Chapter 107 My chaotic, dirty, peaceful and beautiful Beijing

My chaotic, dirty, peaceful and beautiful Beijing Feng Tang I am a native of Beijing.Born in Beijing, grew up in Beijing.Except for a year of military training in Xinyang, Henan, and a two-year business study in the United States, I spent all my time in Beijing.It was the first time in Longtan Lake Bird Market that I saw white knives go in and red knives came out; I set up a stall in front of the Chuiyangliu Middle Street Post Office without a license to sell old magazines, and earned my first big ticket of 100 yuan; I lost my body in a certain corner, and experienced the cause and effect of gains and losses for the first time.He is also seeking a career in writing, and he is proud of his proficiency in writing.However, I don't know why, every time I want to write an article about Beijing that I am satisfied with, but my heart swells up every time, the words don't make sentences, the sentences don't make sentences, and I can't find suitable vocabulary and clues.Taking a step back, if someone else has finished writing about Beijing, I will go and read it, and it will be good; just like someone else has built the Great Wall, I will go to climb it.However, my favorite literary predecessors, Zhou Zuoren, Zhou Shuren, Yu Pingbo, and Shen Congwen, are all southerners. They live in Beijing for their livelihood, and their writings about Beijing are half-dry, such as "Beijing's Tea and Food", "My View" Peking University", "Snow in Taoranting", "Impressions and Thoughts of Peking", all show the cramped and lack of energy of the southerners.Lao She may have made a mistake with me. He stayed in Beijing for too long and felt too much. The short essays he wrote about Beijing were illogical and sensational: "Huh, American oranges are wrapped in paper; if you meet a jade plum with frost in Peking, you are not ashamed to kill!" ("Thinking of Peking")

Going to the Sanlian Bookstore for a stroll, I avoided the crowded hot sale section and the magazine section, and found a copy of "Beijing Urban History and Geography" in a secluded place in the back of the basement.Edited by Hou Renzhi, published by Beijing Yanshan Publishing House.Hardcover hardcover, the binding is simple to shabby, like a doctoral dissertation in social sciences.If you don’t have the authentic Manchu-Han banquet, you can eat flatbread, steamed buns, radishes and vegetables; if you don’t have good literature and art books, you might as well read academic papers.After reading it, I feel that the text is plain, there are not many mistakes, and there is not much chewing.The information is informative, but the local organization is a bit messy.The most important thing is that this book gives me a perspective to describe Beijing: the taste of a big city like Beijing is what people have lived in for a long time; focus on the two axes of space and time, and write about space from the perspective of time Change, write the passage of time from the perspective of space.

The opening title of "Beijing Urban Historical Geography" reads: "In the late Mesozoic Era more than 100 million years ago, a strong orogenic movement occurred in eastern China, with volcanic eruptions, crustal changes, and mountain uplifts. This is the famous 'Yanshan Movement' "So Beijing is surrounded by mountains on three sides, with a plain in the middle, opening to the southeast, like a bay, and Beijing and its surroundings can be vividly called "Beijing Bay".Roughly speaking, the west and north sides of the mountains around Beijing have been active with foreign races since ancient times. When Beijing was captured by foreign races, the so-called Central Plains in the southeast of Beijing was safe to defend (after that, it was almost established as the first in Chinese history. According to the law, alien races in the north invaded, first lost Beijing, then lost the Central Plains, and finally lost the country. If you don’t build a capital in the north, you will accelerate your own demise).Therefore, Beijing has been a place of war and cultural exchange since ancient times.

"Beijing Urban History and Geography" wonderfully describes the changes of Beijing city.Beijing began to take shape when the Jurchen Jin Dynasty destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty and moved its capital from the Songhua River to Beijing.It was called Zhongdu at that time, and its location and size were equivalent to more than half of the current four divisions of Xuanwu District.The circumference of the big city is more than 37 miles, and there are twelve city gates on all sides. The circumference of the imperial city is 9 miles and 30 steps. In particular, there is already a central axis running through the whole city from south to north. This central axis is the current West Second Ring Road. the southern section of the road.When the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Jin Dynasty, the Mongolian cavalry invaded the capital city of Zhongdu. It looked strange, but it was burned to the ground, and they had no intention of building a capital city in Beijing.Forty years later, in order to eliminate the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan moved the capital from Helin to Beijing. It took 18 years to build the Yuan Dadu in the northeast of Jinzhongdu, which established the prototype of Beijing today.It was a Han named Liu Bingzhong who designed and built Yuan Dadu.This eccentric Han man was a monk when he was a child, and later he read Confucianism and Taoism madly, and he was the most skilled. He traveled to many places with Kublai Khan and was knowledgeable.Its design is full of various oriental philosophies, and since then, various aspects of Beijing have been paid attention to.The three most prominent features of its design Fuzawa offspring:

