Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(1937-1945), there was a bit of a slipup, and in an effort to safely keep the relics away from
the occupying Japanese, someone actually lost them. Sadly, the pieces have never been
found, and rumors as to their whereabouts are colorful and inconclusive—some say they are
buried under a tree in Ritan Park (tree found—no relics); others say they sank with the MV
Awa Maru
, a Red Cross relief ship that was mistakenly torpedoed in 1945 by the Amer-
ican submarine USS
Queenfish
(the wreck was found after a five-year, multimillion-dollar
search by China—no relics). Digging at Zhoukoudian resumed after the war, but the discov-
eries later made were far less impressive than those of the previous excavations. You can
now visit the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Museum to try to get an insight into this people's
existence. However, thanks to the signature pieces going walkabout, you might feel a little
nonplussed about having made the hour-or-so journey to get there.
The next group of people found to have moved into the area couldn't have gotten much
closer to where the center of the city now sits. In 1996, workers excavating the ground
to build the Oriental Plaza on the corner of Chang'an Jie and Wangfujing Dajie (about
700 meters from the Forbidden City) uncovered a large collection of stone age tools and
bones. These were somewhat younger than those of the Peking Man clan, being a mere
24,000-25,000 years old, but impressive nonetheless. Rather than flattening the site with the
construction, however, the owners paused for about six months to examine the fossils care-
fully, then built around it. So now, below ground, wedged between one of Beijing's ritziest
shopping malls and the Wangfujing subway station on Line 1 is the Beijing Wangfujing Pa-
leolithic Museum, housing the remains of people who lived not by shopping but by hunting
on what was then a place of verdant plains.
Other such discoveries around the municipality point to Beijing's continuous suitability
for habitation. In Changping district in the north and Fangshan district in the southwest, for
example, implements of other ancient settlements have been found, showing that farming
was popular here even just 6,000-7,000 years ago.
Evidence of China's dynastic past begins around 4,000 years ago with the Xia dynasty re-
portedly kicking things off in about 2070 BC. This dynasty established itself farther south in
the country, however, and Beijing doesn't really get a mention in history topics until about
1046 BC, when the Zhou dynasty put paid to the Shang.
