Chapter 2 Two Beijing

Two Beijing 1 When Zhu Pin arrived in the city, Beijing was still officially known as Beiping. In 1930, the Kuomintang was still in power.Gone are the days of warlord melee.China is once again united.After the turmoil in the first few years of the Republic, China has always firmly believed in developing into a modern country.Zhu Pin felt proud and happy. Six hundred and fifty-five years before Zhu Pin arrived in Beijing, another traveler, a Venetian merchant named Marco Polo, visited this beautiful city.At that time Beijing was still a new city, the magnificent and huge capital of the Mongol Empire.Kublai Khan ordered the city to be built across the river from the ancient imperial city of the Chinese Empire.

Marco Polo set out from Venice with his father Nicholas and uncle Mavro (the two had visited Kublai Khan's court fifteen years earlier), and the three of them traveled through Asia Minor, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.Delayed for a year by an illness in the Persian Gulf, they struggled against all odds and had to trek across the rocky, snowy desolation of the "roof of the world" - the Pamirs, eastward through China's Turkic region , the Gobi Desert and the Yellow River Basin in northern China, and finally reached the court of Kublai Khan.The trip took them three and a half years.All the territory they traveled—Asia Minor to China—was the domain of the great Mongol Empire founded by Kublai Khan's grandfather, Genghis Khan.

When Marco Polo arrived in Shangdu, Kublai Khan's career was in full swing. He had conquered the Tartars in the north. A year after Marco Polo's arrival, he continued to fight against the Chinese and won a decisive victory. In 1277 Kublai Khan the Great Khan became emperor of China.He founded what is known as the Mongol Dynasty, and he established this new capital, which heralds the beginning of China's "modern" history. More than 600 years ago, the young Marco Polo described the new capital of Beijing: The shape of the new city was square, twenty-four miles round, six miles on each side, surrounded by earthen walls, ten paces thick at the base, but thinner at the higher heights, and less than three paces thick at the top, and in all its parts the defensive wall was white. .A central axis dominates the entire city. The city is well planned and the streets are usually straight. If one climbs on the wall of a door and looks straight ahead, one can see the opposite door at the other end of the city.There are many shops and stalls on both sides of the street.The land allotted to the inhabitants of the whole city is square and in line with each other.Each allotted piece of land is sufficient to build a beautiful house, with corresponding yards and gardens.These lands are allotted to the owners of the various families.The property is then passed down from generation to generation.Under such planning, the entire inner city is planned in various squares, like a chessboard, and the precision and beauty of the planning are indescribable.There were twelve gates in the wall, three gates on each side of the square, and above where each gate joined the wall was an elegant building; on each side of the square were five such buildings, in which were many The large room, in which the troops guarding the city were stationed, and each gate was guarded by three thousand soldiers.It would be incomprehensible by any measure to say that the troops stationed here were meant to meet the threat of any hostile power, but the guards were befitting of the dynastic honor and majesty.

In the center of the city, there is a big bell hanging on a tall building, and the bell is heard every night. After the bell rings three times at night, no one dares to walk on the street, unless there is some kind of emergency, such as a woman giving birth or someone has a sudden illness. sick.In these last resorts, that person must also carry a lamp. Outside each gate is a suburb, which is open and extends to join the suburbs of the nearest gates, three or four miles long.The population of residents living in the suburbs exceeds that of the city.Every suburb is separated from the city by a mile, and merchants from all over the country live in numerous inns or inns; there are special places for each different ethnic group, as we often say, one goes to the place where the Lombards live , the other goes where the Germans live, and the third goes where the French live.

The city of Beijing is still divided into two: the inner city and the outer city, with Qianmen in the south.Miles of walls surround the city, and although it is not as densely populated as the inner city, there are many bustling streets, parks, entertainment venues and theaters right at the front door.The houses outside the city are small and small, with many mulberry fields, small chicken coops and ponds. At the southernmost point are the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Earth, where the emperor used to hold New Year sacrifices and pray for blessings from the gods. On the second day after arriving, Zhu Pin visited the city. The layout of the Beijing city he saw was basically the same as what Marco Polo said.Beijing is a well-planned and well-organized city, just like the chessboard layout mentioned by Marco Polo.Two notable avenues, one in the east and the other in the far west of the city, run from the southernmost gatehouse to the northernmost gatehouse, six miles away.Since there are no obstructions, a person can usually see the gatehouses at a glance from a great distance, but they are best seen in twilight or mist.

