Tiantan needs no introduction – next to the Forbidden City itself it's probably Beijing's best-known landmark, and the graceful curves of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿) adorn the official correspondence of no less an entity than the Beijing Municipal Government. The emperors of China feared no man – only here were they obliged to bend their knee before Heaven.
The neighborhoods surrounding Tiantan were as profane as the temple was holy – dedicated to commerce and development, they were the designated testing grounds for modernization and westernization during the early 20th century. Prosperity has since passed them by of course (and most of the old neighborhoods are slated for eventual demolition), but each phase of their historical transformation has left its mark.
Someday I will live here
I feel like I say this about once a week, but I've found the spot I want to live if I ever rouse myself to move apartments. It's not far from Xiangchang Lu, which is part of the appeal, but it would be great anywhere: Jiuwan Hutong (九弯胡同, Nine-turns Alley) is smack in the middle of a very loud part of town, but once you've entered its twisty turns, the world retreats into a distant murmur. That's because one end is almost unlocatable amid the rubble of Qianmen Dajie, and the other is so narrow you skin both shoulders getting in. Not only that, but rumors of a murder which once occurred at this entranceway have kept traffic even lower than it might have been.
Right in the middle of Jiuwan Hutong, four and a half turns from either end, the alley opens up into a tiny little courtyard. It's kept clean and tidy by the locals, features an apple tree and some flower beds, and there is a sofa in one corner. The sun comes in, the noise does not. BYOB.
April 24, 8:14a.m.
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The Best Building in Beijing
I dare anyone to argue with this one. Go to Xiangchang Lu (香厂路, 'Incense Factory Road'), shuffle through the crowds down to the Wanming Lu (万明路) intersection, and look to your left. That crumbling edifice, my friends, was once the poshest of posh locations: the New World Shopping Center (新世界商场). This is a forgotten corner of Beijing now, but at the end of the Qing dynasty it was ground zero for Cixi's too-little-too-late project of modernization and westernization. These streets were some of the first to be paved and widened (narrow as they may seem to us today), and new government facilities were built in the area. After the Qing, the Northern Warlords government (北洋政府) and later the Nationalist government continued the development of this area, building hospitals, residential areas and a number of public squares – the square in front of the Tianqiao Theater is an imitation of these.
Xiangchang Lu really came into its own in 1917, with the construction of the New World Shopping Center. This four-story building provided entertainment in the form of music, shows and dining, and all the fanciest people were seen there. It had a rooftop garden and was one of three buildings in Beijing to sport an elevator. Its glory days were short however: a guest committed suicide here in 1918, and shortly after that the walls of another nearby pleasure-palace collapsed, killing yet more partygoers. That killed the local vibe, and marked the end of Xiangchang Lu as the Sunset Boulevard of its day. The south end of town remained the economic and political center of town until 1927, when the Nationalist government moved to Nanjing, leaving 南城 to begin the long slow decline into its present obscurity.
These days, the grand business of progress and development has been replaced by the more anonymous (though equally vigorous) business of daily living. Xiangchang Lu is absolutely packed with regular Beijing residents, and the shops which once sold the treasures of modernity now sell the staff of life (there are more than 100 food-stalls and restaurants between Xiangchang Lu and the nearby Liuxue Hutong 留学胡同). The New World Shopping Center has become an apartment building; its residents may or may not think much about the history of the place where they live. As far as I'm concerned, its glory has only increased.
April 24, 7:49a.m.
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Sorry little Fahua
So apparently there are two Fahua Temples (法华寺): this one here, and another one that actually looks nice. The point of contention is that one of them once played an exciting role in history, and the other didn't. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi was planning a coup against the Guangxu Emperor, who looked likely to agree a constitutional monarchy – unacceptable to Cixi, who didn't need no stinkin' constitution. Guangxu, who saw the writing on the wall, asked reform-minded intellectuals – including Tan Sitong (谭嗣同) and Kang Youwei (康有为) – to lend a hand. Tan Sitong arranged for a secret meeting with Yuan Shikai (袁世凯), a powerful military commander, and they met in "Fahua Temple".