One, build a city close to water.The small family-style lotus pond water system in Abandoned Gold Zhongdu takes the Gaoliang River water system from the above as the design center.So Beijing had water to drink, a waterscape, and grain transported by water.The design of Central Park in Manhattan, New York was inspired by this, so bankers on Wall Street only have water views today, and they will not go crazy in large quantities. Two, boxy.Affirm the design of the central axis of Jinzhongdu, "Left Patriarch and Right Society, facing the future market". In the big city, the front of the central part is the imperial court, the rear is the market, the left is the Taimiao, and the right is the Sheji Altar.This kind of design is destined to be rich in the north and nothing in the south. The pattern of "the east city is rich, the west city is rich, the culture is poor, the military is broken" still exists to a certain extent.

Three, due south and north.In the capital of Yuan Dynasty, the streets are straight, with south and north, west and east.That's why people who live in Beijing can cultivate a candor that is rarely seen elsewhere. In this post-modern era where Zhao Wei is also wildly popular, Beijingers can still easily find the north, south, east, and west. Less than a hundred years later, the Ming and Yuan Dynasties destroyed all the palaces in Yuan Dadu in order to completely destroy the Feng Shui of the Yuan Dynasty. "Battle of Jingnan", Ming Chengzu seized the throne from his nephew.Ming Chengzu understood that if he lost Beijing, he would lose the Central Plains. He was not greedy for the small bridges and flowing water in the south of the Yangtze River, the beauties with little milk, and the steamed buns. He decided to move his capital to Beijing and truly feel the threat of Saibei in the sandstorm.Fifteen years later, the city of Beijing was rebuilt.This new city is basically a slight development on the basis of Yuan Dadu.One of the most important ones is the southward movement of the Forbidden City. In order to overwhelm the Feng Shui of the previous dynasty, the Longevity Mountain (now Jingshan Mountain) was artificially piled up on the Yanchun Pavilion of the Yuanhou Palace.Coincidentally, Ming Chongzhen was still hanged on Jingshan in the end, as if Feng Shui was still not suppressed.

The Qing people were significantly more open-minded than the Ming Han people.Since Feng Shui can't be suppressed, it is simply to keep the Beijing city of the Ming Dynasty.The money saved was developed on a large scale in Xishan, creating an unprecedented scale of palace buildings, collectively referred to as "three mountains and five gardens", that is, Jingming Garden in Yuquan Mountain, Jingyi Garden in Xiangshan, Qingyi Garden in Wanshou Mountain, Changchun Garden and Yuanmingyuan. Shooting in spring and hunting in autumn, don't forget the foundation of rejuvenating the country on horseback and the fierce spirit flowing up and down in the spine.

"Beijing Urban History and Geography" did not mention that Beijing was liberated in 1949. Although we modern people are more open-minded than the Manchus in the early Qing Dynasty, and even though we don't believe in Feng Shui at all, the military parade is still the most magnificent to watch from the Tiananmen Tower, and we also like cars. and avenues, so we did not keep the old Beijing city according to Liang Sicheng's intention.Just imagine, if we leave the old Beijing and build a new Beijing in the place where Wangjing New City is now, what kind of beauty will the present Beijing be like?In order to make up for the regret, we have now planted plastic coconut trees under the remaining city towers, and put on red, yellow and green lights. It looks like a kindergarten during the day and a ghost castle at night.Mr. Liang came back in his dream to make some mental preparations, be careful not to be scared.

("Beijing Urban Historical Geography", edited by Hou Renzhi, Beijing Yanshan Publishing House, first edition in May 2000, 36.00 yuan)