In 1969, the central government issued an order: the old Tiananmen Tower was demolished and rebuilt on the original site according to the original scale and original architectural form.
Friends familiar with history know that Tiananmen was founded in the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, and on the eve of the Yongle Emperor's relocation from Nanjing to Beijing, he recruited a group of skilled craftsmen across the country to build the city of Beijing, and Chengtianmen was one of them. After the Qing army entered the pass, the Shunzhi Emperor carried out a large-scale reconstruction of the Chengtian Gate and renamed it Tiananmen.
This is an ancient building that is hundreds of years old, so why did the central government order demolition and reconstruction?
Tiananmen
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > a brief history of Tiananmen</h1>
After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, he renamed most of the capital Beiping Province, and Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth son, Zhu Di, was crowned the King of Yan when he was 10 years old, and Beiping was Zhu Di's fiefdom. Zhu Di operated in Beiping for many years and had a strong influence, and later after seizing the throne, he had the idea of moving the capital to Beiping.
Zhu Di first renamed Peiping to Beijing, expanding Beijing with reference to the city of Nanjing at that time. ChengtianMen is the main gate of the Imperial City, designed and built by the architect Qu Xiang, after which Zhu Dilong Yan Dayue called him "Kuluban".
However, since the completion of the Chengtian gate, it has been "ill-fated", in the Ming Yingzong period, the Chengtian gate was struck by lightning and caused a fire, because the above are wooden structures, the past fire extinguishing methods were relatively inefficient, most of them were turned into charcoal, and the imperial court took a long time to repair.
At the end of the Chongzhen period, after Li Zicheng invaded Beijing, the chair was not hot, Wu Sangui led the Qing soldiers into Shanhaiguan, Li Zicheng's peasant army was not the opponent of the Qing army, defeated and defeated, the Qing army approached the city of Beijing, Li Zicheng before retreating, set fire to the palace, including the Chengtianmen Gate, this time the Chengtianmen gate was seriously damaged.
After the Qing army entered the customs, it was also ready to set the capital in Beijing, and many of the palace buildings were destroyed by Li Zicheng, and the Shunzhi Emperor ordered that the Chengtianmen Gate be renovated and renamed "Tiananmen", which is still used today; this time, on the basis of the original, a moat was built, and seven stone bridges were built on the river, that is, the current Jinshui River and Jinshui Bridge.
When the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China in 1900, it shelled the Tiananmen Tower, so when the Qing Dynasty was crumbling, the national treasury did not have much money, and it had to pay 450 million silver to the Eight-Power Alliance, and could not come up with more money to repair Tiananmen Square on a large scale. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China fell into a period of warlord chaos, and no one could take care of it, until after the founding of New China, Tiananmen Square was fully repaired.
Old photos of Tiananmen
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > witnessed the birth of New China</h1>
After the end of the Tianjin Campaign, Fu Zuoyi felt that he could not drag it out any longer, and the two sides held talks again, and Fu Zuoyi finally made his final decision and declared the peaceful liberation of Peiping.
A few days later, the Beiping Military Control Commission and the municipal government began to enter the city to work and began to take over Beiping in an all-round way, and the Cultural Takeover Committee was ordered to take over Tiananmen, but at this time Tiananmen had long lost its former glory, and the procedures for handing over were very simple, only a rusty iron lock.
Because it has fallen into disrepair, Tiananmen Can be described as "dilapidated", the city tower is full of broken bricks and tiles, the roof is overgrown with weeds, the wall skin is peeling off, the doors and windows are missing, there is no piece of it, the Jinshui River is full of silt, you can smell a peculiar smell...
After the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, the Party Central Committee decided to move to Beiping, and soon decided to hold the founding ceremony at the right time; but choosing where to hold the founding ceremony became a problem.
There are two locations: the first is Nanyuan Airport, and the second is Tiananmen Square.
Founding Ceremony
Both places have pros and cons. Nanyuan Airport recently held a military parade, the venue is no problem, and it is far from the city, will not affect the traffic, but because the location is relatively remote, the traffic is inconvenient, but also have to build a "parade platform". The Tiananmen Tower is a ready-made "parade platform" with convenient transportation, but the venue is not as good as Nanyuan Airport, and it will also affect the traffic in the city.
