A Brief History of Beijing
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Time
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Events
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| 930–1122 | A provincial town roughly on the site of modern Beijing becomes the southern capital of the Khitan Mongol Liao dynasty. |
| 1122–1215 | The city is taken over by the Jurchen Tartar Jin dynasty. |
| 1215 | Mongol emperor Genghis Khan descends into the capital and razes everything in sight. |
| 1267–93 | 1267–93 Under Kublai Khan’s (Genghis’ grandson) rule, the capital Khanbalik (Khan’s town) is constructed. It’s known as Da Du (Great Capital) in Mandarin; Cambulac in Marco Polo’s account of the city. |
| 1271 | Kublai Khan formally adopts the new dynasty’s name: the Yuan (1215–1368). By 1279, Kublai Khan makes himself ruler of the largest empire the world has ever known. |
| 1273–92 | Marco Polo’s ghostwritten account of his time in Khanbalik captures the imagination of European readers. |
| 1368 | The Ming dynasty, having driven out the Mongols, establishes its capital at Nanjing. Da Du becomes Beiping (the Pacified North). |
| 1420 | The Yongle emperor becomes the first Chinese emperor to reign from Beijing. The Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven are constructed. |
| 1550 | In response to Mongol attacks, a lower southern extension to the city wall is begun, eventually enclosing the commercial district, the important ceremonial sites of the Temple (Altar) of Heaven and Altar of Agriculture, and a broad swath of countryside (which remains free of buildings well into the 20th century). Beijing remains largely the same for the next 400 years. |
| 1644–1790 | As peasant rebels overrun the capital, the last Ming emperor is driven to suicide. Shortly afterward, the rebels are driven out by invading Manchu forces, whose Qing dynasty transfers its capital from Manchuria to Beijing, absorbing China into its own empire. Chinese are expelled from the northern section of the city, which becomes the home of Manchu military and courtiers. The southern section becomes the Chinese quarter of Beijing. |
| 1793–94 | George III’s emissary to the Qianlong emperor visits China and passes through Beijing, staying outside the city in a vast area of parks and palaces. His requests for increased trade and for a permanent trade representative in Beijing are turned down. When the Qianlong emperor dies in 1799, the government is terminally corrupt and in decline. |
| 1858 | The Second Opium War sees the Qing and their Chinese subjects capitulating in the face of the superior military technology of “barbarians” (principally the British) for the second time in 16 years. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing, China is forced to permit the permanent residence of foreign diplomats and trade representatives in the capital. |
| 1860 | The Qing imprison and murder foreign representatives sent for the treaty’s ratification. British and French rescue forces occupy Beijing and destroy a vast area of parks and palaces to the northwest. Foreign powers begin to construct diplomatic legation buildings just inside the Tartar City’s wall east of Qian Men. |
| 1900 | The Harmonious Fists, nicknamed the Boxers, a superstitious, antiforeign peasant movement, besieges the foreign residents of the Legation Quarter, with the initially covert and finally open assistance of imperial troops. The siege begins on June 19 and is only lifted, after extensive destruction and many deaths, by the forces of Eight Allied Powers (several European nations, Japan, and the United States) on August 14. Boxers, imperial troops, Chinese, foreign survivors, and allied soldiers take to looting the city. Payments on a vast indemnity take the Qing a further 39 years to pay in full, although the British and Americans use much of the income to help found Yan-ching (now Peking) University and other institutions, and to pay for young Chinese to study overseas. |
| 1911 | The Qing dynasty’s downfall is brought about by an almost accidental revolution, and betrayal by Yuan Shikai, the man the Qing trusted to crush it. He negotiates with both sides and extracts an abdication agreement from the regent of the infant emperor, Puyi and an agreement from the rebels that he will become the first president of the new republic. |
| 1915 | Yuan Shikai revives annual ceremonies at the Temple of Heaven, and prepares to install himself as the first emperor of a new dynasty, but widespread demonstrations and the fomenting of a new rebellion in the south lead him to cancel his plans. He dies the following year. |
| 1917 | In July a pro-monarchist warlord puts Puyi back on the throne, but he is driven out by another warlord who drops three bombs on the Forbidden City. |
| 1919 | Students and citizens gather on May 4 in Tian’anmen Square to protest the government’s agreement that Chinese territory formerly under German control be handed to the Japanese. |
| 1924 | The Qing emperor is removed by a hostile warlord and put under house arrest, later escaping to the Legation Quarter with the help of his Scottish former tutor. |
| 1928 | Nationalist Party forces in the south declare Nanjing the capital, and Beijing reverts to the name of Beiping. In the following years many ancient buildings are vandalized or covered in political slogans. |
| 1933 | With Japanese armies seemingly poised to occupy Beiping, the most important pieces of the imperial collection of antiquities in the Forbidden City are packed into 19,557 crates and moved to Shanghai. They move again when the Japanese take Shanghai in 1937, and eventually 13,484 crates end up with the Nationalist government in Taiwan in 1949. |
| 1937 | Japanese forces occupy Beiping, and stay until the end of World War II. |
| 1949 | Mao Zedong proclaims the creation of the People’s Republic of China. A vast flood of refugees from the countryside takes over the courtyard houses commandeered from their owners. Temples are turned into army barracks, storehouses, and light industrial units. |
| 1958–59 | In a series of major projects to mark 10 years of Communist rule, the old ministries lining what will be Tian’anmen Square and its surrounding walls are flattened for the construction of the Great Hall of the People and the vast museums opposite. These and Beijing Railway Station are built with Soviet help. The 400-year-old city walls are pulled down and replaced with a subway line and a ring road. |
| 1966–76 | The destruction reaches its peak as bands of Red Guards ransack ancient buildings, burn books, and smash art. Intellectuals are bullied, imprisoned. Scores are settled, and millions die. The education system largely comes to a halt. |
| 1972 | President Richard Nixon arrives in Beijing for a 7-day stay. The visit marks a turning point in relations between the U.S. and China. |
| 1976 | The death of Zhou Enlai motivated over 100,000 people to demonstrate against the government in Tian’anmen Square. The demonstrations are labeled counterrevolutionary, and hundreds are arrested. The death of Mao Zedong, effectively brings the Cultural Revolution to an end. Blame for the Cultural Revolution is put on the “Gang of Four”—Mao’s wife and three other hard-line officials, who are arrested. The 450-yearold Da Ming Men in the center of Tian’anmen Square is pulled down to make way for Mao’s mausoleum. Leaders back Deng Xiaoping, who returns from disgrace to take power and launch a program of openness and economic reform. His own toleration for public criticism also turns out to be zero, however. |
| 1989 | The death of the moderate but disgraced official Hu Yaobang causes public displays of mourning in Tian’anmen Square, which turn into a mass occupation of the square protesting government corruption, which ended on July 4th. |
| 2001 | Beijing is awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics, and as a result the destruction and complete redevelopment of the city accelerates. |
| 2008 | Beijing successfully held 2008 Summer Olympics. |
