Zhengyangmen

Stand still for a moment and listen. Traffic hums on every side, a steady wash of engines and bicycle bells. Above it, two great towers rise from the pavement, one behind the other. Grey brick, red walls, and green-glazed roof tiles catch the light. This is Zhengyangmen, a gate that once guarded the southern edge of imperial Beijing. Its name means the Gate of the Zenith Sun, but most people in Beijing simply call it Qianmen, the Front Gate.

The name makes sense when you picture the old city. For centuries, Beijing was a city of walls inside walls. At the centre stood the Forbidden City, home of the emperors. Around it lay the Imperial City, and around that, the Inner City, wrapped in a thick defensive wall. Zhengyangmen sat at the very middle of that wall's southern side. It faced the emperor's palace directly to the north. In a very real sense, it was the front door of the capital.

The gate dates to the early fifteenth century. It was built under the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty, the same ruler who moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City. The Ming and later the Qing emperors, the last imperial dynasty of China, ruled from behind this line of walls for roughly five hundred years. Officials, merchants, camel caravans, and ordinary families all passed this way. For many travellers arriving from the south, this was their first sight of the capital's power.

Now look carefully, because there are two buildings here, not one. The northern structure is the gate tower. It sat on top of the city wall itself, with a passage cut through its base. The southern structure is the arrow tower. It is the heavier, more fortress-like building, pierced by rows of small windows. Archers once stood behind those openings. Together, the two towers formed a single defensive system, and they belonged together as one gate.

Between them, there used to be something you can no longer see. A curved enclosure of walls, called a barbican, once joined the two towers. Think of it as a walled courtyard, a trap for any attacker. An enemy who broke through the outer gate would find himself boxed in, under fire from every side. Today the open road and plaza run where that enclosure stood. The empty space between the towers is the ghost of a much larger structure.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Look at the windows of the arrow tower. Some of them have white, curved hoods above them, almost like eyebrows. These are not Chinese in style. They were added in the early twentieth century, when the barbican was removed to ease the flow of traffic. A German architect was involved in that rebuilding. So this most Chinese of gates carries a small, quiet trace of European design. Once you notice it, you cannot unsee it.

The towers in front of you are not exactly the ones the Ming emperors built. Zhengyangmen suffered badly around 1900, during the Boxer Uprising, a violent anti-foreign movement, and the foreign military intervention that followed. Fire and fighting damaged both towers. They were rebuilt in the years after, in the final decade of the Qing dynasty. What you see is that reconstruction, faithful in form to the older gate, but itself now more than a century old.

The early twentieth century changed the area around the gate in another way, too. Railways arrived. Just to the east, you may notice a large building with a clock tower and arched windows. That was a railway station built in the early years of the twentieth century. It brought trains right up to the foot of the city walls. Today it houses a railway museum. Standing here, you can see imperial defence and industrial modernity side by side, within a few hundred metres.

And now for perhaps the biggest surprise. Most of Beijing's old city walls are gone. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Inner City wall was largely torn down. A subway line and a ring road were built along its route. Gate after gate disappeared. Zhengyangmen is one of very few that survived. When you look at these towers, you are looking at one of the last remaining pieces of a wall that once ran for many kilometres around the city.

There is an old saying in Beijing about the gates: inner nine, outer seven, imperial four. It counts the gates of the Inner City, the Outer City, and the Imperial City. Of all those Inner City gates, this one held the highest rank. According to a popular story, the central passage of the old barbican opened only for the emperor himself. It is said that he passed through on his way south to the Temple of Heaven, to perform sacred rites.

Turn north for a moment. Behind the gate tower lies Tiananmen Square, the vast open plaza at the heart of modern Beijing. The Mausoleum of Mao Zedong stands close by. Further on, in a straight line, rises Tiananmen itself and then the Forbidden City. This is the city's great central axis, the north-south line that organised imperial Beijing. Zhengyangmen sits right on it. Nearby, a marker sets the starting point from which China's national highway distances are measured.

Now turn south. Here the mood changes completely. Qianmen Street runs away from the arrow tower, a long pedestrian avenue lined with shops and restaurants. To the west lies Dashilar, an old commercial district of narrow lanes. For centuries, the area just outside this gate was where the city traded, ate, and entertained itself. Officials lived inside the walls. Theatres, inns, and old shops crowded just outside them. That contrast still shapes the streets today.

Before you move on, take one last look at the two towers. Notice how the grey brick base of the arrow tower meets the red walls and green tiles above. Notice the people around you... families taking photographs, office workers hurrying past, tourists looking up just as you are. The walls are mostly gone now. But this gate still stands at the meeting point of old and new Beijing. As you walk away, listen again to the traffic. It flows where the wall once stood.