The capital of both the Ming and Qing dynasties, Beijing (or Peking) arose on the site of the Yuan “Great Capital,” with renovations and expansions in 1421 during the early Ming dynasty. In the conception, planning, layout, and architectural art, the Ming and Qing capital developed traditional capital planning to a high degree in the history of China’s city construction.
History
The Ming dynasty was founded in 1368, with Nanjing (meaning “Southern Capital”) as its capital. In the same year (the first year of Hongwu’s reign), the Yuan “Great Capital” was renamed Beiping. In 1403, Beiping was upgraded to the country’s capital and renamed Beijing (Peking), literally “Northern Capital.” The construction was started in the fourth year of Yongle’s reign; in the fifteenth, a number of palaces were built, and in the nineteenth, the capital was relocated northward from Nanjing to Beijing. For the construction, 27,000 craftsmen were gathered, 200,000–300,000 skilled workers were mobilized, and nearly one million peasants were enlisted. After the downfall of the Ming dynasty, the Qing emperors kept Beijing as the capital. Due to fire and earthquake, in the early Qing dynasty, many palaces were devastated. Most of the present Beijing palaces were renovated during the Qing dynasty although the original layout still remains.
Inner and Outer Cities
The enclosed walls of the inner city were first built during the Yuan dynasty, then known as the “Great Capital.” In the fourth year of Hongwu’s reign in the Ming dynasty, enclosure walls were built six kilometers southward (the present-day Desheng and Anding gates); in the seventeenth year of Yongle’s reign, the wall was relocated outward by one kilometer (the present-day Zhengyang, Chongwen, and Xuanwu gates) to form an inner city measuring 6,635 meters in length from east to west and 5,350 meters in width from south to north. During the reign of Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing dynasty, an expanse of residential areas and marketplaces appeared outside the southern Inner City walls. In order to strengthen the city’s defense, an outer city wall was also constructed, measuring 7,950 meters in length from east to west and 3,100 meters in width from south to north. The planned eastern, western, and northern Outer City walls, however, failed to be constructed due to lack of adequate funds. Later, the Qing imperial government was on peaceable terms with northern ethnic minorities and found it unnecessary to build any outer city walls. As a result, the layout of the capital Beijing in the Qing dynasty was convex-shaped. The population was nearly one million during the late Ming dynasty, and exceeded that figure during the Qing dynasty.
Layout
The city planning of the Ming capital of Beijing reflects the country’s history and ritual philosophy mainly in following ways:
Functional Zoning
The Palace City (i.e., the Forbidden City, now the Palace Museum) was located in the center, ringed by the Imperial City and then by the inner city, and thus was known as the “ternary ring city.” Inside the Palace City was the traditional arrangement of “the front imperial court and the rear dwelling place,” with the palace halls for the emperor to supervise governance, the residence, and the imperial gardens. In front of the southern gate of the Palace City lay the imperial shrine and the sacrificial altar for land and grain deities. To the south were the offices for five governmental departments and six divisions. Near the northern gate were some marketplaces and palace-serving handicraft workshops. Such arrangements carried forth the traditional layout of Chinese capitals featuring “the front imperial court and the rear marketplace with ancestral and deity shrines on the left and right.” The residential areas were distributed around the Imperial City, with thirty-seven total, and then amalgamated to ten neighborhoods during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The residential structure resembled those of big capitals, its rectangular alleys zoning the neighborhoods into different residential areas. The inner city was occupied by officials, nobles, landlords, and businesspeople, while the outer city was inhabited by the common people. In the beginning of the Qing dynasty, the Manchus lived in the inner city, while the Han and other ethnic groups lived in the outer city. Business areas were distributed densely. During the Ming dynasty, a prosperous business center formed near the Dongsi Archway and the front gate of the southern inner city. Other trades are reflected by the present street names in Beijing and by the rice, vegetable, and porcelain marketplaces. Some parts of the inner city formed regular trade fairs and temple fairs, such as the Lantern Fair during Lantern Festival, lasting ten days. During the Qing dynasty, two temple fairs (the Flower Fair and the Local God of the Land Temple Fair) were located in the inner city, while three (the White Pagoda, Nation Defending, and Grand Happiness Temple Fairs) were held in the outer city. In addition, there was also a regular commercial street, including the West Grand Market. Most warehouses for businesses were situated in eastern Beijing because transportation during the Qing dynasty depended largely on the Great Canal, accessible to Tongzhou via a canal wharf.
