Monument to the People's Heros

Monument to the People's Heros

The monument to the people's Heroes is located in the center of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It is on the north-south axis 463 meters south of Tiananmen Square and 440 meters north of Zhengyangmen square. It is a monument built by the government of the people's Republic of China to commemorate the revolutionary martyrs in modern Chinese history.

On September 30, 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference decided to build a monument to the people's Heroes in Beijing in memory of the people's heroes who died in the people's Liberation War and the people's revolution. The foundation was laid on September 30, 1949, started on August 1, 1952, and completed on April 22, 1958

It was unveiled on May 1, 1958 and was announced as one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council of the people's Republic of China in 1961.

The monument to the people's Heroes is 37.94 meters high. In the front (North) of the monument is a whole block of granite, 14.7 meters long, 2.9 meters wide, 1 meter thick and 60.23 tons heavy. It is engraved with the eight gold foil characters "the people's heroes will live forever" inscribed by Comrade Mao Zedong on June 9, 1955. The heart of the stone on the back is composed of seven stones. The content of the stone is a 150 character small block script drafted by Mao Zedong and written by Zhou Enlai.

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Setting up the background

The monument to the people's Heroes is the first state-level public art project after the founding of new China, and also the largest monument in Chinese history. It gathered a large number of China's most outstanding literary and historical experts, architects and artists at that time, such as Wei Changqing, Zheng Zhenduo, Wu Zuoren, Liang Sicheng and Liu Kaiqu. Since the foundation was laid by Chairman Mao himself on September 30, 1949, Chairman Mao's inscriptions were originally written on the letter paper. After being magnified 20 times, they were carved on the stone tablet. Until May 1, 1958, it was officially completed, which is the longest time-consuming large-scale art project since the founding of new China.

The construction of the monument to the people's Heroes not only gathered the craftsmen at that time, but also had a grand scene of collecting stones. The monument is made of 17000 pieces of granite and white marble. The core stone of the monument, collected from Fushan, Qingdao, is the most important large stone in the construction of the monument. It is a complete granite rarely seen in the history of Chinese architecture. Its stone body is 14.4 meters long, 2.72 meters wide, 3 meters thick, and weighs more than 320 tons. The mining and transportation work took seven and a half months. From April 1, 1953 to October 16, the large stone was transported to Tiananmen Square A total of 7116 workers participated in the construction site from mining to transportation.

According to incomplete statistics, the monument cost more than 300 million yuan from foundation to completion.

On March 4, 1961, it was announced by the State Council of the people's Republic of China as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units, which are listed as revolutionary sites and revolutionary memorial buildings, with serial number of 33.

Scheme formation

resolution

On September 30, 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference adopted a resolution to build a monument to the people's Heroes in the capital.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of urban planning immediately issued a notice to all architectural design units and architectural departments of colleges and universities nationwide on the selection of memorial planning and design. By 1951, more than 140 design plans and design modification plans in various forms had been received (more than 240 by the time of finalization). Overseas Chinese also actively offered suggestions and suggestions. Overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah Kee organized overseas Chinese to draw drawings and make models of cement pillars, and sent them to the Construction Engineering Office of the monument to the people's Heroes at a cost of more than 150000 yuan (old currency).

On May 10, 1952, the Construction Committee of the monument to the people's Heroes in the capital was officially established. Peng Zhen, then Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party committee, was the chairman of the committee, Liang Sicheng, an internationally famous architect, was the deputy director, and Xue Zizheng was the Secretary General.

In order to reflect Premier Zhou Enlai's instruction that the purpose of building monuments is to "commemorate the dead and inspire the living", in March 1953, the capital construction committee selected 8 design schemes from more than 240 kinds of design schemes and widely solicited opinions from professional designers. These eight design schemes include: the typical design of low and scattered, the typical design of high and scattered, the design of making three doors, the typical design of rectangular main column stele shape high, the design of lookout platform, the design of erecting stele on the red wall, the design of erecting group image on the top of stele and the stele shape finally adopted.

In many design ideas, the design opinions are quite different.

divergence

At that time, there were quite different opinions

1. Whether the next block of the monument should be built into a showroom.

2. Whether the lower steps should be used as a review stand.

3. Whether the body of the stone tablet should be made into an empty one with a window on the top for looking out at the appearance of Beijing.

