The current Tiananmen Tower
For everyone Chinese, when it comes to Beijing, the first thing that comes out of their minds is Tiananmen.
When outsiders come to Beijing, the first attraction they want to run to is Tiananmen Square.
In the eyes of Chinese, the significance of Tiananmen has become extraordinary.
However, many people may not know that this majestic and golden tower underwent a secret and complete renovation half a century ago.
In 1969, the fundamental reason for the thorough renovation and reconstruction was the safety of the castle tower.
Moreover, Tiananmen Square has also been destroyed and rebuilt many times in history.
Front of Tiananmen Square in 1900
Tiananmen Square was built after Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, and according to historical records, when it was built, it was completely modeled on nanjing's Chengtianmen Gate. Construction began in 1417 in the fifteenth year of Yongle and was completed in 1420.
When it was first built, it was a three-story, five-room wooden archway named Chengtianmen, which was the main entrance of the Forbidden City.
However, in the first year of Tianshun, that is, in 1457, because of a thunderstorm in the summer of that year, the wooden structure of the Chengtian Gate was burned by fire.
Therefore, eight years later, in 1465, it was rebuilt into a heavy eaves castle tower with nine rooms wide and five rooms deep.
The back of Tiananmen Square in 1900
After this reconstruction, Chengtianmen stood until the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, that is, in 1644.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty was in turmoil, and Li Zicheng invaded Beijing and established the Dashun regime.
However, after only 40 days, because of the failure of Shanhaiguan, he had to hastily withdraw from the Forbidden City.
Before the retreat, perhaps with some resentment, the Chengtianmen Gate, along with the many palaces and towers in the Forbidden City, was burned down.
After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the city tower was rebuilt on the original ruins and the name was officially changed to Tiananmen.
More than three hundred years after that, Tiananmen Square experienced natural damage and disasters such as wind and rain erosion and earthquakes, and was also shelled during the invasion of the Eight-Power Alliance.
During the Years of the Republic of China, there were several wars, and by the time of the founding ceremony in 1949, the main structure of the Tiananmen Tower was still well preserved, but on the surface it looked dilapidated.
During the May Fourth Movement, Beijing students were in Tiananmen Square
Before the founding ceremony, the Beijing Municipal Government carried out certain repairs to the city tower.
At that time, due to the urgency of time, only the weeds and weeds on the roof of the roof were removed, the broken tiles were repaired, and the doors and windows on the city tower were repaired and painted.
It was not until 1952 that the municipal government carried out a comprehensive renovation of the castle tower. I checked whether the overall structure was strong and replaced many wooden components that had decayed for a long time.
In the 1950s, because every year on Labor Day and Eleventh National Day, activities were held in the Tiananmen Tower, so every year before the two festivals, Tiananmen was inspected.
Replace new parts where they are broken, and carry out necessary reinforcement where they are not safe.
Because of the damage to the northeast corner of the tower, in 1956, the area was extensively repaired.
Tiananmen during the Republic of China
In general, because the main structure was not damaged, in the first ten years after the founding of New China, the overall maintenance plan for Tiananmen square was that the daily physical examination and maintenance were continuous, but the large main structure did not move.
The situation changed in 1966, when a major earthquake struck Xingtai, Hebei Province, in March of that year, and the earthquake also affected Beijing, and Tiananmen Square was not spared.
After the investigation, the main structure of the city tower has been seriously damaged and deformed, and some places have also sunk.
At that time, the five beams in the castle tower, the West Mountain Flower Stepping Wood, and the Flower Frame Pillar were reinforced, some of which were tilted and some of them were tilted, and iron hoops were added.
During the Republic of China period, the Tiananmen Tower also placed a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek
Although the stability of the castle tower can be guaranteed after the repair, this is not a long-term solution after all.
Experts in the field of protection in the field of ancient architecture believe that the Tiananmen Tower has a history of more than three hundred years, and its main structure will not have a very serious problem objectively speaking.
As long as proper maintenance measures are taken, there will be no problem in insisting on it for another two or three hundred years.
However, Tiananmen is not an ordinary cultural relic, it carries a major political mission.
The state celebrates from the castle towers every year, so nothing can go wrong with that.
It was because of this factor that three years later, in 1969, the State Council officially decided to demolish the old Tiananmen Tower, and then renovate it on the original site according to the original scale and original building form, and all building materials should be replaced with new ones.
Tiananmen Tower in 1945
Before the formal redevelopment plan was approved, the carpentry class of the Ancient Construction Engineering Department of the Beijing Second Housing Repair Engineering Engineering Company made a model of Tiananmen Square in advance in a ratio of 1:10 using the mortise and mortise method.
In the spring of 1968, the workers began to make the model, and it took more than two months to complete the model.
The reason why a model is made first is to fully familiarize yourself with the structure of the building, and at the same time you can rehearse the technique in advance. In the process of production, once any problem is found, it can be solved in advance.
In 1969, the plan to rebuild Tiananmen Square was personally approved by Premier Zhou Enlai, who also served as the commander-in-chief, so this project was absolutely significant at that time.
