Ni hao!Beijing 北京 has many other sights to show you. I will tell you abut some of them in this blog. First picture shows The Qianmen archery tower in Beijing, and the second one shows The Zhengyangmen Gate in Beijing. The Qianmen 前门, literally "Front Gate") is the common name for the gateway known formally as Zhengyangmen 正阳门. It is a gate in Beijing, China. It stands at the south end of the Tiananmen Square precinct, and was formerly the front gate of the Imperial City, a part of the ancient city
of Beijing. First built in 1419, the gateway consisted of a gatehouse proper and an archery tower, which forms a large barbican. Today the archery tower and the gatehouse survive - though not in the form originally built. The present gates date from 1914 and incorporate modern design elements suggested by German advisors. At 42 metres high, the gatehouse was, and is, the tallest among all of the gates of Beijing. After the Communist victory in 1949, the gate complex was occupied by the Beijing garrison of the People´s Liberation Army. The military vacated the gate in 1980. Behind (that is, to the North of) the Qianmen once stood the Gate of China, followed by the present Tiananmen, and the Meridian Gate, which is the front entrance to the Forbidden City. Because of its grandeur
and unique design, the Qianmen was long seen as the symbol of old Beijing. The third picture is Deshengmen Gate. The Deshengmen 德胜门, literary "Gate of Virtuous Triumph" is one of the few surviving city gates in Beijing, China, located at the northern tip of the 2nd Ring Road. In old times, the army would leave Beijing from Xuanwumen and re-enter the city, triumphant, at Deshengmen. The gateway was made up of three structures in ancient times - the gatehouse, the archery tower, and the barbican. However, the gatehouse proper was demolished in 1921, and the barbican has been severely damaged. The archery tower, however, is well-preserved and surroundings are well-lit at night. The Beijing Subway has a stop here. An extension to the Badaling Expressway 
links to the rotary surrounding the gate. The fourth picture shows The City Wall.The ity Wall of Beijing was a fortification built around 1435. It was 23.5 km long. The thickness at ground level was 20m and the top 12m. The wall was 15m high, and it had nine gates. This wall stood for nearly 530 years, but in 1965 it was removed to give way to 2nd Ring Road and the loop line subway of Beijing. Only in the southeast, just south of Beijing Railway Station, stands one part of the wall. Three gates of the city wall are also intact (Desheng Gate, the Yongding Gate and Zhengyang Gate). Beijing was the capital city of the last three dynasties (the Yuan, Ming and Qing) in the history of China, it has an extensive fortification system, consisting of the Palace City, the Imperial City, 
the Inner City and the Outer City. Specifically including the many gate towers, gates, archways, watchtowers, barbicans, barbican towers, barbican gates, barbican archways, sluice gates, sluice gate towers, enemy sight towers, corner guard towers, and moat, it was the most extensive defense system in dynastical China. After the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Beijing's fortifications were dismantled one by one, the Palace City has remained largely intact; the Imperial City only has Tiananmen remaining intact; the Inner City with Zhengyangmen's gate tower and watchtower, Deshengmen's watchtower, the southeastern corner guard tower, and a section of the Inner City Wall near Chongwenmen remaining intact; and nothing of the Outer City remaining intact, with Yongdingmen completely reconstructed in 2004. The fifth picture shows a map of how it looked once. I took some pictures of the remaining City Wall waiting for a bus going to Lipings father in Daxing, southern Beijing. Standing there waiting everything looked very dull all around, and then I suddenly saw the wall! Up with the camera and I just had time to take 4 pictures of it before the bus came! This how history is made! Zai jian!
Peter
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