Architecture of Beijing

Abstract

Beijing (also known as Peking in older romanization of Mandarin Chinese) is the current capital city of the People’s Republic of China. It is one of the six great ancient capitals of China, the other five being Xi’an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. Given the long Chinese history and compared to other ancient capitals, Beijing is relatively young. It served as the capitals for the last three imperial dynasties, the Yuan (1279–1368), the Ming (1368–1644), and the Qing (1644–1911), as well as the Beiyang period of the Republic China (1912–1927). During the 10th to 13th centuries when the north and south were split, it served as capital for the northern regimes of the Liao and Jin empires, both of which were founded by non-Chinese-speaking peoples, the Khitan and the Jurchen respectively. Before the unification of China by the First Emperor of Qin in 221 bce, the capital for the Yan state of the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 bce) and the Warring States period (476–221 bce) was also located in the Beijing area. During the period from the Qin dynasty to the Five dynasties (3rd century bce to 10th century ce), the area hosted the seats for prefecture-level local government under various names. Beijing means the Northern Capital. The current Beijing city was developed from the Ming-Qing imperial capital of the same name. The city was known by many different names in different historical periods. According to the Nine Provinces (Jiuzhou) division of the Xia and Shang dynasties (21st–11th centuries bce) in the Book of Documents (Shangshu), one of the Confucian classics that contains some of the oldest historical records of ancient China, Beijing belonged to the province of Youzhou. During the Zhou periods (11th–3rd centuries bce), it was known as Ji or Yandu, the Capital of the Yan State. As a prefecture-level city, it was known as Ji in the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce), Guangyang in the Han dynasty (202 bce–220 ce), and Yan during the Western Jin and the Age of Disunion period (220–589). The area became the Zhuo county during the Sui dynasty (581–618) and the You prefecture during the Tang dynasty (618–906). It was called Nanjing, or the Southern Capital, in the Liao dynasty (907–1125), and Zhongdu, or the Middle Capital, in the Jin dynasty (1115–1234). Under the Mongol rule of the Yuan dynasty, the city, called Dadu, the Great Capital, became the capital of an enormous empire unifying the north and the south for the first time. During the early years of the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1402 and during the late years of the Republic period from 1928 to 1949 when the city was not the national capital, it was called Beiping. Like the name, the specific location of the city also kept changing in history. The current location of the central city was anchored during the Yuan dynasty with a minor shift to the south during the Ming reconstruction. The history of architecture in Beijing can be traced back to the prehistoric time. Archaeologists have discovered tombs and remains of dwellings from about ten thousand years ago. Extant buildings in the Beijing area, however, are no earlier than the Liao dynasty. Literatures on architecture of Beijing are mostly dispersed in books on Chinese architecture in general or of a specific dynasty, period, regime, type, or religious tradition, which are not included in this bibliography. Books written specifically on the architecture of Beijing concentrate on the late imperial to the modern period. Some of them are typologically focused, for instance, on Buddhist temples; others are case studies on significant buildings, complexes, or urban elements, for instance, the Forbidden City, Chang’an Avenue, Tiananmen Square, etc. Some historical documents, for instance the local gazetteers, contain important information on the architecture and urban space of Beijing, which are also included in the following lists. Some specialized studies on the folkways and traditional urban life of Beijing are closely related to architecture and the urban space, for instance the traditional theater and the hutong life, which are classified under the last category.