Both plans were reported to the Central Committee, and After repeated deliberations by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and others, they finally made a decision: the founding ceremony was held in Tiananmen Square.
Because Tiananmen Square and the Tiananmen Tower had not yet been repaired, the Beijing Municipal Government, after receiving the order, began to prepare for the repair of the Tiananmen Tower and the square, repairing some of the damaged parts that could be seen on the surface, at least to ensure that it would not look very tattered at the founding ceremony.
Since the founding ceremony, every major festival, a grand celebration will be held in Tiananmen, and Chairman Mao and other central leaders will climb the Tiananmen Tower, so the safety of the Tiananmen Tower must be absolutely guaranteed.
Shortly after the founding ceremony, the Beijing Municipal Government began to invite domestic construction experts to study the plan for repairing Tiananmen, but after the outbreak of the Korean War, China sent volunteers into the Korean War, and the focus of the whole country was on the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, delaying the repair of Tiananmen, and did not fully start repairing Tiananmen until 1952.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > rebuild the Tiananmen Tower</h1>
After all, Tiananmen is a centuries-old building, and it still has a security risk by only repairing and repairing.
On March 8 and 22, 1966, a large earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 7.2 occurred in Xingtai, Hebei Province, which affected many surrounding provinces and cities, and there were many cracks and landslides in the earthquake area, and the destructive power of this earthquake also affected Beijing, resulting in the already damaged Tiananmen Square becoming more and more serious. Moreover, during this time, the central government often held various activities here, and the central leaders would climb the Tiananmen Tower.
The Beijing Municipal Government organized experts to conduct a comprehensive "physical examination" of the Tiananmen Tower, found a lot of serious problems, affected by the earthquake, many purlins, fangs have fallen off or directly broken, plus before the construction, some of the design is unreasonable, and there is a situation of cutting corners, and long-term lack of maintenance, after this earthquake, the overall wooden frame structure has a more serious deformation.
During the inspection, experts found a problem that made people sweat: the large pillar behind the place where Mao Zedong rested at Tiananmen Square, although it looked intact on the outside, was hollowed out for 10 meters inside, which was very dangerous, and immediately reported it to the central government.
The central authorities attach great importance to this problem, and it is good to find it in a timely manner, otherwise if an accident occurs, the consequences will be unimaginable, and in the past, simple repairs and patches could not solve the fundamental problems, and the symptoms would not cure the root causes. A decision was made in 1969 to rebuild the original site on its original scale and original architectural form.
Inside Tiananmen
It was already winter when this decision was made. Beijing's winter is not suitable for construction, because the freshly mixed cement has not yet begun to use, it will condense in the cold wind, but because of the May Day in 1970, to hold a celebration in Tiananmen Square, Chairman Mao and other state leaders will climb the Tiananmen Tower, so we must pay close attention to construction.
Time is tight and the task is heavy, the process of Tiananmen is complex, the construction is difficult, and everyone's opinions on the renovation have not been unified, and each has its own reason.
Some people have proposed that foreign construction companies be contracted, but they think that it takes three to five years to rebuild, and if overtime is overtime, it will take two years at the earliest to be delivered, which is far from meeting the needs of Labor Day in 1970.
Responsible for the reconstruction of Tiananmen Square is the Beijing Fifth Construction Engineering Company.
At that time, the reconstruction of Tiananmen Square was not an open project, but required strict secrecy, so the Beijing Fifth Construction Engineering Company screened the workers participating in the construction, in addition to good technology, politically absolutely reliable, all of which had to pass the political examination.
Tiananmen Square (stills)
Wujian dispatched a group of workers with the best skills and good roots to form a number of construction companies, such as carpentry companies, tile workers' companies, color oil companies, shelf companies, and mixed companies, and many construction companies in accordance with the army's establishment, and each company had corresponding platoons and shifts under them, and demanded that all workers not tell their parents and their wives and children, that each construction company had its own certificates, and that no inquiry was allowed to be made between each process; at the same time, in order to ensure the safety of the decision, the central authorities also sent two companies of the People's Liberation Army to disperse to each construction company to participate in the construction.
