Conclusion

Resolving the Forbidden City

What, then, about Chinese architecture today? Has it become and urban planning were set for a national population soon
modern, and what can we expect as we move forward in the to rise to 1.4 billion.
twenty-first century? Part of the answer lies where we began: On October 1, 1949, Mao Zeodong (1893–1976) announced
Has China, or Chinese architecture, moved beyond the the establishment of the People’s Republic from Tian’an Gate
Forbidden City? When did it happen? Or, should we expect it? as he looked onto a plaza that would be opened to accommo-
So long as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall stand, date nearly half a million people for such an occasion. The
they will continue to provide the powerful images that scenes choice of location marked a decision to identify with China’s
of the Acropolis provide for Greece. But different from the past as represented by its primary symbol, architecture: here
Acropolis, the construction principles of the Forbidden City on May 4, 1919, students had protested China’s signing of the
are those of China’s multimillennial architectural history. Versailles Treaty, which lost land to Japan; and on December
The Forbidden City has been the central concern of every 9, 1935, protests here had launched the resistance move-
major national architectural decision in Beijing since the ment against Japanese aggression. This same two-story gate
Ming dynasty and will continue to be as long as it is in with a golden ceramic-tile roof was where Mao’s moder-
China’s capital. ate premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was memorialized by a
Chinese architecture since about 1840 divides along grassroots, public gathering on April 4, 1976, even as Mao’s
terms used to refer to China’s modern periods: jindai (mod- picture hung on the front facade, and in spite of Mao’s direct
ern), xiandai (contemporary), the two sometimes used inter- efforts to deny him the medical treatment that might have
changeably, and dangdai (this very moment). Architecture halted his cancer and the anti-Zhou national propaganda of
classified as jindai includes the oeuvre of Yang Tingbao, the three months following his death. This event, known as
Allied Architects, and other Chinese firms working in the the Tian’anmen Incident, was followed in May 1989 by the
first half of the twentieth century in China. The overlap Democracy Movement that led to what came to be known as
with xiandai is in the first decades of the People’s Republic: the Tian’anmen Square Massacre. The question that plagued
the farther we are from the 1970s and 1980s, the more read- the founders of the People’s Republic and urban planners in
ily the early periods of the twenty-first century are absorbed the 1950s was whether an imperial place and a political space,
into jindai. In the second decade of the twentieth century and a ceremonial space for both, could also be a viable space
architects use dangdai to refer to twenty-first-century build- for the daily affairs of a twentieth-century bureaucracy and
ings; in the 2040s one expects it to be ca. 2020–ca. 2040. take on the functions anticipated for an economic center.
Buildings that represent modern, contemporary, and right Two decades into the twenty-first century, China’s economy
now are in China’s major cities—Beijing, Shanghai, and has centers across the provinces, but Tian’anmen remains the
Guangzhou, of course—a recently burgeoning city such as imperial, political, and ceremonial heart of China.
Shenzhen, and any city or town with ambitions to mod- Deflection of the significance of the Forbidden City
ernize, an eye toward contemporary architecture, and the began in 1912, for as in millennia past, a new government
money to accomplish modernization through architecture. always involved architecture. On January 1, 1913, President
Seeking a conclusion to a history, even as one tries to look Yuan Shikai (1859–1916) tore down gates and walls so that
beyond Beijing, and even as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Chang’an Avenue, the street that ran east and west directly
Hangzhou, and Chongqing vie for status as China’s most in front of Tian’anmen, became an open passageway for
important or influential cities, whether due to economic or pedestrians. In October 1914 the site of the Altar of Soil
cultural factors, one cannot but turn to the Forbidden City and Grain became a public park. Yuan’s minister of commu-
for reference. We do this because restricted imperial ritual nications and minister of the interior at this time was Zhu
space became proletarian space for newly created Marxist Qiqian, the former Qing official who was to discover an old
agendas, and, in spite of massive destruction, buildings copy of Yingzao fashi in Nanjing and to found the Society for
designed in the fourteenth century and buildings renovated Research on Chinese Architecture, which would fund the
based on those designs were preserved as public museum research of Liang Sicheng, Liu Dunzhen, and others discussed
space, and in the process, policies regarding architecture in chapter 17.