Zhu Pin likes the sense of space in the city of Beijing and the vista of the wide and straight streets.Standing at Qianmen Square, right at the south gate of the inner city, he could see the outline of the south gate of the outer city.Looking north through the arch of the front gate into the inner city, he saw a series of gate towers, which drew his eyes to the golden roof of the Forbidden City. The former name of the Forbidden City is the city of emperors. .Walking straight into the south gate is a square, where acacia trees are sparsely planted, and the square is big enough to hold a million people.Here along the grand Tiananmen Avenue to the east and west, the mud walls that enter the Forbidden City and the imperial palace stand impressively.Marco Polo once depicted the palace of the Great Khan.Within these walls stood the palace of the Great Khan, the largest known to man, with walls four miles in length.An empty courtyard stretches between the south wall and the north wall, where prominent princes and nobles and guards come and go.There are no high-rise buildings inside, but the roof is very tall, the height of the foundation and platform is ten steps from the ground level, and the marble wall is two steps wide.This is true on every side.This kind of wall acts as a terrace, and those who walk inside are not seen by those outside.Elegant handrails with pillars are installed on the outer edges of the walls to allow people to approach.The great halls and chambers were decorated on every side with carved and gilded dragons, and various birds.Scenes of warriors, beasts, and battles.The decoration of the roof is also in this style, and gilded decorations and paintings can be seen.

On each side of the palace there is a huge marble stone step, people can climb up from the ground to the marble wall surrounding the palace, which is also the passage to enter the palace. The majestic hall is surprisingly deep and wide enough for a large number of people to dine there.The palace also has many independent bedrooms, which are so noble and gorgeous that any improvement is superfluous.The exterior of the roof is painted red, green, blue, purple and other colors.The roof is strong and has not broken for many years.The dazzling windows are crafted like crystal. The resplendent Forbidden City still towers over the inner city, surrounded by another moat.The site of the Forbidden City is astonishingly large, with three lakes (two mentioned by Marco Polo), which are open to the public.In Central Park, across the gate of Tiananmen, there is a huge park covered with centuries-old cypress trees.Beijingers come here to take a walk or sit leisurely on rattan chairs, drink tea or eat noodles under the cypress trees to pass the time.There are many open-air food stalls here, and Zhu Pin quickly learned to taste twenty kinds of Chinese tea and pass the whole afternoon.If one has a good travel companion, one can hike to Beihai or South China Sea to visit the little dilapidated building where the Empress Dowager Cixi imprisoned the young reforming Emperor Guangxu from 1900 until Emperor Guangxu died in 1908.Zhu Pin's father once told him that with the death of Emperor Guangxu, the last hope of modern reforms under China's traditional imperial autocracy died.Guangxu's successor, the young emperor "Xuantong" Puyi, was crowned at the age of four, and the Manchu empire was rotten to the extreme, and the 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen easily brought the Manchu empire to an end.

The ignorant and stubborn widow queen whose reign is similar to that of Queen Victoria of England at the end of her days, and her nephew, the young Emperor Guangxu, should also die together, because she firmly believes that Guangxu's desire for revenge will Her commemoration was a serious threat, and Emperor Guangxu died two days early for her.It is generally accepted that the dying Empress Dowager ordered Emperor Guangxu to be poisoned. However, Zhu Pin did not think about the collapse of the Qing Dynasty when he visited Beijing.He was stunned by the elegance of the imperial city, and he was deeply impressed by the grandeur of the Forbidden City. From a distance, every palace building can be appreciated freely and without obstacles.If there is no reflection of such a long mirror-like pond, Ma Daha will miss a lot of beautiful scenery.If any skyscraper in New York, USA could be seen unobstructed, then visitors would not need to crane their necks to get a tall and majestic view.

Yet Beijing's plan differs from that of central Paris.The famous Arc de Triomphe is a jewel of Paris, from where the avenues radiate like rays.The star is magnificent from a distance, and the best way to appreciate its beauty is to stand on the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs-Elysées, which rises slightly at the other end, is half a mile away, and it is even more charming to admire it under the sunset sky. The plan of Paris is radial, but the plan of Beijing is based on a central axis, a series of gatehouses from the distant south gate of the outer city through a series of courtyards to the palaces and halls of the inner city.

