THE ROUGH GUIDE to - Parallels Plesk Panel

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Tian’anmen Square
and the
Forbidden City
The first stop for any visitor to Beijing is Tian’anmen Square, which at over
400,000 square metres is the greatest public space on earth. Right in the city
centre, the square is symbolically the heart of China, and the events it has
witnessed have shaped the history of the People’s Republic from its
inception. Laid out in 1949, it is a modern creation in a city that traditionally had
no places where crowds could gather. As one of the square’s architects put it:
“Beijing was a reflection of a feudal society… We had to transform it, we had to
make Beijing into the capital of socialist China”. So they created a vast concrete
plain dotted with worthy statuary and bounded by stern, monumental buildings:
the Great Hall of the People to the west and the National Museum of China
to the east. To the north you’ll see Tian’anmen, a gateway of great significance to
both imperial and communist China.
Beyond it, and in its luxury and ornament a complete contrast to the square’s
austerity, is the Gugong, or Imperial Palace, better known in the West by its unofficial
title, the Forbidden City – a reference to its exclusivity. Indeed, for the five centuries
of functioning, through the reigns of 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties,
civilian Chinese were forbidden from even approaching the walls. With its maze of
eight hundred buildings and nine thousand chambers, it was the core of the capital,
the empire, and (so the Chinese believed) the universe. From within, the emperors –
the Sons of Heaven – issued commands with absolute authority to their millions of
subjects. It remains an extraordinary place today, unsurpassed in China for
monumental scale, harmonious design and elegant grandeur.
Tian’anmen Square
For many Chinese tourists, Tian’anmen Square (, )
is a place of pilgrimage. Crowds flock to see the corpse of Chairman Mao in his
mausoleum and to see the most potent symbols of power in contemporary China:
TIAN’ANMEN SQUARE AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY |
Tian’anmen Square
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