Tian’anmen Square

Beijing requires patience and planning to do it justice. Wandering aimlessly around without a destinationin nfind will rarely be rewarding. The place to start is Tian’anmen Square, geographical and psychic centre of the city, where a cluster of important sights can be seen in a day, although the Forbidden City, at the north end of the square, deserves a day, or even several, all to itself.

The Qianmen area, a noisy market area south of here, is a bit more alive, and ends in style with one oF the city’s highlights, the Temple of Heaven. The giant freeway, Chang’an Jie, zooming east-west across the city, is a corridor of highrises with a few museums, shopping centres and even the odd ancient site worth tracking down. Scattered in the north of the city, a section with a more traditional and human feel, are some magnificent parks, palaces and temples, some of them in the huron, s. An expedition to the outskirts is amply rewarded by the Summer Palace, the best place to get away from it all.

Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City

The first stop for any visitor to Beijing is Tian’anmen Square. Physically at the city’s centre, symbolically it’s the heart of China, and the events it has witnessed have shaped the history of the People’s Republic from its inception.Chairman Mao lies here in his marble mausoleum, with the Great Hall of the People to the west and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution ro the east. Monumental architecture that’s nmch, nmch older lies just to the north - the Forbidden City of the Emperors, now open to all.

Tian’anmen Square

Covering more than forty hectares, Tian’anmen Square must rank as the greatest public square on earth. It’s a modern creation, m a city that traditionally had no squares, as classical Chinese town planning did not allow for places where crowds could gather. Tian’anmen only came into being when imperial offices were cleared from either side of the great processional way that led south from the palace to Qianmen and the Temple of Heaven. Tile ancienl north-south axis of the city was thus destroyed and the broad east-west thoroughfare, Chang’an Jie, that now carries millions of cyclists every day past thc front of the Forbidden City, had the walls across its path removed.In the words of one of the architects: “The very map of Belling was a reflection of tile feudal society, it was meant to demonstrate the power of the emperor. We had to transform it, we had to make Beijing into the capital of socialist China.”As the square is lined with railings (for crowd control) you can enter or leave only via the exits at either end or in the middle.

Dissent in Tian’an men square

It may have been designed as a space for mass declarations of loyalty, but in the twentieth century Tian’anmen Square was as often a venue for expressions of pop- ular dissent: against foreign oppression at the beginning of the century, ana, more recently, against its domestic form. The first mass protests occurred here on May 4. 1919, when three thousand students gathered in the square to protest at the dis- astrous terms of the Versailles Treaty, in which the victorious allies granted several former German concessions in China to the Japanese. The Chinese who had sent more than a hundred thousand labourers to work in the supply lines of the British and French forces, were ouwaged. The protests of May 4, ana the movement they spawned, marked the beginning of the painful struggle of Chinese modernization. In the turbulent years of tile 1920s the inhabitants of Beijing again occupied the square, first in 1925. to protest over the massacre in Shanghai of Chinese demon- strators by British trooos, then in 1926 wnen the public orotested after the weak government’s capitulation to the Japanese. Demonstrators marched on the govern- ment offices and were firea on by soldiers.

In 1976: after the death of popular premier Zhou Enlai, thousands of mourners assembled in Tian’anmen without government approval to voice their dissatisfac- tion with their leaders, and again in 1978 and 1979 groups assembled here to dis- cuss new ideas of democracy and artistic freedom, tr ggered by writings posted along Democracy Wall on the edge of the Forbidden City. In 1986 and 1987, people gathered again to show solidarity for the students and others protesting at the Party’s refusal to allow elections.

But it was in 1989 that Tian’anmen Square became the venue for a massive expression of popular dissent when, from April to June, nearly a million protesters demonstrated against the slowness of reform, lack of freedom and widespread cor- ruption. A giant statue, the Goddess of Liberty, a woman carrying a torch in both hands, was created by art students and set up facing Mac’s portrait on Tian’anmen. The government infuriated at being humiliated by their own people declared mar- tial law on May 20, and on June 4 the military moved in. The killing was ind scr m - nate; tanks ran over tents and machine guns strafed the avenues No one knows how many died in the massacre - probably thousands. Hundreds were arrested afterwards and many are still in jail. The problems the protesters complained of have not been dealt with. and many, such as corruption, have worsened.

streets either side are one way; the street on the east side is for traffic going south, thc west side for northbound traffic. Tile square has been the stage for many of tide epoch-making mass move- ments of modern: the first calls for democracy and liberalism by the students of May 4, 19/9, demonstrating against the Treaty of’Versailles; the anti-Japanese protests of’ December 9, 1935, demanding a war of national resistance; the eight stage-managed rallies that kicked off the Cultural Revolution in 1966, when up to a million Red Guards at a time were ferried to Beijing to be exlnorted into action and then slnipped out again to shake up the provinces; and the bru- tally repressed Qing Ming demonstration of April ‘1976, in memory of Zhou Enlai, that first pointed towards the eventual fall of the Gang of Four. But the square is bcst-known to contemporary visitors for the horrific events of 1989, when students and workers peacefully protesting for democracy were savagely suppressed (see box on p.27).The square was repaved in tilne for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1999, and so was con- veniently ck)sed during the tenth anniversary of the uprising. Tian’anmen Square unquestionably makes a strong impression, but this con- crete plain dotted with worthy statuary and bounded by monumental build- ings can seem inhuman. Together with the bloody associations it has for many visitors it often leaves people cold, especially Westerners unused to such mag- isterial representations of political power. For many Chinese tourists, though, the square is a place of pilgrimage. Crowds flock to see the corpse of Chairman Mao; others quietly bow their heads before the Monument to the Heroes, a thirty-metre-high obelisk conrmemorating the victims of the revo- lutionary struggle. Among the visitors is the occasional monk, and the sight of robed Buddhists standing in front of the uniformed sentries outside the Great Hall of the People makes a striking juxtaposition. Others come just to hang ont or to fly kites, but the atmosphere is not relaxed and a fine for spitting and littering is rigorously enforced. At dawn, the flag at the northern end of the square is raised in a military ceremony and lowered again at dusk, which is when most people come to see it, though foreigners complain that the regi- mentatJon of the crowds is oppressive and reminds them of school. After dark, the square is at its most appealing and, with its sternness softened by mellow lighting, it becomes the haunt of strolling families and lovers.

