BEIJING – THREE MONUMENTAL CHINESE ACHIEVEMENTS: SUMMER PALACE, FORBIDDEN CITY, AND TIANANMEN SQUARE

The Summer Palace is a vast grouping of aesthetically pleasing lakes, gardens and imperial retreat buildings on the outskirts of central Beijing.   Built around 1750, it is dominated by the artificially created mound of Longevity Hill, which rises steeply 60 meters above vast Kunming Lake (one was excavated to pile up the other). The hill covers an expanse of 180 acres.  The hand-excavated lake itself covers an astounding 540 acres.

A smaller imperial retreat sitting atop an existing prominence which preceded Longevity Hill was named Wang Hill Palace.  It was created in the Jin Dynasty (265 – 420) when emperor Wanyan Liang first moved his capital to the Beijing area. In the Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368) 1000 years later, the hill was renamed Jug Hill. This change is explained by a legend in which a ceramic jug with treasure inside was said to have been found on the hill.

The present name of Longevity Hill derived from the Quianlong Emperor (of the Qing Dynasty, 1644–1911) commissioning additional work on existing imperial gardens and buildings on the hill in celebration of the 60th birthday of his mother, Empress Dowager Chongquing.

This new Summer Palace and its expanded gardens began in 1750 as the “Garden of Clear Ripples.” Artisans reproduced the architecture styles of popular palaces and their grounds throughout China. Kunming Lake was created though a huge army of manual laborers extending an existing body of water.

The palace complex has suffered two major destructive attacks. The first came at the hands of the British and French during an invasion in 1860, and the second 40 years later during the Boxer Rebellion in an attack by eight largely European powers during which the garden and buildings were largely destroyed. Most of the palace artifacts were divided among the eight attackers. The Summer Palace has been under restoration since that time.  A primary obstacle to full recovery has been the lack of original blueprints.

Today’s Summer Palace is like a giant family picnic grounds, with elegant and well-maintained buildings to examine, refreshment kiosks, benches to rest on beside the shore of Lake Kunming, and both large and small Dragon Boats to ride on its placid waters as you look up into the commanding heights of Longevity Hill.

One of the most unusual sites I encountered on a relaxed afternoon there was outside the Palace entry walls, adjacent to the visitor entry gate.  A Chinese man was stoically painting as tourists passed by and occasionally dropped currency into his hat.  Not such an unusual site, really.  Except that this particular artist was horribly maimed.

He had no arms, only shoulder stumps.  He had evidence on his scalp and bare back of having been burned and mutilated.  Yet he carefully painted and crafted calligraphy drawings by grasping an ink brush between his toes.

We made eye contact a number of times.  I know he saw the questions in my eyes.  And he probably sensed that I would have given my right pinkie finger to speak with him.  Did his condition occur as a result of an industrial accident?  As a result of warfare?  As a result of government torture and abuse?  Vehicular tragedy? How did he learn to paint like that?  And how long did it take him?

But tourist traffic and presumed language differences prevented that conversation.  I watched him for about ten minutes.  Then nodded to him silently, made a small bow, and dropped money into his hat.  He nodded back ever so slightly, and for just a moment his eyes softened their determined gaze. But he never changed his facial expression a bit.

Even more impressive is The Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing, the best-preserved imperial palace in China. Today it remains the largest ancient palatial structure in the world, and stands as the crowning achievement of traditional Chinese architecture. It was home to 24 emperors of the previously mentioned Ming and Qing Dynasties. It served also as the ceremonial and political center of the Chinese government.

It is recognized as one of the five most important palaces in the world (the other four being the Palace of Versailles in France, Buckingham Palace in the UK, the White House in the US, and the Kremlin in Russia). In 1987, The Forbidden City was selected as a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage site as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

The Forbidden City covers an area of about 178 acres with a total ground area of nearly 150,000 square meters.  This expanse is divided among 90 palaces and courtyards, 980 buildings and 8,704 rooms.  The complex is enclosed by a ten meter high outer wall with a perimeter of 3,430 meters – surrounded in turn by a wide, picturesque moat. At each corner of the Forbidden City is sited a massive watchtower.

Construction began in 1406 during the fourth year of the reign of the Ming Dynasty Yongle Emperor (Zhu Di) and lasted 14 years.  More than a million workers, civilians and soldiers plus over 100,000 craftsmen were said to have worked on the project.  Materials used included whole logs of precious phoebe zhennan wood found in the jungles of south-western China, and blocks of marble from quarries near Beijing. Floors of major halls were paved with specially baked "golden bricks."

