Chaoyang Gate

Chaoyang Gate

Chaoyang Gate is located in Beijing. It is called Qihua gate in Yuan Dynasty. All the grain in the nine warehouses inside the gate is transported to Beijing from this gate. Therefore, there is a bunch of ears carved in the cave of Wengcheng gate. During the festival of granary filling in Kyoto, there is an endless stream of grain trucks. "Chaoyang Gushui" is the first welcoming God of grain transportation from south to north. Chaoyang Gate is similar to Chongwen gate in shape, with five rooms in width, 31.35 meters in width and three rooms in depth, 19.2 meters in depth; Lou liantai is 32 meters in height; Jian Lou is similar to Xuanwu Gate in shape, with seven rooms in width, 32.5 meters in width and three rooms in depth, 25 meters in depth. In 1915, it was demolished once and completely in 1956, which became a shadow of history.

The two city gates in the East are called Chaoyang Gate and Dongzhi gate. Chaoyang Gate is the gate where grain goes in and out, from which the people's rations in the capital come. However, the old people still call it "Qihua gate" and sometimes mistakenly call it "qihuo gate", which is probably the reason why all the treasures from the South have to live from now on. Take the grain cart, so there is a grain ear carved on the top of the gate of Chaoyang Gate. When grain enters Chaoyang Gate, it is stored in the granary nearby. The place names in Chaoyang Gate include "lumicang", "haiyuncang" and "xintaicang", all of which were used to store official grain.

Historical development

overview

In the fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1267), Kublai Khan ordered "to build a new city, 60 li away from the city There are eleven branches The right side of the East is Qihua, and the left side of the East is yueguangxi. " In shuntianfu annals, qihuamen, located on the right side of the East, is today's Chaoyang Gate.

Compared with its later generations, the Qihua gate at the beginning of its construction is simple and crude, with only city buildings and only rammed earth. Marco Polo's travel notes can be used as evidence, "the city is surrounded by a wall." he further describes the shape of the wall connected with the gate, "the root of the field is ten steps thick, but the higher it is, the thinner it is, and the head of the city is only three steps thick" (Marco Polo's biography). It can be seen that the shape of the wall at that time was obviously trapezoidal.

In the 19th year of the reign of emperor Zhizheng (1359), in the winter of October, gengshenshuo ordered all the eleven gates of the capital to build urn cities and suspension bridges (shuntianfu annals). Together with the other ten gates, qihuamen began to develop from single building to complex building. When the Ming Dynasty replaced the Yuan Dynasty, the old name of qihuamen was preserved and repaired several times. The largest one occurred in the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty. The project started in the first month of the second year of Zhengtong (1437) and was completed in April of the fourth year of Zhengtong (1439). After the completion of the project, Qihua gate was renamed Chaoyang Gate.

Chaoyang Gate was repaired many times in the Qing Dynasty, but the shape of the gate is not very special. Xi Renlong, a Swede, the author of Beijing's gate and city wall, said that the structure of Chaoyang Gate Tower is ordinary, and its shape is the same as that of pingzemen (today's Fuchengmen) tower, but there are only differences in details. The only characteristic is that the width is larger than other city buildings, and the size data is slightly larger than that of pingzemen.

Traffic fortress

From the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, and even to the 1950s, qihuamen (Chaoyang Gate) was a place of economic prosperity. In Beijing, in addition to the "first three gates", Chaoyang Gate is the most lively. The bustle of Chaoyang Gate is mainly due to the Beijing Hangzhou Grand Canal. The Grand Canal, which was opened as early as the Sui Dynasty, still played an important role in the Yuan dynasty ruled by the Mongols and became an important transportation lifeline connecting Beijing and the southern provinces. Chaoyang Gate is the nearest gate to TongZhou wharf, an important Wharf at the north end of the Grand Canal. Tongzhou wharf is 40 miles east of Chaoyang Gate. At that time, all the officials and merchants who are away from the south of Beijing, or the officials and merchants who are pilgrims and businessmen from the south of Beijing, have to stop at Chaoyang Gate. Therefore, there is an endless stream of merchants coming and going under the Chaoyang Gate. Seeing this huge business opportunity, businessmen from all walks of life rush to open shops in the gate. What's more, this is the only way to transport grain by water. The southern grain and rice transported to Beijing through the grand canal are loaded in DongBianMen or Tongzhou, and then enter the city through Chaoyang Gate and stored in the city's major granaries. Up to now, there are still many place names with the word "Cang" near Chaoyang Gate (such as haiyuncang, beixincang, etc.), which indirectly proves the function of Chaoyang Gate.

destruction

In 1900, when the Allied forces of the eight powers attacked Beijing, Chaoyang Gate was first broken, and its series of buildings were also shelled. After all, it was external destruction. The active demolition began in 1915. Like several inner city gates such as Zhengyangmen, the urn of Chaoyang Gate disappeared in the process of building the ring railway in that year. Xirenlong arrived in Beijing in the 1920s. The railway project around the city has been completed. After inspecting other city gates, he said that Chaoyang Gate and Dongzhimen gate, both located in Dongyuan, had the greatest impact in the construction. Because of the railway running through the middle of the city, almost all of the urn City in Chaoyang Gate was demolished. The railway station with platform occupied the site sheltered by the high wall of the urn City, jianloumen The hole is gone.

