THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Beijing - page 147

parks. The lake is a popular place to skate in the winter - you can rent skates for ￥ 10 an
hour.
Originally established and administered by Americans at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, the university stood on the hill in Jingshan Park before moving to its present site in
1953. Now busy with new contingents of students (including many from abroad), it was half-
deserted during the Cultural Revolution , when students and teachers alike, regarded as sus-
piciously liberal, were dispersed for “re-education”. Later, in 1975-76, Beida was the power
base of the radical left in their campaign against Deng Xiaoping, the pragmatist who was in
control of the day-to-day running of the Communist Party's Central Committee during Mao's
twilight years. The university's intake suffered when new students were required to spend a
year learning Party dogma after 1989; now it's once again a centre for challenging political
thought.
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Wudaokou
Wudaokou subway (line 13)
The Wudaokou district sits close to the Peking and Tsinghua university complexes. As you'd
expect of an area featuring thousands and thousands of China's best students (and an ever-
growing number from abroad, particularly South Korea), it puts forward a youthful, cosmo-
politan air. Wudaokou is regarded as the home of Beijing's alternative culture; for the casual
visitor, it's best used as a place to eat or to catch the local rock bands .
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Dazhong Temple
大钟寺 , dàzhōng sì • Beisanhuan Lu • Tues-Sun 8.30am-4.30pm • ￥ 15 •

dazhongsi.org • Dazhongsi sub-

way (line 13)
Deriving its name from the enormous bell hanging in the back, the Dazhong Temple 's halls
( dazhong means big bell) now house one of Beijing's most interesting little exhibitions,
showcasing several hundred bronze bells from temples all over the country. The bells here
are considerable works of art, their surfaces enlivened with embossed texts in Chinese and
Tibetan, abstract patterns and images of storks and dragons. The odd, scaly, dragon-like
creature shown perching on top of each bell is a pulao , a legendary animal supposed to shriek
when attacked by a whale (the wooden hammers used to strike the bells are carved to look
like whales). The smallest bell here is the size of a goblet; the largest, a Ming creation called
the King of Bells , is as tall as a two-storey house. Hanging in the back hall, it is, at fifty
tonnes, the biggest and oldest surviving functional bell in the world, and can reputedly be
heard up to 40km away. You can climb up to a platform above it to get a closer look at some
of the 250,000 Chinese characters on its surface, and join visitors in trying to throw a coin