The southeast corner of the ancient Ming Dynasty city wall is the only place where wall still remains other than the few gates lining the perimeter like Deshengmen. There is also a fantastic Southeast Corner Tower still intact.
Southeast Corner Tower
This imposing structure holds a place in more recent history as well. Its position made it one of the first things travelers would see of Beijing when arriving by railroad in the late Qing era and ever afterward. At the birth of the 20th century, the Boxer Rebellion once again brought foreign troops into the Chinese capitol. Forty years earlier it was mainly just the French and British, but this time, it was an alliance of eight foreign powers including Russia, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and the United States.
As the contentions grew, the foreign troops advanced. The Russian and U.S. contingent came from the southeast and took the wall at what they called the Fox Tower. This was the closest access to the former Foreign Legation Quarter in the southeast corner of the inner city. They planned to liberate this neighborhood from the Boxers and Qing army, which had besieged the neighborhood for fifty-five days. Visitors to this tower can find inscriptions from U.S. and Russian soldiers carved into the wall. Unfortunately, this aggression on Beijing led to the destruction and damage of many historic structures. And, it led to the further demise of imperial sites that were never fully restored after the Opium Wars.
A Lasting Legacy
Visitors to several places throughout Beijing will be reminded of this foreign incursion on Chinese soil. Information repeatedly gives this for the reason why something no longer exists or needs restoration. While this is partially true, this is not the only cause for the demise of historic sites in Beijing. Many other things contributed to this, including the relatively low amount of funds for rebuilding or restoration in the Qing coffers compared to previous eras, the modernization of the city during the Republic era and afterwards, and the campaign against history and culture carried out more than half a century later all across China.
Whether the Eight-Nation Alliance’s siege of Beijing is the reason for so much loss of history is true or not doesn’t matter as much as what this siege did to the Chinese psyche. It solidified the distrust of foreigners by reinforcing the idea that foreign powers just wanted to take advantage of the Chinese people and treat them as a lesser nation from which to extract all it could. Unfortunately, this was the case for much of the imperial and colonial expansion of Western powers of the day. And, sadly, they continue to use this narrative as a platform to build nationalism and criticize the acts, views, and intentions of other nations and their citizens.
Ming Dynasty Wall Park
Connected to the Southeast Corner Tower, the only remaining section of Ming-era city wall runs to the west. Partially restored, visitors can walk on a small section of it when visiting the tower. However, most is still in ruins. They spared this section of wall from demolition while building Line 2 of the Beijing Subway because it went north to the Beijing Railway Station. They also didn’t need the bricks, so it remained. Overtime though, it did lose many of its bricks as it was left to ruin. In 1990, when the city decided to restore what it could of the tower and wall and create a park along the wall, it asked locals to donate Ming-era bricks. One fifth of the two million used in restoration efforts were from that time period, more than 500 years before.
A stroll through this park is nice with many older trees spared and several flowering tree groves planted. There are other historic sites along the way as well. The most preserved is one of the original switch houses for the earliest rail line into Beijing. Part of those original tracks are preserved as well.
Beijing Ancient Observatory
Just north of the Southeast Corner Tower of the Ming Dynasty city wall lies the Beijing Ancient Observatory. This platform, once part of the inner city wall, became the observatory in 1442. It is the successor to the older Yuan Dynasty observatory where Guo Shoujing observed the heavens. When the Ming era began, they sent the instruments from the old observatory to Nanjing. Yongle, Ming emperor who eventually returned the capital to Beijing, had copies of the astronomical instruments made and sent back to Beijing.
During the Qing era, the observatory received updates in instruments and theories from the Jesuits. Kangxi Emperor appointed Ferdinand Verbiest as the head of the observatory in the late 1600s. More about this influential outsider in a later post.