During the Qing Dynasty, Beijingers were forbidden to build houses higher than one floor, preventing them from being able to see the Forbidden City from a distance.Today, buildings with two or three floors are scattered everywhere.The fact that almost all houses are one-story gives the city a sense of space that is not crowded. Numerous low walls and wide houses have become the symbols here, such as the gate tower and Jingshan towering from the park where the former emperors rested, so that people can easily appreciate them from a distance.The main road was about sixty feet wide, with a middle lane for cars and rickshaws, and two footpaths, with mule lanes on each side.The avenue in front of the palace was at least a hundred feet wide, and some parts of the city and the western hilltops on the horizon had a more rural air.

Zhu Pin also noticed the different effects of the roofs of Chinese palaces and tall churches and buildings in the West.The beautiful steeples of the Gothic church symbolize the ascension of the soul and the soul entering the kingdom of heaven.The wide, flat and deep roofs of Chinese official palaces symbolize not the lofty soul, but the tranquility, spaciousness and return to the truth of life. All kinds of dazzling decorative bricks and tiles constitute the exterior beauty of the palace.The color of the bricks and tiles of the imperial city is imperial yellow, but other colors are also used.Zhu Pin saw that the tops of many pavilions on Jingshan Mountain were green, purple, sky blue and deep purple blue, just as Marco Polo described. For Beijing, the elegant imperial city and magnificent scenery are worthy of special mention, but the daily life on the streets also fascinates Zhu Pin.There are crowds everywhere, huge crowds of ordinary people going about their daily lives.Zhu Pin saw a sea of ​​people everywhere, and most of them were wearing various blue clothes. In cold weather the common man wears thick padded jackets and gowns with leggings tied at the knees to keep out the cold winds and to keep out the dust in any season.Sometimes people also put cut-out sleeves on top of their trousers.It's a pair of special leg sleeves, cut to the hips to keep them from being too bulky, and has a strap at the front to keep them from slipping off. Two Beijing 2 There is a bright white landscape in the blue sea of ​​summer, and Zhu Pin saw many fashionable girls wearing modern long gowns (Zhu Pin's Cantonese-speaking father would call them shirts). Sweating caravans of camels from Mongolia laden with coal passed men with small parasols, antlers and other items, uniformed soldiers past peasant women on donkeys or men marching in the wide muddy fields beside motorways. Mongolian mule cart.Sometimes the funeral procession spread dramatically a hundred yards apart, and the professional funeral directors made men in gray and green attires who looked like sandwich makers and people with billboards on the streets of New York.Schoolgirls with curly hair and their scarves fluttering in the wind passed by in rickshaws, and high-ranking officials hurried past in limousines among the guards standing on both sides of the road. The sound of the horn is "Suo-duo-ruan-mi".Here the ancient meets the modern.Sometimes a Manchu woman might be seen, perhaps a princess of yore, heavily rouged and wearing a foot-high headdress.The Manchu aesthetic concept seems to be that women regard height as beauty, and the result is that there are both tall headdresses and tall soles. Rickshaws are everywhere, and as soon as potential customers appear, half a dozen rickshaw drivers rush forward.The design of the rickshaw takes into account the balance between the weight of the puller and the rider. The rickshaw is very convenient, and Zhu Pin likes to ride a rickshaw.The boy pulling the rickshaw liked to hear the bells under his feet and the urgent "excuse me!" "借光" literally means "to borrow your light," but here the meaning is closer to this: "Would you please make way for me?" One reason one never loses one's sense of direction in Beijing is that the boy pulling the rickshaw designates a direction when turning left or right — north, south, east or west — as a reminder to those behind.They never make mistakes.Zhu Pin also formed such a habit.Sitting on a rickshaw, he likes to say "go east" and "go west" to the driver. Behind the main street are many hutongs or alleys, which are also one of the most charming places to live in Beijing.If the main street is straight, then the hutongs are not. The names of these hutongs are born and bred, strange and weird, such as Niuwei Hutong, Tianjing Hutong and Little Dumb Hutong.The alley is peaceful and quiet, and because the houses are short, it has a rural atmosphere.Some of the houses here are ordinary people's houses, some rich people's mansions and some houses with gardens are sometimes hidden in the inconspicuous entrance.Only the sound of rickshaws, the footsteps of travelers, and the ethereal and high-pitched shouts occasionally break the peace and tranquility of the alley. Each type of hawker in the alley has its own unique way of yelling and the outfits it carries on its shoulders.During the day, butchers, fishmongers and fruit sellers made it easier for housewives.Some hawkers collect