It seems that the railway around the city, which paid a huge price for the city gates, did not play its due role. According to Zhang Xiande, who has painted "portraits" for the city gates, he once took the railway around the city to Hohhot and other places, but later the railway stopped passenger transport and only carried goods. In the 1950s, even the freight transport stopped and was completely idle. In addition, several 70 year old people interviewed by the reporter even had no impression of the railway around the city, and they could only remember that they had seen the railway tracks after repeated tips.

disappear

If the active demolition in 1915 was a prelude, the demolition in the 1950s was the climax and the end. The Beijing Daily on October 16, 1956 explained the reason for the demolition of Chaoyang Gate: "due to years of disrepair, it was found that there were many sinking and cracks in the wall, some columns were skewed outward, cornices and column joints were rotten, and the south building door split down. If it is not removed, there is a risk of collapse at any time. ". Although the demolition of the city gate has already started, Chaoyang Gate has given the experts a great shock. Because the building of the Ministry of culture is near the Chaoyang Gate, and the office of the cultural relics bureau is just in the southeast corner of the building of the Ministry of culture. You can see the Chaoyang Gate from the window of the office. However, the appeal of scholars failed to save the fate of Chaoyang Gate, and finally the demolition became the final conclusion, so they had to watch Chaoyang Gate disappear in front of their own eyes.

On October 9, 1956, the Chaoyang Gate Tower was demolished; in 1958, the arrow tower was demolished. The traces of Chaoyang Gate have disappeared, and the original building components claimed to be preserved for later use have also been lost during the cultural revolution.

present situation

Sino foreign exchanges shape new Chaoyang Culture

In 1978, an overpass was built on the site of Chaoyang Gate. By the 1990s, there were 29 overpasses on the Second Ring Road, and 14 of them were named after the disappeared city gate, just like Chaoyang Gate. When the vehicles arrive here, they go around the turntable, just as people used to go around the city wall. The "green branches and leaves" and "green glazed tiles" that Xi Renlong has seen have been replaced by skyscrapers, and the small commodity economic atmosphere that once occupied the main part of the regional culture has been replaced by a modern cultural atmosphere of the integration of China and the West. From Chaoyang Gate subway station, there are white-collar workers with firm vision, foreign visitors like Xi Renlong, and literary youths who are nostalgic for bars and food from all over the world. There are still a few old granaries near the city gate, but they appear in a different identity. They are labeled as "history" and "culture" by real estate developers for sale.

Related knowledge

When it comes to Chaoyangmen, Tongzhou must be mentioned. Most of the grain and rice stored in Chaoyangmen are transported from Tongzhou Wharf (and some are transported through DongBianMen wharf), and other goods and materials to Beijing also take this route. In 2005, a Ming Dynasty sunken ship with full city bricks was found at the wharf along the original Beijing Hangzhou Grand Canal and in Xianghe, Hebei Province, which is close to Tongzhou. According to the expert's textual research and analysis, the wall bricks on the ship are roughly the same as those used in the Ming Dynasty, and it is basically certain that they are the ships transporting City bricks to the capital by water transport. The place names related to docks also exist in this area, such as "dock Village".

Tongzhou has always been an important traffic road in the east of Beijing. No matter how merchants come and go, or whether they make contributions from all directions, whether it is by water (Grand Canal) or by land (Jingtong Avenue), Tongzhou is the only place to enter Beijing. Its name comes from canal water transportation. In the third year of jintiande (1151), hailing King took the meaning of "water transportation to facilitate economic development" from the Beijing Hangzhou Grand Canal and set up a cishizhou, called Tongzhou. The pivotal position in transportation promoted the prosperity of Tongzhou's economy, and TongZhou began to enjoy the reputation of "one Beijing (Beijing), two health (Tianjin) and three TongZhou". Chaoyang Gate, as the node connecting the capital and Tongzhou, acts as a transit station. A large part of the prosperity of Chaoyang Gate depends on the past merchants who stop at this transit station.

However, in the end of Qing Dynasty, the canal water transportation stopped and TongZhou lost half of its important position. Although the impact of the suspension of water transport also affected the city, the diet structure of Beijingers changed, and the proportion of rice as the staple food decreased to 3 / 10. But Chaoyang Gate, which has lost part of its waterway customers, still takes the lead in the traffic fortress by virtue of its dry road, Jingtong Avenue.

By the 1950s, Chaoyang Gate had become a material center

Chinese PinYin : Chao Yang Men