Tiananmen Square at the end of the Qing Dynasty
After the National Day in 1969, the Tiananmen Tower was completely covered by a huge canopy, and people did not know what was happening inside.
The Tiananmen Tower is 66 meters long, 37 meters wide and 33.7 meters high, and it is very difficult to completely cover such a huge building.
But it only took the construction team 8 days to cover Tiananmen Square with reed mats.
The reason for the cover is, on the one hand, to keep it a secret and ensure that no one will watch during the construction period.
On the other hand, there is an objective construction need. Because of its age, the dust accumulated on the edge of the city tower reached one centimeter or even two centimeters thick, and if it was not covered, it would cause a lot of dust.
In addition, the construction period spans the entire winter, so in order to take thermal insulation measures later, it is also necessary to cover up.
Tiananmen Square before the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China in 1949
In the process of reviewing the construction plan, it was proposed that the reconstruction should be contracted by foreigners, and the construction time would take three or five years, or at least two years.
However, this point was first denied by Premier Zhou.
He identified two points for reconstruction, the first being the construction of domestic construction projects. The second time is short, to ensure that the celebration of May Day in the coming year will continue as usual, so it must be completed before May Day.
After that, Premier Zhou personally designated the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Construction and Engineering as the main contractor, together with the General Staff Headquarters, the Beijing Garrison District, and other departments of the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee, to form the Leading Group for the Reconstruction of the Tiananmen Tower.
Tiananmen Square on the day of the founding ceremony
In order to ensure the foolproof task, Beijing Fifth Construction Engineering Company carried out strict screening of construction personnel.
Not only must we be technically proficient, but the key is political reliability.
After the selection of construction team members, militarized management is carried out according to the military establishment. A total of five construction teams were formed, namely the Carpentry Company, the Tile Company, the Shelf Company and the Mixed Company.
All the construction team members cannot disclose the project situation to the outside world, even their families.
The first thing after the start of construction was the demolition of the city building. Because it is necessary to ensure that the new city towers built later are the same size as the original city towers, before demolition, the city towers are measured in detail.
Yao Laiquan, the commander of the carpentry company, cooperated with the people of the Surveying Bureau to make detailed measurements of the buckets, arches, sounds, columns, and end gates of the castle tower.
Mao Zedong announced the founding of New China at the Tiananmen Tower
In the specific demolition process, each wooden component that is dismantled, in addition to drawing, is also photographed and numbered in order.
After that, it is all handed over to the Beijing Municipal Architectural Design Institute, who first draws the drawings, and then processes the wooden components according to the new drawings.
When demolished to the middle of the ridge of the house, the construction crew found a box.
When the ancient building was closed in the main roof ridge, a box would be placed in the main roof ridge, and the box was filled with gold, silver, copper, iron and tin small yuan treasures, as well as colorful threads and grains, etc. The role of the box is to town things.
After the Tiananmen Tower was rebuilt, a piece of White Jade stone was placed where the box was placed, on which it was rebuilt from January to March 1970.
Due to the proper coordination of the various construction teams, it took only one week for the city tower to be demolished. After that, all the measurement data was reported to Mao Zedong, who instructed mao zedong: the original is unchanged, the size is unchanged.
The troops under parade pass through Tiananmen Square
In the following construction process, in order to ensure the temperature, the boiler room was temporarily built in the adjacent Zhongshan Park.
After dismantling, it is the installation of the big wood. The wood needed for the bucket arch comes from the Dongzhimen City Tower, and all the wooden components are anti-corrosion, insect-proof and fireproof.
There are more than 60 pillars on the city tower, each 12 meters long and weighing more than 7 tons. Originally, in the original forests of Hainan Island and Xishuangbanna, many suitable trees were found. However, because the whole is too big and too heavy, transporting out of the forest is a big problem.
The last pieces of wood were imported from Gabon and Indonesia. Because the wood there is hard and looks like mahogany, it will not burn when it encounters fire, but will only smoke.
In 1953, Mao Zedong and other leaders were in the Tiananmen Tower
The wood needed is ready, and the next thing is the problem of assembly, but there are still a lot of problems.
At that time, the crane arm, the maximum height was only 25 meters, and the height was not enough. Later, during the construction, the method of "oblique slipping" was adopted. Two cranes lift a pillar, which is first slipped onto the pillar foundation, and then a little bit into place.
Once assembled, it's time to paint with oil on.
Some processes originally had 13 processes, which were very time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the construction team studied and tested to make a processing machine, which made the efficacy increase by 150 times at once.
In 1969, Tiananmen City Tower
Two opinions appear on the depiction of the pattern.
One view is that since it is an ancient building, it should be built in the traditional way. The golden dragon and seal paintings above, as well as the large areas depicting gold, should not be altered.
However, another opinion is that these things are all four olds and belong to the feudal content. Tiananmen is meant to have a revolutionary new era significance, so some people hope to replace it with patterns such as sunflowers and Yan'an Pagoda.
In the end, because of the disagreement, it was reported to Premier Zhou Enlai for decision.
After reading everyone's opinions, Premier Zhou said that the dragon is the symbol of the Chinese nation, so the main part cannot be changed.
