Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.' Mao
Zedong
The Great Leap Forward
The move to tear down the city's walls, widen the roads and demolish the distinctive
páilóu
(ceremonial arches) started immediately after 1949, but was fiercely contested by
some intellectuals, including Liang Sicheng, who ran the architecture department of
Qīnghuá University. So in the midst of the demolition of many famous landmarks, the
municipal authorities earmarked numerous buildings and even old trees for conservation.
However, it was all to no avail - Mao's brutal political purges silenced all opposition.
The Cultural Revolution
Those intellectuals who escaped persecution in the 1950s were savagely dealt with during
the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Qīnghuá University became the birthplace of the Red
Guards (a mass movement of young radicals, mobilised by Mao). In the 'bloody August'
of 1966, Běijīng's middle-school students turned on their teachers, brutally murdering
some of them. Some reports estimate almost 2000 people were killed in Běijīng at this
time. The number excludes those beaten to death as they tried to escape Běijīng on trains
- their registration as residents of Běijīng suddenly cancelled. The headquarters of the
Cultural Revolution in Běijīng was in the Jiànguóménwài embassy area. It has since been
demolished, and the site is now occupied by the Si-tech Department Store.
In the 1958 Great Leap Forward, the last qualms about preserving old Běijīng were aban-
doned. A new plan was approved to destroy 80% of the old capital. The walls were pulled
down, but the series of ring roads planned at the time were never built.
Going Underground
By 1969 Mao had fallen out with Moscow and he prepared China for a nuclear war. The
city's population was turned out to build tunnels and nuclear fallout shelters. Bricks from
the city walls and even the Old Summer Palace were used to build these. You can still vis-
it the tunnels and shelters built during those years in a few places, such as Dìtán Park,
where the tunnels are used as an ice rink, and at Yuètán Park, where the tunnels have been
converted into a shopping arcade.