Because Tiananmen is a secret construction, before demolition, a huge canopy must be built around Tiananmen square with reeds to wrap Tiananmen squarely.
Yang Helin, the commander of the Xi shed company, first tied a model, because there were several workers who had been engaged in related work for many years before, and they understood what to do at a glance. This work must be coordinated with the workers of the shelf company, which changed the previous method of steel pipe folding, tied together with several cedar artemisias, connected layer by layer, and in just over a week, the entire Tiananmen Tower was tightly wrapped, and outsiders did not know what was going on inside, and even the staff of Zhongshan Park and the Cultural Palace nearby did not know what was happening.
At the same time, in order to keep warm, a boiler room was specially built, and during the construction in winter, although it was cold outside, it was warm inside.
The demolition of the Old City Tower was the first project after the start of construction.
Tiananmen City Tower in the end how much wood is used no one can say, and the dismantled things, no matter how big the structure, can not find a nail, the central government requires the new Tiananmen Tower, the shape and scale must be the same, the five construction of the carpentry company Yao Laiquan and the comrades of the Survey Bureau to cooperate with each other, all the buckets, arches, columns, etc. are measured one by one, each piece of dismantled wooden structural parts, are drawn as they are, and the direction and position are clearly marked, taken into photos, and then handed over to the factory, according to the drawings for production, Because of the tacit understanding, it took only one week to demolish the Tiananmen Tower.
During the demolition, workers found an ancient "treasure of the town tower" on the highest ridge tile in Tiananmen City
At that time, Yao Laiquan of the carpentry company was ordered to climb to the highest point of the ridge tile to count the number of ridge tiles, and after smashing the yellow glazed tile in the middle, he found a square box of about 30 centimeters, on which was carved the pattern of the Erlong Play Bead.
After the leader let Yao Laiquan pry open, he took out a gold yuanbao from it, although it was stored for too long, it was not so bright; after the gold yuanbao, Yao Laiquan felt a gemstone, as well as soybeans, sorghum, black beans, millet, corn, after consulting the ancient architecture experts, he learned that this was a treasure of the town building, ancient feudal superstition, when building a house, he would put some "evil" things to seek peace.
Later, when the new city tower was built, Yao Laiquan, the leader of the carpentry company, also placed a modern anti-evil object in the original location: a piece of Han white jade stone with a height of 17 centimeters, a width of 12 centimeters, and a thickness of 3 centimeters, on which was engraved the words reconstructed from January to March 1970, which became a witness to the reconstruction of Tiananmen Square.
The demolition of Tiananmen Square can be described as a surprise and joy, and the discovery of the treasure of the town building is "joy", but then the "surprise" comes.
When demolishing a wall, a worker found a shell, everyone evacuated urgently, after public security and expert identification, this is a shell when the Eight-Power Coalition invaded Beijing, but strangely, this is a complete shell, if it is fired and not exploded, it should be only the warhead without a shell casing, if someone deliberately placed it on this side, what is the role of a shell? From the discovery of the first shell, the workers found several identical shells when they were working later, but because the construction of Tiananmen Square was an extremely confidential project at that time, these shells were taken by the police.
Because the Tiananmen Tower was originally made of a large amount of wood, there were 16 pillars alone, each 12 meters long and weighing several tons, and a car could only pull one, and after the demolition, it began to look for suitable wood.
At that time, suitable timber was found on Hainan Island and Xishuangbanna, and the Hainan government learned that it was necessary to build Tiananmen, and immediately said: As long as Tiananmen needs it, even if the people of Hainan carry it one by one, they will send the timber to Tiananmen.
Because of the problem of transportation, the train is too slow, a helicopter can not be hoisted, two at the same time hanging and dangerous, and finally imported from overseas a batch of wood similar to mahogany, this wood has a little, encounter fire only smoke, will not be, to tiananmen fire prevention help.
