△ Beijing North Second Ring Road Xiaojie Bridge, also known as North Xiaojie Opening
The word "open- " is actually a little bit derogatory: what is originally complete must be broken in a violent way in order to be called "open-minded". Used in life, "open up", which means sacrificing a lot of beatings.
You taste, is that what you mean.
My home is in the northeast of Beijing, on the edge of the fifth ring road. If you want to enter the old Beijing City in the second ring road, the closest one is to cross The East Street of Hepingli and "enter the city" from the opening of North Small Street. That's right, that's the word "open-minded."
For a long time, I did not understand the meaning of this word in the name of the place, until I later found that these "openings" were in the places where there were once walls.
In the imagination, a group of small people climbed up the city wall and randomly operated a way to knock the city wall down, and from then on the city wall was opened for "opening".
However, how could the walls of the mighty imperial capital be tolerated?
△ In the northwest corner of the Beijing City Wall in 1948, it was taken over the current Xizhimen Subway Building
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="143" > opening</h1>
Whether it is an imperial capital or a small city less than a mile away, the most basic function is to protect the safety of the people in the city. Walls and doors are the basic elements of a city, and it is natural to go through the city gates to enter the city.
△ View of Beijing from the southeast of Beijing City (near the present-day Shili River). Liang Sicheng painted, and the city gate was marked by the author
By the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there were 10 gates in the inner city of Beijing, counting the 7 in the outer city, a total of 17; the walls of the inner and outer cities added up to more than 30 kilometers. At that time, nearly 400,000 people lived in the city, eating and drinking in and out, all relying on these 17 gates.
Removing the four gates of Xuanwu, Heping, Zhengyang and Chongwen that communicate between the inner and outer cities, plus the newly opened Fuxing Gate and Jianguo Gate of the Japanese Army, the entire Beijing City has 15 openings in external communication, which is equivalent to more than 2 kilometers of the city wall every 2 kilometers. In addition, there is a railway special opening next to Zuo'anmen during the construction of Jinghan Road (to this day, Beijing Station starts and ends, and the general speed trains that pass through the old lines such as Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou will still pass through here).
After the war, the capital of the republic was in ruins and the people's lives were restored, and the city walls had become an obstacle to traffic inside and outside the city; its defensive role in the era of cold weapons had also disappeared. In fact, in order to build a railway around the city and divert traffic, the urns and towers of several city gates have long been incomplete.
△ ChaoyangMen (taken in 1951)
Can the walls of Beijing be ripped off? Can it be dismantled?
Liang Sicheng, who advocated the complete protection of the city of Beijing and moved the administrative office area outside the city, wrote a special article in 1950 on the whereabouts of the city wall, refuting the views of opponents one by one. As for the party advocating the demolition of the city wall, he summarized the reasons as follows:
The city wall, an ancient fortification, has now lost its function, and it has fulfilled its historical task;
The city walls are the remains of feudal emperors;
City walls impede traffic, restrict or hinder the development of the city;
Many bricks could be obtained by demolishing the city walls, and the land could be obtained and used as roads.
Before refuting it, he jumped out of the city wall to look at the city wall and lamented the bitter consequences of the big city disease since the industrial revolution in Europe and the United States:
Because of the unplanned, orderly and unrestricted development of industry and commerce in Europe and the United States, the cities themselves have also evolved into a state of weed sprawl... People who live in central areas such as London and New York have to take an underground car for three quarters of an hour or even more to reach the countryside.
Is this scene a bit familiar?
In Liang Sicheng's view, the solution to this urban disease lies in abandoning the pattern of single center + spread pie, developing multi-center and multi-group groups, and each group is separated by green space, fields, water systems and so on.
The city wall and its surrounding water system and open space can be used to separate and curb disorderly development at the same time, but also can be "made into an excellent green belt park", and the city wall itself can also be used to "plant grass and flowers, cool and recreation".
A bit romantic.
△ The blurred "green partition" near the Siyuan Bridge in Beijing shows that there are still many buildings in the green partition area. Figure: Baidu Map
Ideologically, Liang Sicheng also believes that the city wall has a new era significance. Tiananmen, the Forbidden City and other former royal forbidden places are now open to the people, why has the city wall become a symbol of feudal society and must be demolished? Moreover, the city wall was also built by the people, and like the Great Wall, it is the crystallization of the wisdom of the working people. Obstructing traffic and using the city wall to build roads, he also refuted them one by one: traffic problems, the appropriate location can open a few more city gates; the city bricks are demolished and there is concrete inside, which is time-consuming and laborious and cannot free up much land.
In the first few years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, issues involving the planning of the capital city needed to be discussed and approved by the Capital City Planning Commission, and Returnees such as Liang Sicheng and Chen Zhanxiang, who were familiar with Western urban planning theory, were all members. Although Liang Sicheng once said in the article that "a few more city gates can be opened", in the year after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the initiative to open the mouth was still repeatedly rejected.
Perhaps in his view, "moving the knife" on this unparalleled masterpiece of Beijing City should be cautious and cautious, and if you can not move, you will not move.
Kong Qingpu, a graduate of Tsinghua University who was a technician at the Beijing Municipal Construction Bureau at the time, is still alive today. He once recalled the scene in an interview with the Beijing News:
(After the founding of the People's Republic of China), the lives of ordinary people gradually improved. Also, as soon as the war ended, the population increased rapidly. Moreover, after the Central People's Government lived in the city, the increase in population was also very large. Including officials, service personnel, as well as garrisons, police have increased. What about these people's domestic garbage and travel problems?