used bottles.Some vendors sold housewives small things—needlework, buttons, ribbons, and cosmetics—as well as sweets of all kinds and toys for children of all kinds.These peddlers use a stick to beat a tambourine to shout for business; the stick used by the peddler is bent, and the small metal head is suspended on both ends of the stick by a silk thread, swinging back and forth, beating on the drum quickly and rhythmically.A loud, muffled sound indicated that it was a roadside barber. At one end of the load was a pot of hot water on the stove, and at the other end was a tool box for customers. The razors and towels were placed in the drawer of the tool box. At night, the hawkers' cries are always so beautiful and rhythmic, and the cries are different.Zhu Pin learned to distinguish each kind of cries. In order to hear the cries of vendors selling candied haws or sticky wild hawthorn, he often slept very late.The nights are quiet, but sometimes they are not.Magpies and crows have long made their home in the big tree in the east clearing.After a while he will hear a small empty sound, that is a hawker selling gourds.After a few minutes, he would hear the rhythmic yelling of the Yuanxiao vendor in the distance. The small round glutinous rice balls were tumbling in the hot water. This sound was made by the vendor hitting the bowl with a spoon. Two pieces The thing is held by one hand, like a Spanish dancer striking castanets.The cries of these night snack vendors are low, soft and distant, and they add meaning to the tranquility of the night. If Zhu Pin stayed up all night, he could hear the sound of bells and drums from the bell tower in the distance, telling him the time of night.Finally at midnight, when the city watchman passed the street and tapped three times with a wooden board, Zhu Pin knew that it was midnight.This is the music in the alley. There is something even more special about these Beijing hawkers.When a peddler yells his deal, he usually cups his hands behind his ears as if to increase the volume and carry the yell farther.A person usually cups his hand over his mouth to amplify the sound, but doing so in the ear just makes him hear better.The peddlers seemed to think that if they could hear their own echo, then his voice would travel further. Zhu Pin likes to wander the streets of Beijing and observe people's colorful life.Zhu Pin's visit was aimless.He has been to the Lama Temple and the Temple of Heaven, and he especially likes to attend temple fairs. He takes turns holding temple fairs in different temples on fixed days of the month (for example, on the 6th, 16th, and 26th in one temple; on the 5th, 15th, and 25th). No. is at another temple).Here one can buy everything from second-hand shoes and antiques to fake paintings.Many palace museums have rich collections dating back hundreds of years, which belonged to past emperors.They are now open to the public.Many streets are lined with second-hand bookstores, and there are even two streets that sell lanterns. There is a leisure park outside Fuchengmen, half a mile away from Zhu Pin's residence, where ordinary citizens go for entertainment.There are magicians, acrobats and boxers, boxers who use boxing to attract customers to buy their iron damage potions.There are also Peking Opera performances here. Beijing opera is a hobby of ordinary people, in Chinese drama because there is no "Diamond Horseshoe" does not pursue glory and wealth. "Peking opera fans" are not uncommon. They are fanatical and penniless, singing Peking opera in the streets and alleys, reviving the pain, tragedy and great life of heroes in history time and time again.It is through theater and plays that illiterate Chinese learned what they knew about Chinese history. Zhu Pin fanatically fell in love with the singing of an actress in the leisure park in the south of the city. She sang Huagu Opera.This is a one-man show, using rhythmic language to tell an episode of history and singing it with affection.This is also how ancient Chinese epics were produced—a fragment of history told by some self-playing and singing to the accompaniment of an instrument.The only instrument used was a one-foot-diameter snare drum.It was placed in a suitable place on the stage, and the girl beat the drum rhythmically with a stick in time with the story she was telling and singing.She usually plays both roles in the dialogue, shaping the character of the character through her gestures and well-trained voice, the smooth and wavy singing voice deeply touched the Chinese ears. Tungan Bazaar is one of Zhu Pin's favorite places.If holidays mean crowds, at a fair like this, every day of the year is a holiday.Because such a bazaar is composed of streets with many small shops, it is a shopper's paradise.Just like in a department store, you can buy what you want, and the rows of small shops here are like the counters in the department store.These streets were twenty feet wide, and the shops were stocked with all sorts of goods, and there was no room in front of them.People in the store can freely talk to people in the store across the street.Of course hawkers are not allowed in these streets. The bazaar has everything from shops selling cosmetics, hardware, fruits, snacks, curios, lamps, books and