Premier Zhou Enlai has always been concerned about the progress of the project, and some major issues are all decided by him. In reconstructing the big kiss at both ends of Tiananmen Square, there were differences in the treatment of patterns and painted paintings, some people believed that the golden dragon and seal should be used according to the previous plan, and others believed that the golden dragon and seal were feudal things, and sunflowers should be used to shine and yan'an pagodas.
After reading it, Premier Zhou believed that the dragon is the symbol of the Chinese nation, and the original main part should not be changed, and instructed: Tiananmen Square paintings as a whole use simple "dahlias and seals", hook heads and other small glazed tiles can be used sunflower patterns, the rest of everything is business as usual, and no structure can be changed!
It is worth mentioning that when Tiananmen Was rebuilt, it only demolished and rebuilt the upper part, and the base did not move much. Although there are hundreds of years of history, or brick-concrete structure, but the ancient technology has to admire, when the use of glutinous rice soup and mixed soil bricks, used for so long is still very strong, to dismantle is very difficult.
At the same time, the construction unit also changed some places on a small scale on the basis of the original. For example, considering that when Chairman Mao was inspecting the troops in the Tiananmen Tower, he had to go down three steps from the front porch of the city tower to reach the inspection position in the middle, the construction team planned to change the three steps to one step, but later felt that the three steps became one step, and it was not very good to walk, and finally directly moved the corridor platform forward to the handrail, dismantled the steps, and set the railing in the position of the handrail.
The central news film production department, which is responsible for the photography of the event, also proposed that in the past, because the lighting of Tiananmen Square was relatively poor, it was difficult to reflect the entire scene when filming, and in order to highlight the image of Chairman Mao, several lights could be added.
Some people also suggested that when holding activities, when leaders or guests went from the city tower to the front porch, because the steps were relatively small, and the railings on both sides were relatively high, the reporters were walking around in the front because it was not easy to take pictures, which affected the line of sight, which was also a real problem, so the engineer changed the length of the railing to a little smaller, and the steps also moved twenty centimeters inside.
Leaders commonly used the lounge, in the past used fluorescent lamps, because considering that the failure rate of fluorescent lamps at that time was relatively high, afraid that the key moment would drop the chain, after the electrician's research, the fluorescent lamp was changed to a small flower lamp with relatively high stability, and at the same time, the wires that were like "spider webs" before were all changed to dark lines, improving the beauty and so on.
Although these are some small details, they show the sense of responsibility of the construction unit at that time.
The newly built Tiananmen Tower, "increased" by 87 cm, because of the collapse of the foundation, Tiananmen "short" a little, the construction unit in order to restore Tiananmen to the original height as much as possible, increase the size of the bucket arch and adjust the lifting frame, and absorb some ancient construction techniques, so although the height increased by 87 cm, it is normally difficult to detect the change in height.
The last process of tiananmen reconstruction was to hang the national emblem, and Zhou Enlai attached great importance to this step and demanded that it must be hung correctly, and this task was finally entrusted to Yao Laiquan to complete.
The national emblem on the upper floor of Tiananmen Square has a diameter of 1.7 meters, it takes eight people to lift it, Yao Laiquan found that the name of the worker carrying the national emblem was written on the back of the national emblem, Yao Laiquan asked the superior leader for instructions, the leader clearly required that the national emblem could not leave any traces, so he erased the names of these people.
According to the instructions of the central authorities, the position of the national emblem should be aligned with the central axis of Beijing, and there can be no deviation in the slightest.
national emblem
This work should be coordinated with the Survey Bureau, which held the theodolite and stood on the central axis to direct, because there was no walkie-talkie, the Survey Bureau used the flag to direct Yao Laiquan to adjust the position, measured little by little, and it took more than three hours to accurately hang the national emblem on the central axis of Beijing.
On April 7, 1970, the reconstruction of the Tiananmen Tower was completed and passed the acceptance of the state, and when the shed and scaffolding were demolished, a brand-new Tiananmen Tower appeared in front of the world.
From December 15, 1969 to April 7, 1970 completion, it took only 112 days to complete the demolition, reconstruction, paint, on the basis of the original, increased elevators, heating, communications and other facilities, construction peak at the same time more than 2700 people at the same time, the speed, high quality, in the world very few.
End of this article