The "Admiral Yamen" of the year
No. 45 North Xikou Road, Mao'er Hutong, looks nothing special now. As early as the Ming Dynasty, it was the seat of the Beizhen Fusi, which was commonly known as the "North Yamen" of the old Beijingers. In the Ming Dynasty, this "North Gate" was a chilling place, like today's State Security Agency. In the Qing Dynasty, it was first the huitongguan of the Rebbe. In the twenty-first year of Qianlong, he became the commander of the infantry army, Yamen (the department responsible for managing social order in Beijing). It was not until 1924, when the qing room preferential treatment regulations were amended, that the infantry commander Yamen was abolished, and it was used as a security brigade headquarters during the Republic of China.
Admiral Yamen
The original site of the Deportivated Admiral Yamen
The now-disappeared "Infantry Commander Yamen" was once the site of the National Drama Theatre, and its office building was built on the original site of the "Infantry Commander Yamen". It is said that after liberation, with the support of Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Luo Ruiqing, it was changed to the Central Experimental Drama Theater, and the Experimental Drama Theater Small Theater was also born here. Once upon a time, "visiting Shichahai, visiting Gonggu Lane, and watching Mandarin dramas" became a compulsory course for tourists to come to Beijing. Until 2001, Courtyard 45 was the location of the Central Experimental Drama Theatre, and then merged with the China Youth Art Theater to form the National Drama Theatre, which moved into the new site of Guang'anmen, which was originally located as the theater dormitory area.
Former site of the Experimental Drama Theatre
The Former Admiral's Gate has long since disappeared. There is a written record: "After the Xinhai Revolution, according to the conditions for preferential treatment of the Qing imperial family announced by the provisional president Dr. Sun Yat-sen, there were projects such as 'the honorific title of the Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty still exists', so not only all the institutions in the Forbidden City exist, but also the Eight Banners are unified and the Yamen are all the same as usual, and the commander of the infantry army, Yamen, and the Police Department also have their own division of labor to manage ground security inside and outside Beijing." It was not until the thirteenth year of the Republic of China (1924) when the regency cabinet announced the revision of the conditions for preferential treatment of the Qing imperial family that it was dismissed. ”
Mr. Zhu Jiaxuan, a well-known expert in Qing history, recalled: "I remember when I was a child living in Hat Er Hutong, I often passed through this yamen. Living in the Hat Hutong in and out of the west entrance, in front of the Yamen is the only way, which is equivalent to crossing the east and west gates of the infantry commanding the Yamen. Gate three jacaranda, barrel tile, ridge beast, hard mountain type. The left and right barriers are separated by windows, and the middle vermilion lacquered gate is two. There is a horse stone in front of the door, and the shadow wall, the lobby, and the left and right compartments in the middle of the door can only be seen from outside the gate. There are also several main rooms and box rooms in the back. On the left side of the gate is the Yanwu Hall, the gate is three meters tall, there is a figure eight wall on the left and right of the door, and there is a pair of stone lions in front of the door.
The stone lion in front of the Admiral's Gate
From outside the door, you can see that inside the door is a large playground, sitting on a high platform facing north and south, on the platform of the open hall with five trees and two rolls, and there are group houses on both sides. One or two hundred steps away from the opposite side of these two gates, there are two illuminated walls. This is what this yamen looked like back then. Now the house of a service company in front of the building is built on the original right gate platform, and the surrounding taibang stones are still the original foundation site, and there are no other relics left. ”
Yang Liangzhi, a librarian at the Beijing Municipal Research Museum of Literature and History, recalled that the two big lions in front of the gate (Yamen) on the left and the right were so tall in the eyes of us little dolls, but they were by no means majestic. Grandma often took me to play with the big lion, standing on the square lion seat, tiptoeing up to touch the lion's big mouth, and then probing its thick tongue—it didn't bite, and then touched its towering nose and deep eyes.
A tower built on the site of the former Governor's Gate
In the 1980s, a boxy tower was built in the courtyard of the former Central Experimental Drama Theatre, which had an extremely strong mark of the times at that time and now, but was extremely incongruous with the surrounding environment. There were many cultural celebrities living in the tower, such as Liu Mengxi, a famous scholar and expert in red studies, and famous actors Zheng Zhenyao and Lei Kesheng who lived in this tower that year. Recently, some media reported that in order to rectify the surrounding environment of the central axis, it was decided to demolish this tower. (To be continued)