4. The most divergent opinion is the shape of the top of the stele, whether to build the Xieshan style of the top of the stele or the group sculpture of heroes. Because these opinions are not unified, it is difficult to start the project.

Finally, after preliminary consultation between the central leadership in charge of the work and the parties concerned, it was decided that:

1. The base part should be designed according to the exhibition room, with room for change.

2. Because Tiananmen Gate has been used as a large reviewing platform, the lower platform decided not to design the reviewing platform.

3. For the convenience of maintenance, the body of the monument is made into an empty tube, but the top of the tube does not open a lookout window to maintain the solemnity of the monument. The empty tube also greatly reduced the weight of the monument. The total weight of the monument, including the underground concrete, was only about 10000 tons. (due to the reasonable design, although the earthquake resistance factor was not considered at that time, the monument withstood the test of Tangshan earthquake.).

4. For the most difficult to determine the design of the top of the stele, three of the most concentrated design schemes are selected to make a 1:5 model, which is erected on Tiananmen Square to widely solicit the opinions of the people of the whole country.

Just as the bottom floor was about to be completed with all the reinforced concrete according to the design of the exhibition room, the idea that the platform base should be made into a solid body gained the upper hand. The reason they put forward was very convincing: the body of the solid stone tablet seemed solemn and stable, and the following exhibition room was set up, while the body of the stone tablet felt overhead and unstable, which was not suitable for a monument to martyrs.

There has also been extensive discussion about where the monument will be built. At first, some people advocated building it on Dongdan square, some on Qianmen tower, some on the original site of Zhonghua Gate, and some on Babao mountain in the western suburb. Finally, the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference decided to set up the monument in Tiananmen Square, the National Center of people's political activities.

details

General idea

The monument to the people's Heroes is located in the center of Beijing's Tiananmen Square, 463 meters south of Tiananmen Square and 440 meters north of Zhengyangmen square. It is solemn and magnificent, with a unique Chinese national style. In the square and Tiananmen, Zhengyangmen form a harmonious, consistent, complete building complex. The monument to the people's Heroes is square with a construction area of 3000 square meters. It is divided into three parts: pedestal, xumizuo and the body of the tablet, with a total height of 37.94 meters. The pedestal is divided into two layers, surrounded by white marble railings and steps on all sides. The lower seat is in the shape of Begonia, 50.44 meters wide from east to west and 61.54 meters long from north to South; the upper seat is square. There are two layers of xumizuo on the pedestal, and eight wreaths composed of peony, lotus, chrysanthemum and hanging curtain are engraved around the upper xumizuo.

The eight pieces of huge white marble relief embossed on the four sides of the lower part of the Humen are destructed opium, respectively, with the theme of "Wuchang tobacco sales", "Jintian uprising", "Wuchang uprising", "54 movements", "May 30 Movement", "the uprising of the Nanchang", "guerrilla warfare against Japan" and "victory over the Yangtze River". On the two sides of the relief of the "victory over the Yangtze River", there are two other "supporting fronts" and "Huan". Welcome the Chinese people's Liberation Army "as the theme of decorative relief. With a height of 2 meters and a total length of 40.68 meters, the relief is engraved with more than 170 characters, vividly and generally showing the historical facts of the great revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism of the Chinese people over the past 100 years, especially under the leadership of the Communist Party of China for 28 years.

On the top of the East and west sides of the stele, there are decorative patterns composed of red stars, pines and cypresses, and flags, symbolizing the eternal revolutionary spirit of the martyrs. Around the small monument, there are eight big wreaths made up of peony, lotus and chrysanthemum. These flowers symbolize the noble and pure quality and express the people's eternal memory and admiration for the heroes. The top of the stele is a traditional architectural form of the nation. It is the top of a small hall with cirrus clouds above and heavy curtains below. The shape of the monument makes people feel that it has both national style and distinct spirit of the new era.

Relief modeling

Ten large reliefs of white marble are inlaid around the pedestal. These reliefs are two meters high and together they are 40.68 meters long. According to geologists' tests, these reliefs can last at least 800 to 1000 years. There are about 20 heroes in each relief, each of them is the same size as a real person, and their faces, personalities, thoughts, feelings and postures are different.

From the east side of the stele, we look down in historical order. The first relief is "the destruction of opium smoke", describing the eve of the Opium War

Chinese PinYin : Ren Min Ying Xiong Ji Nian Bei