Other unusual materials or methods included masonry stonework, mortise and tenon joinery, ceramic tile roofs, lacquer painting, extensive use of silk, paper covered walls, wood carvings, marble and stone sculptures, and gold leaf foil highlighting.  Decorative  and paint scheme emphasis was on the colors yellow, gold, purple, blue, green, and red.

Origins for the name of this imperial palace came from the belief in ancient times that the emperor was said to be “A Son of Heaven” -- therefore Heaven’s supreme power was bestowed upon him. An attempt was made to construct the emperors’ residence on earth  as a replica of the Purple Palace where God was thought to reside in Heaven.  Such a divine place would of course be strictly off limits to common people.  It was at first called the “Purple Forbidden City” and only shortened later.

After being the home of 24 supreme rulers – 14 emperors of the Ming dynasty and 10 from the Qing dynasty – the Forbidden City ceased being the political center of China in 1912 with the forced abdication of Puyi (the last Emperor of China). Under an agreement with the new Republic of China government, Puyi remained in the Inner Court, while the Outer Court was transferred to public use.  Puyi was later evicted after a coup in 1924.

Public access to The Forbidden City was initiated in 1925.  It was at that time The Palace Museum (now located in nearby Tiananmen Square)was established.  Since that date the museum (with its extensive collection of Chinese artwork and artifacts based upon the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties) has been in charge of the entire Forbidden City.  The Palace Museum remains the premier treasure house of Chinese cultural and historical artifacts due to its unrivaled standing in the development of Chinese architecture and culture.

Currently The Palace Museum is overseeing a sixteen-year restoration project to repair and restore all buildings in the Forbidden City to their pre-1912 state.

In 1933, Japanese invasion of China forced the evacuation of the national treasures in the Forbidden City.  Much of the collection was returned at the end of World War II, but the majority of it was evacuated to Taiwan in 1948 under orders of Chiang Kai-shek, whose Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party in 1949. The high quality collection remaining with the Nationalists was relocated to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and put on public display finally in 1965.

After establishment of the (communist) People's Republic of China in 1949, some damage was done to the Forbidden City as mainland China was swept up in revolutionary zeal epitomized by the Cultural Revolution of 1966. During the uncertainties, however, further destruction was prevented when party elites sent army troops to guard the culturally priceless city.

Tiananmen Square is the dominant city gathering place in the center of Beijing and adjacent to The Forbidden City.  It is named after the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) formerly located to its north and separating it from The Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the fourth largest city square in the world at 440,000 square meters (109 acres). It has major cultural importance as the venue of many highly significant events in Chinese history – including proclamation of The People’s Republic of China on October 1^st, 1949.

In recent times the square is best known outside China as the focal point of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, in which a pro-democracy movement was ended tragically on June 4^th of that year with declaration of martial law in Beijing by the Chinese Communist government and the killing of several hundred (possibly thousands) of unarmed civilians by soldiers.

To this day, the Communist Chinese Party and national government refuse to acknowledge the massacre ever took place.  All discussion of the event is forbidden in any public forum.  All sharing of newsbits, photographs or videos remaining of the event are suppressed and then purged.  At the time of my arrival in July of 2014, I was told internet traffic was slowed to a crawl three weeks prior to the 25^th anniversary of The Massacre so as not to allow any renewed organization of protests or memorialization of the slaughter.

Tiananmen Square was designed and built in 1651, seven years after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and shortly after heavy fighting between that set of rulers and its Qing Dynasty successors led to destruction of the Tiananmen Gate (built in 1415) leading to the Forbidden City.  The square has since been enlarged up to four times its original size.

Near the center of today's expanded square stood the "Great Ming Gate", the one-time southern gate to the Imperial City, renamed "Great Qing Gate" during the Qing Dynasty, and "Gate of China" during the Republic of China era. This was a purely ceremonial gateway that had a special status as the "Gate of the Nation" whereby it normally remained closed except when the Emperor passed through.

British and French troops who invaded Beijing in 1860 pitched camp near the gate and briefly considered burning down both the gate and the entire Forbidden City. They decided ultimately to spare the Imperial Palace and to burn instead the emperor's Summer Palace. The Qing emperor eventually agreed to let the foreign powers barrack troops – and later establish diplomatic missions – in the area, resulting in the Diplomatic Quarter seen today immediately to the east of the modern square.

In 1954, the Gate of China was demolished, allowing for enlargement of the square. Four years later a major expansion of Tiananmen Square started, and completed  a year later. This followed the vision of Communist Party “Great Leader” Mao Tse Tung to make the square the largest and most spectacular in the world, intended to hold over 500,000 people. As a result, a large number of residential buildings and other structures within its confines were demolished.