In terms of painting, the whole can replace some of the original content with relatively simple dahlias and seals. The rest is business as usual, and no structure can be altered.
The White Jade Stone that was put in the Tiananmen Tower during the reconstruction
After the painting, the next step is to paste the gold leaf. There were six kilograms of gold on the upper floors of the castle, and the gold leaf was all imported, very thin, and during construction, the workers had to clip them up one by one, paste them on the paint, and then flatten them little by little with a small brush.
At this point, the main structure of the entire upper body of the Tiananmen Tower has been completed, while the base of Tiananmen Has not been rebuilt.
In fact, not only has it not been rebuilt this time, but Tiananmen Square has been destroyed many times in history, and it is only the destruction of the first half of the wooden structure of the city tower, and the base is basically relatively intact.
At that time, two new elevators were installed for Tiananmen, so construction was started from the lowest level.
The workers found that although the base was only a brick-concrete structure, in history, when it was built, all the bricks made of mixed soil were cast with glutinous rice soup.
Therefore, even if it is more than five hundred years since its initial construction, it is very strong and very laborious to dismantle.
In 1953, a temporary portrait of Stalin was hung in the Tiananmen Tower
So in the end, only a layer of brick was inlaid on the wall of the base, and another 50 cm thick cement was punched on the outer wall.
This makes the Tiananmen Tower 87 centimeters taller than the original.
However, because of the age, the foundation continues to sink, and the new height just cancels out the height of the sinking, so the overall appearance will not make a difference.
Moreover, in the process of construction, the eaves absorbed the architectural techniques of the Ming Dynasty and raised the bucket head part of the bucket arch, so the overall appearance of the cornice is more upturned.
In this way, Tiananmen Square looks even more tall and magnificent.
The last process is to hang the national emblem. At that time, the national emblem was completed by the Beijing Engraving Factory and was 1.7 meters in diameter. Although the overall material is plywood, it takes 8 people to carry it.
In order to ensure that the national emblem can be hung correctly, Yao Laiquan, the commander of the carpentry company, finally checked the pass.
On October 1, 1965, Mao Zedong was in the Tiananmen Tower
Before hanging the national emblem, Premier Zhou personally told them that they must hang the national emblem correctly and that there should be no mistakes.
Before hanging, Yao Laiquan made a final inspection and found that the name and date of the person carrying the national emblem were written in pencil on the back. So he used fine sandpaper and polished the handwriting little by little.
In the process of hanging, use the left and right sets of pulleys to slowly hoist to a fixed position, and then adjust the position.
The national emblem should be aligned with the central axis of Beijing, and there should be no slightest deviation.
Workers hung on the city tower, and comrades from the survey bureau were in the square, measuring with theodolites, and correcting the position a little.
In May 1970, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Prince Sihanouk were in the Tiananmen Tower
The midline on the theodolite should coincide with the centerline on the national emblem.
To this end, Yao Laiquan constantly corrected the position according to the signal of the yellow flag in the left and right hands of the surveyors.
It took three hours to hang the national emblem on the central axis of Beijing.
By the evening of March 7, 1970, construction was nearing completion. The lightning nets and lanterns on the castle towers were also installed.
Finally, the portrait of Chairman Mao and the placards on both sides of the People's Republic of China, Long Live the Great Unity of the People of the World, are hung.
At this time, the placard has been replaced by fiberglass material, and the outer bread has iron horns.
Snow and Chairman Mao were on the upper floor of Tiananmen Square on National Day 1970
Another month later, on April 7, all works were completed. After acceptance, the reconstructed Tiananmen Tower was qualified.
At this moment, tens of thousands of bamboo pens and 3,000 cubic meters of mat sheds were all dismantled overnight.
In the early morning of the next day, what appeared to the world was a more golden and brilliant Tiananmen Square.
Subsequently, on the afternoon of April 11, 1970, Premier Zhou Enlai inspected the Tiananmen Tower.
From the official start of construction in December 1969 to the completion of the construction in early April 1970, the entire reconstruction took only 112 days.
In 1963, Mao Zedong was in the Tiananmen Tower
Soon, a month later, on Labor Day, party and state leaders held a grand celebration on the newly built Tiananmen Tower.
Throughout the construction process, glazed tiles alone were made of 100 specifications and more than 100,000 pieces. The Tiananmen Tower not only retains its original appearance, but is also fortified according to the nine-level seismic standard.
In addition to the reconstructed castle towers, the east and west roll sheds and the height of the city platform, the daughter wall has also been thinned.
According to statistics, during the construction process, the departments involved in the whole country involved a total of 216 departments in 21 provinces and cities. During the construction process, the number of construction workers reached more than 2700 at the highest time.
After this reconstruction and renovation, through daily normal maintenance, the life of Tiananmen will last for hundreds or even thousands of years.
As a symbol of the new China, the rebuilt Tiananmen Square is not only more majestic and heroic. Moreover, the significance of its representation has become more extraordinary and brilliant in Beijing and even in the whole land of China.
Tiananmen Square in the rising sun
Because Tiananmen not only belongs to but also represents the country, the people and the entire Chinese nation.