The buildings

At the centre of the centre of China lies a corpse that nobody dare remove. Tiziano Terzani, Behind the Forbidden Door The square was not enlarged to its present size until ten years after the Conmmnist takeover, when the Party ordained the building of ten new Soviet- style official buildings in ten months. These included the three that donfinate Tian’anmen to either side - the Great Hall of the People, and the musemns of Chinese History and Revolution. In 1976 a fourth was added in the centre - Mao’s mausoleum, constructed (again in ten months) by an estimated million volunteers. It’s an ugly building, looking like a school gym, which contravenes the principles offing shui (geomancy), presumably deliberately, by interrupting the line fi’om the palace to Qianmen and by facing north. Mao himself want- ed to be cremated, and the erection of the mausoleum was apparently no more than a power ploy by his would-be successor, Hua Guofeng. In 1980 Deng Xiaoping said it should never have been built, although he wouldn’t go so far as to pull it down.

The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall is open every morning fi-om 8.30am to 11.30am, and also from 2pm to 4pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays fi’om October to April. After depositing your bag at the offices on the eastern side, you join the orderly queue of’Chinese on the northern side. This advances sur- prisingly quickly and takes just a couple of minutes to file through the cham- bers in silence - tile atmosphere is reverent, and any joking around will cause deep offence. Mao’s corpse is draped with a red flag within a crystal coffin. Meclnanically raised f?om a fi-eezer every morning, it looks unreal, like wax or plastic. It is said to have been enrbalmed with the aid of Vietnamese technicians who had recently worked on Ho Chi Minh (rumour has it that Mao’s left ear fell offand had to be stitched back on). Once through the marble halls, you’re herded past a splendidly wide array of tacky Chairman Mao souvenirs. North of here, Tian’anmen itself, the Gate of Heavenly Peace (daily 8am-5pm;, students 10), is the main entrance to the Forbidden City. An image familiar across the world, Tian’anln.en occupies an exalted place in Chinese iconography, appearing on banknotes, coins, stamps and indeed virtu- ally any piece of state paper you can imagine. As such it’s a prime object of pil- grimage, with malty visitors milling around waiting to be photographed in front of the large portrait of Mao (one of the very few still on public display), which hangs over the central passageway. From the reviewing platform above, Mao delivered the liberation speech on October 1, 1949, declaring that “the Chinese people have now stood up”. For an exorbitant fee you can climb up to this plat- form yourself where security is tight - all visitors have to leave their bags, are frisked and have to go through a metal detector before they can ascend, inside, the fact that most people cluster around the souvenir stall selling official certifi- cates of their trip reflects the fact that there’s not much to look at. Taking up almost half the west side of the square is the Great Hall of the People. This is the venue of the National People’s Congress and hundreds of black Audis with tinted windows are parked outside when it’s in session. When it isn’t, it’s open to the public (daily 8.30-3pm;~20).What you are shown is a selection, usually 6, of the 29 reception rooms - each named after a province and filled with appropriate regional artefacts. Actually, it’s rather boring - the place just looks like a standard Chinese three-star hotel, but built for giants. On the other side of the square, there are two museums (Tues-Sun 8.30am-4.30pm; ~3) housed in the same building: the Museum of Chinese History, covering everything up to 1919, and the Museum of the Revolution. Both are full of propaganda; the latter often closing for refits (for twelve years during the Cultural Revolution, for example) as its curators are faced with the Kafkaesque dilen-nna of constandy having to remvent history according to the latest Party line. At the time of writing, however, the vast building was open, displaying some rather dull exhibits of documents and pho- tos fi:om the twentieth century (these ternfinate at 1949, post-liberation histo- ry being just too contentious). Those from the nineteenth century, including such oddments as a contract signed by a peasant selling his wife and “Weapons used by the British against the Tibetan People” are much more interesting. There are copious English captions, but you might wish there weren’t, as they are full of terms like “foreign aggression” and “colonial oppressors”; the Chinese is harsher. The Museum of Chinese History is more interesting, though it’s intended for the education of the Chinese masses rather than for- eign tourists, so there are few English captions. It was being renovated at the time of writing with luck they’ll do something about the terrible lighting and mustiness - but temporary exhibitions, of paintings and porcelain for example, in the side halls were open and worthwhile .

For an overview of the square, head to the south gate, Zhenyangmen (daily 9am-4pm;), similar to Tian’amnen and 40m high, which gives a good idea 0fhow much more impressive the square would look ifMao’s mausoleum had- n’t been stuck in the middle ofit. A diorama inside shows what the area looked like in 1750.

Too see more Tourist Attractions in Beijing, Please click here.

Too see more information about China, Please click here.