Contents:
The city was centered on the Drum Tower slightly to the north of modern Beijing and stretched from the present-day Chang'an Avenue to the northern part of Line 10 subway. Remnants of the Yuan rammed earth wall still stand and are known as the Tucheng.
In , soon after declaring the new Hongwu era of the Ming dynasty , the rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang sent an army to Khanbaliq and conquered it. The early death of Zhu Yuanzhang 's heir led to a succession struggle on his death, one that ended with the victory of Zhu Di and the declaration of the new Yongle era. Since his harsh treatment of the Ming capital Yingtian modern Nanjing alienated many there, he established his fief as a new co-capital.
The city of Beiping became Beijing northern capital or Shuntian [51] in On 28 October , the city was officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty in the same year that the Forbidden City was completed. A order by Zhu Di's son, the Hongxi Emperor , to return the primary capital to Nanjing was never carried out: he died, probably of a heart attack, the next month. He was buried, like almost every Ming emperor to follow him, in an elaborate necropolis to Beijing's north.
By the 15th century, Beijing had essentially taken its current shape. The Ming city wall continued to serve until modern times, when it was pulled down and the 2nd Ring Road was built in its place. The capture of Beijing by Li Zicheng 's peasant army in ended the dynasty, but he and his Shun court abandoned the city without a fight when the Manchu army of Prince Dorgon arrived 40 days later. Dorgon established the Qing dynasty as a direct successor of the Ming delegitimising Li Zicheng and his followers [57] and Beijing became China's sole capital. Facilities for Manchu worship were introduced, but the Qing also continued the traditional state rituals.
Signage was bilingual or Chinese. Northwest of the city, Qing emperors built several large palatial gardens including the Old Summer Palace and the Summer Palace. Under the Convention of Peking ending that war, Western powers for the first time secured the right to establish permanent diplomatic presences within the city.
From 14 to 15 August the Battle of Peking was fought. This battle was part of the Boxer Rebellion. The attempt by the Boxers to eradicate this presence, as well as Chinese Christian converts, led to Beijing's reoccupation by eight foreign powers. Also required was the execution or exile of government supporters of the Boxers and the destruction of Chinese forts and other defenses in much of northern China.
Ten days after the treaty was signed the foreign armies left Peking, although legation guards would remain there until World War II. With the treaty signed the Empress Dowager Cixi returned to Peking from her "tour of inspection" on 7 January and the rule of the Qing dynasty over China was restored, albeit much weakened by the defeat it had suffered in the Boxer Rebellion and by the indemnity and stipulations of the peace treaty.
The fomenters of the Xinhai Revolution of sought to replace Qing rule with a republic and leaders like Sun Yat-sen originally intended to return the capital to Nanjing. After the Qing general Yuan Shikai forced the abdication of the last Qing emperor and ensured the success of the revolution, the revolutionaries accepted him as president of the new Republic of China.
Yuan maintained his capital at Beijing and quickly consolidated power, declaring himself emperor in His death less than a year later [62] left China under the control of the warlords commanding the regional armies. Following the success of the Kuomintang 's Northern Expedition , the capital was formally moved to Nanjing in On 28 June the same year, Beijing's name was returned to Beiping written at the time as "Peiping".
During the war, [15] Beijing fell to Japan on 29 July [64] and was made the seat of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China , a puppet state that ruled the ethnic-Chinese portions of Japanese-occupied northern China. In the final phases of the Chinese Civil War , the People's Liberation Army seized control of the city peacefully on 31 January in the course of the Pingjin Campaign. He restored the name of the city, as the new capital, to Beijing, [67] a decision that had been reached by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference just a few days earlier.
In the s, the city began to expand beyond the old walled city and its surrounding neighborhoods, with heavy industries in the west and residential neighborhoods in the north. Many areas of the Beijing city wall were torn down in the s to make way for the construction of the Beijing Subway and the 2nd Ring Road. During the Cultural Revolution from to , the Red Guard movement began in Beijing and the city's government fell victim to one of the first purges. By the autumn of , all city schools were shut down and over a million Red Guards from across the country gathered in Beijing for eight rallies in Tian'anmen Square with Mao.
In December , the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress in Beijing under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping reversed the verdicts against victims of the Cultural Revolution and instituted the "policy of reform and opening up. Since the early s, the urban area of Beijing has expanded greatly with the completion of the 2nd Ring Road in and the subsequent addition of the 3rd , 4th , 5th and 6th Ring Roads. Beijing is situated at the northern tip of the roughly triangular North China Plain , which opens to the south and east of the city.
