Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MAO'S B
Ě
IJ
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NG
The People Stand Up
In the spring of 1949 Mao Zedong and the communist leadership were camped in the west-
ern suburbs around Bādàchù, an area that is still the headquarters of the PLA. On 1 October
1949, Mao mounted the Gate of Heavenly Peace and declared the founding of the People's
Republic of China, saying the Chinese people had stood up. He spoke only a few words in
one of the very few public speeches he ever made.
Mao then moved into Zhōngnánhǎi, part of the chain of lakes and gardens immediately
west of the Forbidden City and dating back to Kublai Khan. Marshal Yuan Shikai
(1859-1916) had lived there too during his short-lived attempt to establish his own dynasty
after 1911. Nobody is quite sure why he chose Běijīng as his capital, or why he failed to
carry out his intention to raze the Forbidden City.
Mao worked as a library assistant at the former Peking University campus known as Hóng
Lóu (the Red Building), now a small museum.
After 1949 many of new China's top leaders followed Mao's cue and moved their homes
and offices into the old princely palaces
(wángfǔ),
thus inadvertently preserving much of
the old architecture.
Industrialising
Mao wished to turn Běijīng from a 'city of consumption into a city of production'. 'Chair-
man Mao wants a big modern city: he expects the sky there to be filled with smokestacks,'
said Peng Zhen, the first Party Secretary of Běijīng, to China's premier architectural histor-
ian, Liang Sicheng, as they stood on the Gate of Heavenly Peace looking south.
Factories Galore
Thousands of factories sprang up in Běijīng and quite a few were built in old temples. In
time Běijīng developed into a centre for steel, chemicals, machine tools, engines, electri-
city, vinegar, beer, concrete, textiles, weapons - in fact, everything that would make it an
economically self-sufficient 'production base' in case of war. By the 1970s Běijīng had be-
come one of the most heavily polluted cities in the world.