In the end Yuan Shikai screwed the reformers, but for our purposes the pressing issue is: which Fahua Temple did they meet in? There's this one, in Chongwen district, and another west of the back gate of the Central University for Nationalities (中央民族大学), and apparently both claim the honor. According to sleuthing in this article from the Old Beijing website, it's the Haidian Fahua Temple that wins the prize (the article says that there are actually four Fahua Temples in Beijing). Apparently Yuan Shikai wrote in his diary that he traveled by sedan chair from his lodgings in the Summer Palace to the Fahua Temple and back within one or two shíchén (时辰, one shichen being two hours), which would have been an impossible trip had he been referring to the Chongwen temple.
Which leaves our sorry Chongwen Fahua Temple not only ill-favored but also historically undistinguished. I followed intricate instructions from the internet (ain't the internet grand?): up the first alley to the east, left at the public toilet, head for the men's but bear straight on at the last minute and duck through a gate… I found myself in some danwei or other, a clothing factory I think, and took this highly unprepossessing photograph:
That's what's left of the interior of the Fahua Temple, though you'd be hard-pressed to know it for all the laundry hanging out to dry. For this I got yelled at by some old man. Fahua Temple, we had hoped for more from ye…
March 31, 1:57p.m.
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Layering
Pity the south end of town. They get no attention or investment, and they've got that distinctly down-at-heel feel – cross Zhushikou Dajie and you might think you're in another city altogether. That's worked to their advantage in some ways. The post-1980s development skipped over this area, and some neighborhoods have preserved their history in an unusual way: unlike Xisi or Dongsi, where the hutongs look much like they must have 100 years ago, southern Beijing traces the early course of China's industrialization.
Take the area north-east of Tiantan, say. Rumor has it the winding hutongs were originally laid down over little winding streams in the area (similar to the Houhai area). Those hutongs are still present, and the buildings retain their original shape, but the building materials have been jumbled together haphazardly: crumbling Qing-dynasty grey brick alternates with bright-red New China brick; concrete pillars support wooden roof-beams; sheets of corrugated iron shield elaborate lintel paintings. It's as if the whole neighborhood had been traced over, using a completely different brush, once every twenty years or so.
The abortive industrialization of the Republican period, when southern Beijing was the locus of modernized development, is also apparent. Crumbling warehouses stand where courtyards were razed, gantry cranes stick out of awkward two-story structures, and metal workshops abound. It's pretty quiet now, of course – the engines of China's economy look very different these days – but it's all still there, right where they left it, and there it will stay… until they knock it down.
March 31, 8:25a.m.
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The Pillars of Tiantan
I should be laughed out of town for my gullibility, but I just have to know – I have it on exceedingly unreliable authority that the pillars in the Dragon Fountain of Tiantan were partially re-constructed after the earthquake of 1889 using timber imported from Oregon State in the US. I'm not even going to say where I heard this, because it's embarrassing, but if we could get a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, that would be wonderful. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
March 6, 2:25p.m.
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Jingzhong Miao
On the maps from which I'm operating, there's a little temple icon marked with the words Jingzhong Miao (精忠庙) in the area directly north and west of Tiantan. Three separate streets approach the temple from east, west and south, but each appears to peter out just before it reaches the mark. To those of us possessed of a certain psychological makeup this sort of thing constitutes a flagrant (nigh insolent!) challenge, answerable only by forty-five minutes spent weaseling through alleys and squinting at the sun, trying to triangulate the likely location of the Temple of Exemplified Loyalty.
The short version of the story is: the temple hasn't existed since the fifties, though I didn't actually find that out until I got my hands on a copy of Susan Naquin's encyclopaedic Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900, now known at my house as The Big Book of Temples. The longer version is, the Jingzhong Miao was a Ming-era temple damaged by the earthquake of 1679, and rebuilt by an alliance of local guilds and "occupational groups". It thereafter served partially as a place of worship for the gods of leatherworkers, actors and oil painters, and partially as a huìguǎn (会馆) or guild-house for those groups – the craft/commercial character of this area runs deep.
During the hunt, at the very eastern end of Xibanbi Jie (西半壁街), I came upon the doorway above. Set under the eaves was this Eight-Trigrams insignia, deeply scored (almost certainly during the Cultural Revolution) but still visible. There's no reason to think this is directly connected to the Jingzhong Miao (though Naquin notes that many of the rites there were performed by Daoist priests), but it was still a nice little find on an otherwise fruitless hunt.
March 5, 11:44a.m.
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