Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and sights, from some post offices or, most easily, from the huge bookstore known as Běijīng Books Building (
CLICK HERE
). Go to the service desk to your far right as you enter the bookstore.
|MUSEUM
HÓNG LÓU
( 29 Wusi Dajie, 8.30am-4.30pm; National Art Museum)
Built in 1918, this red-brick building
was the former library and arts department of Peking University (Běidà), and Mao Zedong
worked here as a librarian from 1918 to 1919 before forming north China's first Commun-
ist Party here. It was also from here that he and his comrades helped launch the 1919 May
Fourth Movement, after which the main road here is named; Wusi means 'five-four'. The
ground floor of the main building now forms the
New Culture Movement Museum
(Xīnwénhuà Yùndòng Jìniànguǎn), which commemorates the movement. The registration
room contains the desk Mao used to work from, and you can also see the office of Li
Dazhao, the library administrator who apparently introduced Mao to books on Marxism.
|HISTORIC BUILDING
LAO SHE MUSEUM
( Lǎo Shě Jìniànguǎn; 19 Fengfu Hutong; 9am-3.40pm, closed Mondays; Dengshikou)
Brimful of un-
complicated charm, this courtyard house off Dengshikou Xijie was the home of Lao She
(1899-1966), one of Běijīng's best-loved 20th-century writers. The life of Lao She - au-
thor of
Rickshaw Boy
and
Tea House,
and former teacher at London's School of Oriental
and African Studies - is detailed in a modest collection of halls, via newspaper cuttings,
first-edition books, photographs and personal effects. The exhibition falls at the final
hurdle, giving perfunctory mention to perhaps the most significant aspect of Lao She's
life: his death by drowning in Taiping Lake on 24 August 1966 after a nasty beating by vi-
tuperative Red Guards the day before. Captions are largely in Chinese.
GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Mao Zedong attempted to exorcise the nation of religious impulses, but today an estimated 400 million Chinese
adhere to one faith or another. The bankruptcy of communism as a popular ideology coupled with wide-ranging
social problems, from vast income disparities to a sense of powerlessness in a one-party state, has encouraged