On its southern edge, the dominating Monument to the People's Heroes was erected. As part of the Ten Great Buildings Project begun in 1958 to commemorate the Ten-Year Anniversary of the People's Republic of China, the Great Hall of The People and the Revolutionary History Museum (now National Museum of China) were erected on the western and eastern sides of the square.

The year after Mao's death in 1976, his mausoleum was built on top of the site of the former Gate of China (now in the middle of the square). In connection with this project, Tiananmen Square was further increased in size to accommodate 600,000 people. 

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, commonly known as the “June Fourth Incident” or more accurately the Democracy Movement in Chinese, were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing taking place in the spring of 1989.  The protests received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within Communist Party leadership.  The protests were eventually forcibly suppressed by hard line leaders who ordered the military to ruthlessly enforce martial law in the country's capitol.

The crackdown that initiated on June 3–4 became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted mass casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square, which demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks.

The protests were triggered in April 1989 by the death of former Communist Party General Secretary General Hu Yaobang (a liberal reformer, who was deposed after losing a power struggle with hardliners over the direction of allowable party political and economic reforms). University students marched and gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn Yaobang, who had also voiced concern over inflation, limited career prospects, and party corruption.

The protesters called for government accountability, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and restoration of workers' control over industry. At the height of the protests, approximately one million people assembled in the Square.

The government initially took a conciliatory stance toward the protesters. The student-led hunger strike galvanized support from other demonstrators around the country. Protests spread to 400 cities by mid-May.  Communist Party chairman Deng Xiaoping and other central committee leaders ultimately resolved to use force to quell the unrest. Party authorities declared martial law on May 20, mobilizing as many as 300,000 troops around Beijing.

In the aftermath of the crackdown, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press. Police and internal security forces were strengthened. Officials deemed sympathetic to the protests were demoted or purged. 

Political reforms were largely halted and economic reforms did not resume until 1992.  The Chinese government was widely condemned internationally for the use of force against the protesters. Western governments temporarily imposed economic sanctions and arms embargoes, which have been essentially erased since as China has become “the world’s manufacturer.”

Walking near the square today certain things are chillingly obvious.  Surveillance cameras dot the lampposts and vertical columns for blocks around.  Numerous uniformed and plainclothes police are readily evident.  Police do their best to prevent self-immolation suicide protests – fire suppression equipment has been placed in many locations within the square.  Others are posted to prevent suicides jumps into nearby moats and rivers.

In 2004, a Beijing citizen named Ye Guoqiang had attempted just such a fatal jump as a protest against forceful eviction from his home in order to make way for an Olympic Games construction project. He was sentenced to two years in prison for embarrassing the state.

One Chinese writer reported:  "If you want to kill yourself," the judge told him, "at least do it in the privacy of your own home, not beneath the Chairman's (Mao) nose." The writer went on to cynically observe that citizens can allow themselves to be shot dead by the army below Mao's mausoleum portrait, but not to commit suicide there.

Entry to the square must now be made from underground tunnels, from which access is easily controlled – there is no entry from street level any longer.  Visitors are questioned and frisked.  Large accordion style portable zipper gates can be extended at a moment’s notice to control pedestrian traffic for blocks around.  In times of … public excitement … it is possible to seal Tiananmen Square off completely.

Twenty-five years after The Massacre, the Chinese appear to have made a faustian pact with their government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for increased material comforts. They live relatively more prosperous lives, yet any expression of their thwarted collective political will remains expressly forbidden.

Like in Russia post 1989, it is fine in mainland China today to make money.  Lots of money.  And just as in Russia, it is completely acceptable to become a billionaire oligarch.  What is not okay, is to politically poke the standing order.  It remains unacceptable to challenge the powers that be in the realm of ideas or power sharing.

   

Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, observed recently:  “It is hard not to feel a great deal of sadness at the backwardness totalitarianism has imposed on China, Russia and Cuba. Any social progress communism may have brought these societies is dwarfed by the civic, cultural, and political retardation it caused, and the remaining obstacles standing in the way of these countries taking full advantage of their resources and reaching a modernity that encompasses democratic ideals, the rule of law, and liberty.”

When party chairman Deng Xiaoping announced after the 1989 massacre that the Chinese people needed more “education,” and when his government launched a systematic effort to snuff out Chinese political longings and cast citizens into “patriotic” subjects focused on nationalism and money, he could have pointed to famous playwright Bertolt Brecht’s quip: “The people have lost the confidence of the government; the government has decided to dissolve the people …” and mold another.