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 Resolving the Forbidden City

c.1. Beijing from Qianmen to Forbidden City, 2018

The Counteraxis Gate and then Qing Gate had once stood. The Monument to
the People’s Heroes was one of the most important. From initial
By the 1950s it was clear to those making urban decisions debate about what it should look like until the unveiling in 1958
that Chang’an Avenue was the keystone for a successful was a nine-year process. With a Chinese-style roof at its top, the
transformation of Beijing into a communist capital. In 1952 marble monument is one of the very few designs in post-1949
and 1954 additional gates and monuments were torn down so Beijing to which Liang Sicheng’s name is attached. Its similarity
that car traffic between its eastern and western sides was more to a Han-period que does not escape anyone who knows China’s
fluid. Through the 1950s, in time for the tenth anniversary architectural history (see figure 3.23). Eight reliefs at the base
of the People’s Republic, parts of the street were expanded narrate the history of China’s revolutionary struggle: destruc-
to 50 meters in width, 5,500 bays of houses from hutong tion of opium in 1839 that signaled the First Opium War; the
were demolished, the section right in front of Tian’anmen uprising that grew into the Taiping Rebellion of 1851; the upris-
was widened to 80 meters and named Grand Parade Road, ing that led to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911; the May 4th
and rows of streetlights and trees were added. One goal of Movement of 1919; the May 30th Uprising on Nanjing Road
this development was not reached until 1966, when Chang’an in Shanghai in 1925; the first battle between the Guomindang
Avenue became the longest street in the world, extending 40 and the People’s Army in 1927; the War of Resistance against
kilometers from Tong(xian) county in the east to Shijingshan Japan from 1931 to 1945; and crossing the Yellow River in 1949
in the west. The north-south imperial line and its perennial at the end of the Chinese Civil War. China’s new history rose 38
symbolism of southern orientation being the most auspicious meters, towering above the Hall of Supreme Harmony, whose
had been deconstructed and replaced by an east-west axis that axis that height challenged (figure C.1).
had become the most important thoroughfare not just in the In 1957, the year before the monument was completed, the
city but in China. Telegraph Service Center and Central Broadcasting Building
Meanwhile, additions that represented the people were were built on Chang’an Avenue (figure C.2). Both had symmet-
erected on the imperial axis south of Tian’anmen where Ming rical facades punctuated only by windows and a central tower,

