City Construction and Fortification

Moat and water system

    Yuan's Khanbaliq had a moat system around the city. In 1368, Ming troops entered Khanbaliq and rebuilt the northern walls slightly south of the original, they built the foundations of the new wall upon the piled earthen hill formed from digging the moat of Khanbaliq. They also dug a new moat for the three main southern gates of the forbidden, imperial and inner city sections. They then connected these three moats with the eastern and western moats of Khanbaliq. When the outer city was built during the Jiajing era, a moat surrounding the outer city was built along.

    The water of Beijing's moat are spring water diverted from Mount Yuquan and Baifuquan northwest of the city. It follows Changhe and diverges into two at Xizhimen. One route going east, forming the inner city's moat system, it divides into two further routes at Deshengmen, one going south, one going east. The southern route enters Jishuitan, the three lakes, and finally entering the moat system at Tongzihe, following the curvature of the city's moat, flowing into the city's southern moat system at Zhengyangmen. The eastern route continues its eastward journey, turning 90 degrees south at the northeastern corner guard tower, converging with the city's southern moat system at Dongbianmen's northwest; Another route goes westwards and then southwards, forming the outer city's moat system, it converges with the inner city's southern and eastern moat system at Dongbianmen, finally entering into Tonghui River.

    The inner city's moat system is widest at Zhengyangmen's southeast, it is between 30 to 50 metres in width there; It is at its most narrow in the section between Dongzhimen and Chaoyangmen, a mere 10 metres in width. The moat is 3 metres at its deepest, and a mere 1 metre at its most shallow near Fuchengmen. The outer city's moat is more narrow and more shallow compared to the inner city's. From its many years of usage, at the end of the Qing dynasty, the artificial moat system had become no different from a natural river system.

    There are water passageways located throughout Beijing's city walls, they help with the input and output of the city's water supply. There are seven passageways in the inner city: Deshengmen West (enters the inner city, 3 passages), Dongzhimen South (leaves the city, 1 passage), Chaoyangmen South (leaves the city, 1 passage), Chongwenmen East (leaves the city, 1 passage), Zhengyangmen East (leaves the city, 1 passage), Zhengyangmen West (leaves the city, 3 passages) and Xuanwumen West (leaves the city, 1 passage). There are three passageways in the outer city: Xibianmen East (enters the outer city, 3 passages), Dongbianmen West (enters the outer city, 3 passages) and Dongbianmen East (inner city and outer city's main drainage, 3 passages). The passageways have a foundation built of rammed earth with stone slabs and stone bricks, followed by a layer of bricks. Each passageway has two or three layers of iron railings, there are also soldiers on guard at these passageways.

    The moat system had a great influence on the daily activities of Beijing's commoners. From the Yongle era of the Ming dynasty until the mid-Qing dynasty, the southern moat system's eastern section were used as canals for the transportation of staple food for entrance into the city. During the winter months when the moat froze over, they were walked upon as shortcuts in and out of the city. When the commoners were leaving the city, they would often board boats by the city's eastern moat system, following the moat southwards, leave the city at Dongbianmen, enter onto Tonghui River which leads to the rural areas of Tongzhou. Every year during the Hungry Ghost Festival, people would place small ships with candlelight on the moats. During the winter months, there would be skating, and the ice would be sawed and saved in underground storages for use in the summer months. The moats are also home to many fishes and ducks.

    In 1953, Beijing's moat system was measured at 41,19 kilometres, however as Beijing continued to expand, the moat system fell out of usage and became underground river systems. During the 1960's, the moat system of the three main southern gates became underground rivers. The western, eastern and northern moat systems became underground rivers in the 1970's. Today, only parts of the inner city's northern moat system, the outer city's southern moat system, the imperial city's moat system and the forbidden city's moat system are still seeing the light of day.

    Besides the moat system, many lake system of the city were landfilled between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s (e.g., Taiping Lake), totalling a land area of 33,4 hectares. Many others such as Longxugou and Lianhuachi decreased in size from partial landfills. However, the government also cleaned up many other lakes outside of the city, forming into larger lakes, subsequently built into public parks (e.g., Taoranting, Longtan Lake, Yuyuantan, and Zizhuyuan). Also some new river systems were built during the 1950's (e.g., Kunyu River and Jingmi Divertion River).

Yuan Khanbaliq

    Yuan's Khanbaliq had 11 city gates, with the eastern, southern, and western sides having three gates per side, and the northern walls having two gates. The three eastern gates going from north to south are as follows: Guangximen, Chongrenmen and Qihuamen; The three southern gates going from west to east are as follows: Shunchengmen, Lizhengmen and Wenmingmen; The three western gates going from north to south are as follows: Suqingmen, Heyimen and Pingzemen; and the two northern gates going from west to east are as follows: Jiandemen and Anzhenmen.

    During the early Ming dynasty, Xu Da was ordered to command the reconstruction of a new city, he found Yuan Khanbaliq's scale too great and thus for the ease of defending the city, built a new northern wall from rammed earth 5 kilometres south of the Yuan original. After the 4th year of the Hongwu era, the original Yuan's northern walls were abandoned, the northern gates of Jiandemen and Anzhenmen along with western wall's northern gate Suqingmen and eastern wall's northern gate Guangximen were abandoned as a result of the northern wall's abandoning. However, they were still used as secondary defense systems during the Ming dynasty. During the rebellion of An Da, there were still some Ming troops stationed at those gates.

