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The Imperial Axis: Tiananmen to the Hutongs

China · 7 stories · 1–2 hours

North along Beijing's central axis: forty hectares of empty square, the only door into the Forbidden City, an artificial hill built for the view, and the drum that once told the city when to sleep.

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Stories along the way

  1. 1. Forty Hectares of IntentStand still for a moment and take the measure of the space you are in, because the scale is doing something to you deliberately. This is roughly forty hectares of open ground —…
  2. 2. The Mystery of Tank ManOn the morning of June 5, 1989, a man stepped onto Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue carrying nothing more lethal than two shopping bags. Just hours earlier, the Chinese military had…
  3. 3. Beijing's Three Millennia of PowerIn October 1420, after years of massive construction, the Ming emperor Zhu Di officially declared his grand new seat of power: Beijing, meaning the 'Northern Capital.' But just…
  4. 4. Sacred Halls of the Imperial AncestorsImagine an emperor of the Ming Dynasty stepping onto a grand, three-tiered stone platform—an architectural honor given to only four sites in all of Beijing. He was not stepping…
  5. 5. The Five Phoenix TurretsIn front of you is the Meridian Gate — Wumen — completed in fourteen twenty, and the only way in. The Forbidden City has four gates. This is the largest of them, and today it is…
  6. 6. The Emperor's View, ReversedDirectly north of the palace, the ground rises — and it rises because somebody decided it should. Jingshan is an imperial park, and its hill sits at the highest point of Beijing's…
  7. 7. Drum at Dusk, Bell at DawnTwo heavy towers, one behind the other at the northern end of the axis, and between them they ran this city's day for more than six hundred years. The system was beautifully…