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 CONCLUSION

c.2. Telegraph Service Building, Chang’an Avenue, Beijing, 1957

elements that showed the influence of socialist architecture of and design institutes existed and there were opportunities to
the Soviet Union perhaps by way of the international Beaux- design a new China. The major showcase was to be Chang’an
Arts tradition. As observed in chapter 17, Beaux-Arts con- Avenue. The government launched the Ten Great Buildings,
struction lends itself to civic display, so that this kind of facade sometimes known as the Anniversary Projects. The role of
for a public or national communications building or a museum architecture in the service of the state was at least as important
could have roots in both Beaux-Arts and socialist styles. The for the People’s Republic as it had been in imperial China. This
Beijing Military Museum in Haidian district, finished in 1960, project was conceived as part of the Great Leap Forward, the
similarly has a strong central thrust with a central, towerlike economic and social campaign intended to catapult China into
projection at the top, but two five-story frontal appendages an industrialized socialist state. The goal was to complete ten
that flank its center project in the manner of que. Occasionally significant and modern buildings, the definition of modern
Chinese roofs, nicknamed “big hats” or “Chinese hats,” topped architecture debated across China.1 All would be public build-
projecting sections of massive structures such as Zhang Bo’s ings, and all were to be finished by the tenth anniversary of the
(1911–1999) Minorities (or Nationalities) Culture Palace of People’s Republic in 1959.
1958–1959 and Zhang Kaiji’s (1912–2006) Sanlihe Government The Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square,
Complex of 1955 (figure C.3). The blocklike facades with cen- or to the right if one looked out from Tian’an Gate, was the
tral towers could convert for other functions, such as a plane- most important (see figure C.1). Measuring 356 meters across
tarium: Beijing’s Planetarium in Xizhimen, designed by Zhang the front, 206.5 meters deep, and 46.5 meters in height, it was
Kaiji with Song Rong in 1957, has a central dome instead of the the headquarters for governmental meetings and ceremonies
taller tower of Zhang’s Sanlihe building. of the National People’s Congress. Zhang Bo and his insti-
One of the changes in architecture after 1949 was that tute were major designers of this flat-roofed structure, whose
design proposals came more often from institutes than from central front and ends projected forward as Beaux-Arts and
individuals. The proposal for the Monument to the People’s Soviet Socialist buildings did. Its Great Auditorium can seat
Heroes associated with Liang and his wife Lin Huiyin was ten thousand, and more than five thousand can eat in the
made through Tsinghua University. Zhang Kaiji and Zhang State Banquet Hall at one time. The National Museum of
Bo submitted proposals as members of the Beijing Institute China, established in 2003 with the merging of the National
of Architectural Design and Research, with which both were Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese
affiliated for more than forty-five years. The same institute was Revolution, both founded in 1949 and completed in 1959, is
involved in the major projects that transformed Tian’anmen opposite the Great Hall of the People on the east side of the
Square during this decade. square. It was renovated in the first decade of the twenty-first
The patron now the government, the thrust national pride century by a German architectural firm. The museum is 313
and public display, and the Forbidden City still immutable in by 149 meters at the base and 40 meters high, which is smaller
the background, China launched a major architectural cam- than the Great Hall of the People, but like that building it
paign. Yes, architecture still served the state, but architects has a pillared arcade in front and symmetrical disposition,

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 Resolving the Forbidden City

c.3. Zhang Kaiji, Sanlihe Government Complex, 1955

in this case the towers that bracket the pillars on either side. center of Beijing and that architecture should serve the
The Military Museum of the People’s Revolution (Zhongguo party, production, and the people, three adjectives were used
Renmin Geming Junshi Bowuguan), in Haidian, different from to describe the criteria: solemn, beautiful, and modernized.2
the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, was another building The meaning and implications of each of them, and in com-
finished in the first ten years of the People’s Republic. The bination, both in Chinese and in English translation, can be
above-mentioned Minorities (or Nationalities) Cultural Palace long debated, but there is no question that beautiful (meili)
on West Chang’an Street also was one of the 1950s projects, as was proclaimed to be compatible with both modern archi-
was Beijing Railway Station, designed by Yang Tingbao and tecture and the dignity of buildings that represented 1960s
Cheng Deng’ao, which was completed in 1959 to replace a sta- China. Some 1.5 million square meters of land in Beijing was
tion built in 1901. Workers’ Stadium, also completed in 1959, available for development. In addition to the six invited
in the Chaoyang district, and renovated in 2004, with a capac- proposals, submissions came from First Generation archi-
ity of more than sixty-six thousand and occupying 350,000 tects working outside Beijing, including Yang Tingbao, Zhao
square meters, also was one. National Agriculture Exhibition Shen, and Benjamin Chen, all discussed in chapter 17. A
Hall, also in Chaoyang district, was one of the projects as well. well-documented symposium, including photographs of sub-
Hotels and guest houses were part of the government’s architec- missions under discussion, was planned to lay the ground-
tural definition of modern as well. Diaoyutai State House for work for China’s vision of architecture’s part in national
foreign dignitaries and Chinese officials took the name of the development and pride into the 1970s. As it turned out, 1966
Jin dynasty Angler’s Terrace on the site of which it was built. was the official beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Minzu (Ethnicities) Hotel on West Chang’an Avenue also was With greatest intensity from 1966 to 1969, and perhaps
one of the Ten Buildings, as was the Overseas Chinese Hotel slightly less until the death of highly influential military
that was torn down and replaced in 1990. The last two hotels commander Lin Biao in 1971, much more old architecture was
were not completed in time. Even if incomplete, the agenda torn down in Beijing and across China than were noteworthy
was set. In 1959 national architecture was people’s architecture. buildings constructed until the official end of the proletarian
In Beijing, it had already transformed Tian’anmen Square and struggle in 1976 when Mao died and the Gang of Four, one of
Beijing’s primary axial building line, and it proclaimed the whom was his wife Jiang Qing, were arrested. The thousands
presence of new China in Haidian near Tsinghua and Beijing of executions, relocations, and corresponding reassignments
Universities and in the commercial district Chaoyang. of China’s workforce during this decade are widely known.
The year 1959 ended with five of the projects planned Beijing had renamed streets as Eternal Revolution and Anti-
for Chang’an Avenue unfinished. In 1964 six design units in Imperialist, some of which have since returned to their
Beijing were invited to submit proposals for the Chang’an original names. Across China’s cities names like Jiefang and
Avenue–Tian’anmen nexus in anticipation of the twenti- Jianguo, Liberation and Building the Nation, respectively,
eth anniversary of the People’s Republic five years later. In were assigned to streets. Both are still names of major streets
addition to the understanding that this hub was the political in cities, towns, and villages across China today.