stationery to snack bars, established restaurants and cinemas.People from all walks of life gather here to form shopping and entertainment consumer groups.Everyone is one here: men, women and children, officials and ordinary people, intellectuals and artists.They form a huge crowd with Chinese cultural characteristics - bargaining, laughter, busy and leisurely life - this is a cross-section of China.Here you can feel the life in Beijing and the daily life of ordinary people. Hard-working people are always ready to laugh at the pain of others, just like laughing at their own pain.Here you can feel all kinds of tastes of Beijing, listen to all kinds of voices in Beijing, as well as the scolding of men and the crying of babies.At the same time the unobtrusive rhythmic clink of brass saucers indicated the drinks peddler.The people here are busy, fulfilling, toiling and laughing, and the men on the street go about their business peacefully as if it has been here for thousands of years, even under alien rule. This is northern China, and northerners are bigger, stronger, and more forthright than southerners. Over the past 2,000 years, various ethnic groups have been merging continuously, and it is difficult to say who is the real Chinese.Especially in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries AD, Mongols and Turkic tribes from the north occupied northern China, where there was extensive intermarriage between the Han Chinese and these invaders. As early as the sixth to eighth centuries, Jews came to China through the Turkic region, and Nestorian scriptures are still handed down to this day, which talks about the Jews who came to China from Asia Minor.Like other tribes they were gradually assimilated.But until the beginning of the twelfth century, there were still tens of thousands of Jews in Honan (a central province).They kept their synagogues, but they spoke Chinese, dressed like Chinese and intermarried with Chinese. The Chinese have assimilated many foreign peoples for hundreds of years, even Khan Kublai Khan, the first invader who succeeded in establishing a foreign dynasty in China, himself was assimilated by Chinese culture and Chinese civilization .Initially, although Kublai Khan's military power was invincible, in fact, during the most prosperous period of his rule, China contributed highly developed achievements of civilization-printing, banknotes, a comfortable life, high-end cooking, and a peaceful way of life.But more importantly than these, the Chinese have a concept of human beings and a humanized life, judging a person not by his race but strictly by the standards of good and bad people-according to his personal character .When the Chinese faced the superiority of force, they adopted a mysterious and devious way of non-resistance and sang praises of this force and power, beautifying the invaders in form.Generally speaking, the way Chinese people assimilate foreign nations is to disarm them, not to treat them as outsiders, but to try to make them forget their alien identity. Northerners are always raised taller than Southerners at all times.During the invasion of the north, Tatars and Hu people came from the other side of the Great Wall to camp in northern China, and the south (around Nanjing) was famous for its elegant and profound culture.Wealthy and old families moved to the south, and some cities were renamed Nanchangzhou and Nanhuzhou, just like the early American colonists named those towns New York or New London, and those names were the names of cities in their former countries. Centuries later we can still see the differences between northerners and southerners, the people in the south around Shanghai and Hangzhou are better at doing business than being a warrior.They like a life of comfort and luxury.The men here are shorter and some don't have beards at all.The children of rich families are spoiled and spoiled, and they lack enough exercise.The most typical one is Suzhou, which is famous all over the world for its beautiful women.Suzhou dialect has feminine characteristics, and here there is plenty of food and clothing and comfort.Wealthy young Suzhou men usually go to tea shops to drink tea, eat breakfast, and read newspapers until eleven o'clock.It is said that when a Suzhou man was fighting, he rolled up his sleeves and said, "Come here!" while stepping back step by step. By the time his sleeves were rolled up, he was safely standing in front of his house.However the place is also known for its academics and its many great libraries.A girl from a scholarly family grows up in the mountains of books.Many of them could write beautiful, sweet and melancholic love poems.In northern China, it is beneficial to introduce foreign blood.During the Tang Dynasty (eighth-ninth century A.D.), the amalgamation of ethnic groups was very evident.Many Tang generals were of foreign blood, and many Tang princesses were married to chiefs of dependent states.Li Bai, one of China's greatest poets, probably also has foreign blood in him.Three generations of his family lived in exile in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, and it is more likely that his father and grandfather married a Tajik girl.From this point of view, this person must be a newcomer.Li Bai is a complete newcomer.