    Of the entire Yuan Khanbaliq's fortifications, only a small part of the northern and western sections of the city walls remain, as well as parts of the moat system in those areas. Suqingmen's barbican's wall of rammed earth's southern half can still be seen clearly.

Influences

    Beijing is the capital city of the last three dynasties in the history of China, it is also the last imperial capital built in China's history. As the imperial political, cultural, military and commercial centre of the empire, the city planning and design of Beijing city represents some of the highest achievements in the field by the Ming and Qing dynasties, continuing and improving upon the city building and planning traditions of earlier dynasties. The construction of Beijing's city fortification system took much of the ideas of Yuan's Khanbaliq and Ming's Nanjing, it is a conclusion to Yuan and post-Yuan pre-Republican era city planning styles. It is also the conclusion to China's 3200 year-long square-shaped dynastical city planning style, it is also a possible pinnacle in that regard closely matching the scale of Tang dynasty's Chang'an city planning. During the early Ming, when beijing was chosen as the new capital, Beijing was carefully planned, an axis running through the northern and southern walls' midpoints, dividing the city equally into two, quoting from the Confucian ideals of "居中不偏" and "不正不威". The entire city has the forbidden city's palace complex as its centre, with Longevity Mount (Jingshan) just north of the palaces. The Imperial city surrounds the palaces providing everything necessary for the Emperor's living style within the palace complex. The southern sections of the city are then allocated to officials and bureaucrats, while the inner and outer city are simply extra protection for the imperial city and the palace complex. The streets, avenues, and boulevards of the city are straight and wide, presenting an imperialistic ideal of order. Everything including buddhist temples, taoist temples, business districts, parks, imperial family residences are all planned in accordance with the imperial city's layout, its order being much stricter than that of the Yuan Khanbaliq, and also being on a bigger scale than Yuan's Khanbaliq. On the design of the defences of the city, Beijing's fortifications also took in elements from Northern Song dynasty's «Wujing Zongyao» and Southern Song's already highly developed fortification construction expertise, using bricks and stones as foundations rather than rammed earth, this is the same with all of the structures of serving as the city's defences, including the watchtowers, the corner guard towers, the barbicans, the enemy sight towers, the sluice gate towers and so forth. Forming both planar and spatial defence for the city, it is dynastical China's best fortified city defence system, displaying the late dynastical China's greatest achievements in city fortification design.

    Beijing's fortifications were described by American Architect E.N.Bacon as "Man's greatest single architectural achievement on the face of the Earth". Sweden's scholar, Osvald Siren, once published «Beijing's city walls and city gates» describing the fortification's majestic views, he wrote in his book, "if we compare it (Beijing city) to a giant's body, then the city gates are as the giant's mouth, used for the giant's respiration and speech, the entire city's life are centered around these city gates, like arteries. Those that enter and leave these city gates not only are carts, automobiles, pedestrians, and domesticated animals, but also people's thoughts, ideas, hopes and dreams, expectations and disappointments, and funeral processions and marriage ceremonies symbolising deaths and new lives. When you are standing by the gate's archway, you can feel the liveliness of the entire city, even the entire city's great expectations, all passing incessantly through these rather dark and narrow archways --- the city's heartbeat, pumping life force to this incredibly complex organism called Beijing, giving it life, giving it rhythm." In the conclusion of the book, he presents a pessimistic view of the future of Beijing, whether these fortifications would be able to remain intact in their present forms. Indeed, the fortifications were subsequently dismantled one by one.

Protection

    As the call for a restoration of ancient culture grows stronger and Beijing becoming the host city of the upcoming 29th Olympiad, there have been many demands for a complete or partial reconstruction of the original "凸"-character-shaped city defence system. The recently completed reconstruction of Yongdingmen is one such example, and will most certainly be followed by others in the near future. A restoration of the city's Inner and Outer city moat system which will become part of the public waterway network, reconstruction of the three gates on the south of the city's central axis (and possibly all of the nine gates and three corner guard towers of the Inner city) are already on being discussed by officials. However, most of the original sites of the gates have become sites of major developments since their dismantlement, such as Fuchengmen, Chaoyangmen, and Xuanwumen, which are now busy roads with high rises. This presents much difficulty if the city government were to start reconstruction work there. There have also been some alternatives of reconstructing them at a nearby site where it is less crowded. Some of the more likely projects are the restoration of the remaining fortifications, and the reconstruction of parts of the city walls, which are less daunting and require much less funding. Between 2001 and 2003, the remaining section of the southern Inner city city wall's eastern sections located in the south of the Beijing train station were completely restored and opened to the public as the "Ming dynasty city wall site public park". Between 2005 and 2006, the remaining sections of Beijing eastern Inner city city wall's south section were restored and merged with the "Ming dynasty city wall site public park". Currently, the Southeastern corner guard tower is being restored, and when completed will join the southern wall east section and eastern wall south section as the "Ming dynasty city wall site public park". Restoration of Beijing Ancient Observatory's sections of the city wall and its enemy sight tower are under planning, as well as Zhengyangmen's barbican.