Architectural Layout
The layout of the capital included an axis which ran from the Gate of Eternal Settlement in the south to the Drum-Bell Towers in the north, at a length of eight kilometers, as the central artery. All the imperial palaces and other key structures were located along the axis. The southern section of this axis was a straight avenue bordered by two groups of complexes, the Temple of Heaven and the Altar of the God of Agriculture, from the Front Gate northward to the t-shaped square in front of the palace via the Great Ming (later “Qing”) Gate. The southern plot of the square lay between the eastern and western rows of “thousand-step corridors” to form a narrow access, whereas the northern plot expanded to the left and right like two wings. At the northernmost stood the magnificent Tian’anmen Gate, decorated with white marble “golden stream bridges” and ornamental pillars. Passing through the Tian’anmen Gate, the Gate of Uprightness, the Meridian Gate, and the Gate of Great Harmony, visitors reached the six grand palace halls (Great Harmony, Central Harmony, Preserving Harmony in the front, and Heavenly Purity, Union, and Earthly Peace in the rear) renovated during the Qing dynasty, which featured varied styles, structures, and courtyards and together took up key positions on the axis. Prospect Hill towers fifty meters above the northern Forbidden City, the highest point of the city. To the north of Prospect Hill, through the northern Di’an Gate of the imperial city, visitors reach the Drum and the Bell Towers, the destination of the axis.
Road System
The chessboard-like road network of Beijing during the Ming and Qing dynasties formed a crisscrossing communication network from south to north and from east to west. The artery within the city ran from the front of the Palace City through the Gate of Eternal Settlement and ended after passing through many other inner city gates. In the outer city, two exterior avenues continued through the Gate of Advocating Literature and the Gate of Military Might and passed horizontal streets which linked the two avenues. The Imperial City comprises two neighborhoods, east and west, in which quite a few T-shaped slope lanes were built to facilitate local accessibility.
Landscaping
The main palace gardens of the Ming dynasty, such as the one to the west of the Forbidden City, were constructed at the resting palace sites centered on the North and Central Lakes and the Jade Islet. In the beginning of the Ming dynasty, a South Lake was chiseled near the two lakes. As of the Qing dynasty, with the three lakes as the center, more palace gardens were built, each subtly arranged with an expanse of horticultural woods and waters. They remain great artworks as well as the fundamental gardening attractions in downtown Beijing. In the Qing dynasty, a number of imperial palace gardens were also constructed in a northwestern suburb, including the Old Summer Palace, the Eternal Spring, and the Ten Thousand Spring. These palace gardens form attractive artificial landscapes, each with different features. In the inner city of the Qing dynasty, there were also numerous private gardens in noblemen’s and high-ranking officials’ homes.
Water Supply and Drainage
In ancient times, the drinking water supply mainly depended on artificially dug wells, with the water then sparsely distributed and shared among the alleys. In the Yuan dynasty, the White Float Spring and then the Jade Hill Spring were channeled from a northwestern suburb into the capital as new water supply sources to the palaces, gardens, and even the Great Canal. As of the Ming dynasty, due to a lack of channel maintenance and spring water cutout, the city was short of water except for the limited flow from the Jade Hill Spring Pool into the water storage pond via the Jar Hill Lake, with a stream flowing into the North and Central Lakes. In the Qing dynasty, the Jar Hill Spring Pool was dug into Kunming Lake to provide channel irrigation and a water supply for the artificial landscapes. The water drainage system of Beijing during the Ming and Qing dynasties was also developed on the basis of the Great Capital of Yuan dynasty. Inside the Forbidden City, the drainage ditches and channels formed an independent system, with some gutters and an open channel known as the Inner Golden Stream. The channel was also used as a moat for defense, inner city water supply, and sewage drainage. The Xishui Pass outside the Gate of Virtue and Victory channels from the upper moat waters into the pass, while the one outside the Three Front Gates drains the lower moat and sewage. There was one moat built during the Ming dynasty and several major ditches: the East Ditch, the West Ditch, and the ditch under the Imperial Stream Bridge. Inside the city, the moats and ditches flow on from north to south following certain landforms. Outside the Zhengyang Gate are a few open channels named Dragon Beard, Tiger Bridge, and Sanlihe. These play a role in the case of excessive flooding of the moat outside the Three Front Gates, and also contribute to the inner city’s water drainage.