Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FROM THE BEGINNING
The Great Capital of the Mongols
The place we now call Běijīng first rose to true prominence when it was turned into a capit-
al city by Kublai Khan (1215-94), the founder of the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty. The
Mongols called the city Khanbalik, and it was from here that the descendants of Genghis
Khan (Kublai Khan was his grandson) ruled over the largest land empire in world history.
This is where Marco Polo, one of many thousands of foreigners drafted to help the Mon-
gols govern China, came to serve as an official. Běijīng was really only the winter capital
for Kublai Khan, who chose to spend the summer months at Běijīng's sister city, Xanadu,
which lay to the north, 1800m up on the steppes. This was called the 'Upper Capital', or
'Shàngdū' in Chinese, while Běijīng was 'Dàdū' or 'Great Capital'.
The Mongols became the first 'barbarian' tribe to attempt to rule China. They ruled from
Běijīng for just short of a century, from 1272 to 1368.
Běijīng seems a curious place to have been selected as capital of the Yuan empire, or in-
deed any empire. For one thing, it lacks a river or access to the sea. It is on the very outer
edge of the great northern plain, and very far indeed from the rich rice granaries in the
south and the source of China's lucrative exports of tea, silk and porcelain. Throughout his-
tory the Han Chinese considered this barbarian territory, home to a series of hostile predat-
ory dynasties such as the Liao (907-1125) and the Jin (1115-1234), who also both made
Běijīng their capital. To this day Chinese historians describe these peoples as primitive
'tribes' rather than nations, perhaps a prejudice from the ancient antipathy between nomad-
ic pastoralist peoples and the sedentary farmers who are the Chinese.
Běijīng's First City Walls
Běijīng had first become a walled settlement back in AD 938 when the Khitans, one of the
nomadic 'barbarian tribes', established it as an auxiliary southern capital of their Liao dyn-
asty. When they were overthrown by Jurchens from Manchuria, the progenitors of the
Manchus, it became Zhōngdū or 'Middle Capital'. Each of these three successive barbarian
dynasties enlarged the walled city and built palaces and temples, especially Buddhist
temples. They secured a supply of water by channelling streams from the otherwise dry
limestone hills around Běijīng, and stored it in the lakes that still lie at the heart of the city.
