Beijing’s Ten Great Buildings: popular responses over three eras (1959-2016)

Abstract

Modern Beijing’s original Ten Great Buildings (Shi da jianzhu) in 1959 were iconic markers in the re-building of the city as a modern capital fit for the People’s Republic of China. The idea of modern buildings as gauges of the modernisation of the city took hold in official and popular imaginations. Over the decades since the late Fifties through to the present-day, ordinary Beijingers have debated what parts of their built environment best serve as markers of progress and modernity. This article examines popular responses at three moments in the growth of Beijing. The original set of ten buildings, erected to mark the tenth anniversary of the new state, elicited pride as well as more recent mixed feelings. In 1988, at the most liberal moment in the PRC since 1949, Beijing Daily conducted a readers’ poll for a new set of Ten Great Buildings from the Eighties. A quarter-million people voted for their favourites. In the twenty-first century, as Beijing was further transformed and Beijingers took to the Internet to express their views, alternative lists of ten iconic buildings from the 2000s have been hotly debated.