexion today, warts and beauty marks included, is Republican and People's Republican. From about 1000BCE, a series of small states made the area around Beijing their capital. While the emperors of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties built their capitals in central and eastern China, Beijing was under barbarian rule or served as a northern outpost of the empire. In the 10th century, the Khitans, a non-Chinese horde, founded the Liao dynasty and established their capital Yanjing here; in the 12th century, the Jurchen Tartars conquered the Liao and named their Jin dynasty capital Zhongdu (Central Metropolis). The Mongols sacked Zhongdu in 1215, and in 1260 Kublai Khan established the capital of the Yuan dynasty on the same site, calling it Khanbaligh, or Dadu (big metropolis). This was the Cambaluc Marco Polo so lavishly described I his famous travel book. Oddly enough no mention of the Venetian or anyone like him appears in contemporary Chinese records. In 1368, the Ming dynasty, a Chinese house, succeeded the Yuan and built its capital at Najing in south China. And in 1403, Zhu Di, one of the sons of the founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, unseated his nephew, the second Ming emperor, from the throne. Ruling as the Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di then began to build his greatly expanded capital Beijing – so named for the first time – on the ruins of Khanbaligh. Yongle's masterpiece, completed in 1420, provided the city with the stately geometric pattern that remains little changed today and in that year the city was formally named Jingshi, or Capital City, a designation that survived until 1912. The Qing, or Manchu dynasty (1644 – 1911), embellished their Ming inheritance by building grand gardens in the western suburbs and erecting a number of splendid mansions, Lamaist temples and dagobas throughout the capital. No expense was spared in the elaboration of the imperial properties, which were off limits to all but member of the imperial clan, officials attending audiences and the thousands of maidens and eunuchs who served the Son of Heaven and his concubines high and low. The most creative Manchus were Kangxi, Qianlong and the notorious, kitschy Empress Dowager Cixi. During the Republican period (1911-49) scattered attempts were made to create a style of modern Chinese architecture that combined Chinese essence with Western permanence. Examples of this can be seen at Tsinghua (Qinghua) and Peking (Beijing) universities. The Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, moved the capital to Nanjing in 1928, and when the war with Japan broke out in 1937, Peking, then renamed Peiping, entered into a twilight period of decline. Dynasties and Republics in Beijing is a post from: Traveling China from Traveling China http://www.chinaya.org

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