Beijing City Fortifications - Influences

Influences

Beijing, the political, cultural, military, and commercial centre of the empire, was the capital city of the last three dynasties of China; it was the last imperial capital built in China's history. Continuing and improving upon the construction and planning traditions of earlier dynasties, Beijing embodied some of the highest achievements in the field of city planning during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The construction of the fortification system borrowed ideas from Dadu of the Yuan era and Nanjing of the Ming era, and typified the Yuan and post-Yuan pre-Republican era city planning styles. It is the final example of China's 3,200 year-long square-shaped dynastical city planning style. It closely matched the scale of Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty. The city was carefully planned during the early Ming dynasty, with a central axis running through the midpoints of the northern and southern walls, dividing the city into two equal parts to fulfil the Confucian ideals of "居中不偏" and "不正不威". The Forbidden city was at the centre of it all, with Longevity Mount (Jingshan) just north of the palaces. The Imperial city, surrounding the palaces, provided everything necessary for the maintenance of the Emperor's lifestyle within the Forbidden city. The southern sections of the city were allocated to officials and bureaucrats, while the Inner and Outer city served as extra protection for the Imperial city and the palace complex. The streets, avenues, and boulevards of the city were straight and wide, presenting the imperialistic ideal of order. Everything, including Buddhist temples, Taoist temples, business districts, parks, and imperial family residences were all planned in accordance with the city's layout, its order being much stricter than that of Dadu, and larger in scale. The design of Beijing's fortifications borrowed elements from the Wujing Zongyao of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) and the already highly developed fortification construction expertise of the Southern Song (1127–1279). All of the structures used bricks and stones as foundations rather than rammed earth, including the watchtowers, the corner guard towers, the barbicans, the enemy sight towers, and the sluice gate towers. Forming both a planar and spatial defence for the city, it was 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 Edmund Bacon as "man's greatest single architectural achievement on the face of the Earth". Swedish scholar Osvald Sirén described the fortification's majestic views in his book The Walls and Gates of Peking. He wrote, "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 is 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." He concluded with a pessimistic view as to whether the fortifications would remain intact into the future. Indeed, the fortifications were subsequently dismantled one by one.