GT; capital Museum > Poly art Museum > National art Museum of China > Beijing world art museumbest for imperial history

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Gt; Beijing Imperial City Art Museum > Forbidden City (see the boxed text) > Summer Palace’s Wenchang Gallery (see the boxed text) > Beijing Police Museum > Forbidden City’s Clocks and Watches Gallery (see the boxed text) > Great Bell Temple > Military Museum TEMPLES

Temples are scattered throughout every district in Beijing. But getting ‘templed out’ is unlikely. All Beijing’s temples are unique in their own way and it’s worth taking the time to visit several. By stepping through their gates, you leave the hustle of modern Beijing behind and enter a timeless world of solemn worshippers, busy monks and plumes of incense smoke wafting through the air.

Every school of Chinese thought, Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist, is represented in Beijing. But whatever philosophy they adhere to, Chinese temples are laid out in the same way as traditional courtyard homes (see also): along a north–south axis according to the principles of feng shui. The middle courtyard area contains the prayer halls, while the surrounding quarters usually house the resident monks.

Chongwen’s colossal Temple of Heaven is the best known, while Dongcheng’s Lama Temple attracts the most worshippers. Nearby is the Confucius Temple, the country’s second-largest shrine to the famous philosopher.

The differences between Buddhist and Taoist temples aren’t always immediately apparent, but the monks have distinctive appearances. Buddhist monks usually have shaved heads, while Taoists have their long hair tied into a topknot.

Beijing’s temples welcome visitors, but always ask permission first if you want to take photos of the monks or worshippers.

Gt; Dongyue Temple > Confucius Temple > Zhihua TempleMOST HISTORIC

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> Fayuan Temple > Miaoying Temple White Dagoba > Temple of Heaven > Lama Temple > Wuta Temple

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HISTORY

LIFE AS A BEIJINGER

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Background

Top of chapter BACKGROUND

HISTORY

Located on a plain, prone to dust storms, lacking a river and nowhere near the sea, Beijing is hardly the ideal place to establish a capital city. By AD 938, though, it was an auxiliary centre for the ruling Liao dynasty, who called it Yanjing, which is still the name of Beijing’s local beer. Subsequently sacked and destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1215, Beijing was the Mongol capital of China for a century or so. It wasn’t until the Ming dynasty that it became a truly Chinese city.

The credit for that goes to Yongle (1360–1424), the third Ming emperor. Much of what you see in today’s Beijing, including the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, is down to him. The Ming rulers got busy outside town too, reinforcing the Great Wall and manning it with a million soldiers. That, though, cut no ice with the Manchus, who swept down from the northeast, overthrew the Ming and established the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).

Under the Qing, the Han Chinese were forced to live in the south of Beijing outside the city walls, in what are the present-day districts of Chongwen and Xuanwu. At the same time, the Qing did much to improve Beijing, building summer palaces, pagodas and temples. They also adopted Chinese culture as their own, boosting Peking opera, calligraphy and painting.

But the last years of the Qing dynasty were some of the most challenging Beijing had ever known, as the city bore the brunt of the Second Opium War (1856–60), the Taiping Rebellion (1851–64) and the Boxer Rebellion (1900).

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14