Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
REPUBLICAN CHINA
After 1900, the last tribute barges arrived in Běijīng and a railway line ran along the tradi-
tional invasion route through the Jūyōng Pass to Bādálǐng. You can see the handsome clock
tower and sheds of Běijīng's first railway station (Qiánmén Railway Station), recently re-
stored as the Běijīng Railway Museum, on the southeast corner of Tiān'ānmén Square.
Běijīng never became an industrial or commercial centre - that role went to nearby Tiānjīn
on the coast. Yet it remained the leading political and intellectual centre of China until the
late 1920s.
Hotbed of Student Activity
In the settlement imposed after 1900, China had to pay the victors heavy indemnities. Some
of this money was returned to China and used to build the first modern universities, includ-
ing what are now the Oxford and Cambridge of China - Qīnghuá and Peking Universities.
Běijīng's university quarter was established in the Hǎidiàn district, near the Old Summer
Palace (some campuses are actually in the imperial parkland). Intellectuals from all over
China continued to gravitate to Běijīng, including the young Mao Zedong, who arrived to
work as a librarian in 1921.
1919 May Fourth Movement
Běijīng students and professors were at the forefront of the 1919 May Fourth Movement.
This was at once a student protest against the Versailles Treaty, which had awarded Ger-
many's concessions in China to Japan, and an intellectual movement to jettison the Con-
fucian feudal heritage and Westernise China. Mao himself declared that to modernise China
it was first necessary to destroy it. China's intellectuals looked around the world for models
to copy. Some went to Japan, others to the USA, Britain, Germany or, like Deng Xiaoping
and Zhou Enlai, France. Many went to study Marxism in Moscow.
Some of 20th-century China's best literature was written in Běijīng in the 1920s and 1930s by
the likes of Lao She, Lin Huiyin, Xu Zhimou, Shen Congwen and Qian Zhongshu.
Modernising the City
As the warlords marched armies in and out of Běijīng, the almost medieval city began to
change. Temples were closed down and turned into schools. The last emperor, Puyi, left the
 
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