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 Resolving the Forbidden City

In 1976 the last major building was added to Tian’anmen greater Beijing’s twenty-two million people had approximately
Square and Beijing’s old imperial axis. It was Mao’s mauso- six million cars, and the subway system is referred to as a good
leum, known as Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. It enshrines start. Already in the 1920s urban planners in Beijing had des-
his body in a crystal sarcophagus, following the precedent ignated a streetcar line that ran a 17-kilometer loop around
set by Lenin. Unlike the ambitions for Sun Yat-sen’s remains, Beijing to the north and began and ended at Tian’anmen. In
preservation was successful. Various sites, including behind the 1980s a second ring was added beyond it. Ring Three came
the Forbidden City, were considered. The one selected was in in the 1990s, followed by Ring Four in 2001, the fifth ring in
front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, thus lengthen- time for the 2009 Olympics, then the sixth ring. Ring Seven
ing the north-south axis of Beijing by the addition of a second was completed in December 2016. Chang’an Avenue cuts right
monument of the People’s Republic (see figure C.1). A front through the center of the Sixth Ring Road but will have to be
colonnade, facing Tian’anmen, was agreed on, as was the goal lengthened to reach Ring Seven.
of erecting a building that reflected China and modernism. In the twenty-first century the Forbidden City, Great Wall,
The similarities with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and Qin Shi Huangdi’s mausoleum are the most widely known,
DC, and Yang Tingbao’s participation were mentioned in frequently visited, and popularly published architecture of
chapter 17. (Yang was one of the few First Generation archi- China. The China in which one experiences them is more than
tects still alive at the time.) To China, the structure was a a century beyond its imperial past. Tian’anmen Square draws
“modern” building in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. as much international attention as the Forbidden City, but
To someone familiar with Beaux-Arts design and its use in those who stand there facing the plaza need only pivot to look
civic architecture across the globe, it was a statement that toward the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
modern architecture in China could be compatible with a
European mode while the Forbidden City still stood in the
background.
Chinese students again began to study abroad in the late
1970s. The Third Generation went to Europe as well as the
United States at this time. Their designs have been realized
as hotels, exhibition halls, museums, skyscraping apartments,
auto malls, airports, hospitals, and every other necessary or
superfluous structure of contemporary life in every part
of China. One jokes that on certain streets of Beijing and
Shanghai and Guangzhou the buildings change every five
years, sometimes more often (figure C.4). Their designers are
a wish list of the world’s most influential architects. One also
chides that one has to go deeper and deeper into China to
find old buildings, particularly unrestored buildings. China’s
architectural and archaeological institutions work in part-
nership with World Heritage Organization and ICOMOS to
save as much as possible as cost-effectively as possible. The
list of monuments slated for preservation grows every year.
Still, we end with Beijing. The governmental offices of the
People’s Republic of China are outside the Forbidden City, just
as Liang Sicheng had worked so tirelessly to achieve. In 2017

c.4. Lujiazui (east side of Huangpu River across from the Bund), Pudong,
Shanghai, at night, 2017

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