Mountains to the north, northwest and west shield the city and northern China's agricultural heartland from the encroaching desert steppes. The northwestern part of the municipality, especially Yanqing County and Huairou District , are dominated by the Jundu Mountains , while the western part is framed by Xishan or the Western Hills. The Great Wall of China across the northern part of Beijing Municipality was built on the rugged topography to defend against nomadic incursions from the steppes.
Major rivers flowing through the municipality, including the Chaobai , Yongding , Juma , are all tributaries in the Hai River system, and flow in a southeasterly direction. The Miyun Reservoir, on the upper reaches of the Chaobai River, is the largest reservoir within the municipality. Beijing is also the northern terminus of the Grand Canal to Hangzhou , which was built over 1, years ago as a transportation route, and the South—North Water Transfer Project , constructed in the past decade to bring water from the Yangtze River basin.
The city spreads out in concentric ring roads. The Second Ring Road traces the old city walls and the Sixth Ring Road connects satellite towns in the surrounding suburbs. Tian'anmen and Tian'anmen Square are at the center of Beijing, directly to the south of the Forbidden City , the former residence of the emperors of China. To the west of Tian'anmen is Zhongnanhai , the residence of China's current leaders. Chang'an Avenue , which cuts between Tiananmen and the Square, forms the city's main east—west axis.
Three styles of architecture are predominant in urban Beijing. First, there is the traditional architecture of imperial China, perhaps best exemplified by the massive Tian'anmen Gate of Heavenly Peace , which remains the People's Republic of China's trademark edifice, the Forbidden City , the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the Temple of Heaven. Next, there is what is sometimes referred to as the "Sino-Sov" style, with structures tending to be boxy and sometimes poorly constructed, which were built between the s and the s.
In the early 21st century, Beijing has witnessed tremendous growth of new building constructions, exhibiting various modern styles from international designers, most pronounced in the CBD region. A mixture of both s design and neofuturistic style of architecture can be seen at the Art Zone , which mixes the old with the new. Both buildings are in the Beijing CBD. Beijing is famous for its siheyuans , a type of residence where a common courtyard is shared by the surrounding buildings.
These courtyards are usually connected by alleys called hutongs. The hutongs are generally straight and run east to west so that doorways face north and south for good Feng Shui. They vary in width; some are so narrow only a few pedestrians can pass through at a time. Once ubiquitous in Beijing, siheyuans and hutongs are rapidly disappearing, [78] as entire city blocks of hutongs are replaced by high-rise buildings.
Many complain, however, that the traditional sense of community and street life of the hutongs cannot be replaced, [80] and these properties are often government owned. Autumn, similar to spring, is a season of transition and minimal precipitation. Beijing has a long history of environmental problems.
For example, surface albedo , wind speed and humidity near the surface were decreased, whereas ground and near-surface air temperatures , vertical air dilution and ozone levels were increased. In heavy smog struck Beijing and most parts of northern China, impacting a total of million people. After this "pollution shock" air pollution became an important economic and social concern in China.
Joint research between American and Chinese researchers in concluded that much of the city's pollution comes from surrounding cities and provinces. In , the city burned The first one Gaojing Thermal Power Plant was shut down in The last one Huaneng Thermal Power Plant would be shut in The government sometimes uses cloud-seeding measures to increase the likelihood of rain showers in the region to clear the air prior to large events, such as prior to the 60th anniversary parade in [] as well as to combat drought conditions in the area.
More recently, however, the government has increased its usage of such measures as closing factories temporarily and implementing greater restrictions for cars on the road, as in the case of " APEC blue " and "parade blue," short periods during and immediately preceding the APEC China and the China Victory Day Parade , respectively. Beijing air quality is often poor, especially in winter. It was widely reported, originally through a Twitter account, that the category was "crazy bad". This was later changed to "beyond index". On 8 and 9 December Beijing had its first smog alert which shut down a majority of the industry and other commercial businesses in the city.
According to Beijing's environmental protection bureau's announcement in November , starting from highly polluting old cars will be banned from being driven whenever Smog "red alerts" are issued in the city or neighboring regions. Due to Beijing's high level of air pollution, there are various readings by different sources on the subject.
The smog is causing harm and danger to the population. The air pollution does directly result in significant impact on the mobility rate of cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease in Beijing.
Dust from the erosion of deserts in northern and northwestern China results in seasonal dust storms that plague the city; the Beijing Weather Modification Office sometimes artificially induces rainfall to fight such storms and mitigate their effects.