Then, Liang Sicheng had no words.
△ The construction site of the Beijing-Hankou Railway when the opening of the opening in the outer city
In October 1950, at the work conference on war preparedness held by the municipal party committee and the municipal government, it was decided to demolish six city wall openings in the east, west and north of the inner city; around the Spring Festival in 1951, Wu Han, then vice mayor of Beijing, also held a special symposium on the opening of the city wall. In that year, the opening of Dongzhimen North Street was opened together with the three openings of Taoran Pavilion (now Taoran Bridge) and Jiasong (now Guangming Bridge) in nancheng, as the first batch of openings.
The game behind it has been dusted. Throughout the 1950s, including the renovation and expansion of the original city gate, more than ten opening projects were implemented.
The opening of the city wall is just a microcosm of the demolition and protection confrontation in the old city of Beijing. The old city of Beijing has gradually disappeared in this decades-long confrontation with economic interests, ideology, world pattern, and the situation within the party.
Until recent years, Beijing has been fortunate to form a consensus on protecting and continuing the tradition from top to bottom, and the once-popular demolition and construction has finally had the meaning of stopping the flag.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="145" > embassies</h1>
△ A partial satellite map of the northeast corner of the old city of Beijing, and a map of the location of the locations involved in this article. Basemap source: See watermark
From the North Street Exit all the way to the east, not far from the North Official Hall Bus Stop. Every day, the 44 routes depart from here and then return here, and it takes more than 200 laps around the second ring road.
Is there an "official hall" near here? Where is it?
△ Beiguan Hall Bus Station. Now the 688 road has been optimized, and the brand has not been changed.
Further on, the second ring road, which has always been straight forward, is stunned by a rounded bend, there is a barbed wire fence inside the bend, and the net is green; from the satellite map, several rows of red-roofed buildings are gradually arranged along the second ring road.
Who would have thought that this was actually the Russian Embassy in China. It stands proudly independent of all embassy gatherings, silently telling the story of the neighbor's ups and downs with China.
The side entrance of the Russian Embassy on Min'an Street
Xiao Qian, a famous journalist and translator born near this neighborhood at the end of the Qing Dynasty, once described this place in his childhood:
There is also a very peculiar (garlic-like) building attached to the dongzhimen city root, which is the Russian Orthodox Church. There is also a cross on the vaulted roof, but during worship it is lit with incense and candles, which is more attractive than the jesuitism. They muttered in their prayers—they now know that they are chanting in Greek. Near the church, we often see some Russians who help the old and the young, who have escaped from their own country after the October Revolution, and when they see people, they reach out and beg, which looks very pitiful.
It was they who made me remember long ago: Don't be a wanderer without a motherland.
△ Xiao Qian's birthplace - the present appearance of Yangguan Hutong
Why did the Orthodox Church appear in old Beijing? Why are there Russian displaced people here? Why is the Russian embassy far from the embassy district and isolated in the city?
It all started 400 years ago.
In 1613, the Romanov family entered the stage of Russian history, beginning more than 300 years of tsarist rule. During this period, Russia gradually changed from a traditional European country to what it is today across Europe and Asia. The two peoples of China and Russia, whose historical ties were not very deep, began to gradually approach with the footsteps of the Tsar's pioneering.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, taking advantage of the unstable government, Russia began to expand its territory in the Heilongjiang River Basin and the area east of the Waixing'an Mountains, and by the 1680s, the sphere of influence had approached the main stream of the Heilongjiang River.
In 1683, Kangxi, who had quelled the San Francisco Rebellion and recovered Taiwan, made up his mind to break the war in the northeast. In 1685, the Qing army and the local ethnic minority armed forces launched a general attack on the Russian stronghold of Yaksa on the banks of the Heilongjiang River, and after ten days of fierce fighting, finally took Yaksa in one fell swoop. The Russian army withdrew, the Qing army destroyed the city of Yaksa, did not think that a few months later the Russian army killed another horse gun, the Qing army launched a general attack again, which completely destroyed the Russian army. Years of war have led to a large influx of Russian prisoners of war and "Russian traitors" into China.
△ Yaksa is now almost an empty city. The river on the left is the Heilongjiang River
If how prisoners of war were treated was a sign of the degree of national civilization, then from this point of view, Confucian culture was much better than some European cultures—we placed these Russians in the "Pepper Garden" in the northeast corner of the city (note that it was not Hu Jiayuan outside the DongzhiMen), and a nearby Taoist temple (recorded in the old map as the "Five Residences Temple") was also given to the Russians, and this pepper garden was just mentioned at the 44 Road Beiguan Hall Main Station, and the location of the adjacent immigration hall.
△ The 1936 edition of the Map of Peiping shows that the "Pepper Garden" has been falsely named "Hu Homeland", and the North Pavilion, which was then changed to the Russian Orthodox Church. Author remake
Among them, some of the Elite Russian nobles were also incorporated into the Yellow Banner by the Qing court, changed the Chinese name, and only those who had the flag had "iron crops".
They ate Chinese rice and lived in a house on the edge of the second ring road, but their faith has never changed.
The Russians converted the Taoist Temple into a church, St. Nicholas' Church, the first Orthodox church in Beijing, the "garlic head" that Xiao Qian saw in his childhood.
Speaking of "garlic head", when I was a child, I also had a "garlic head" outside my window, which was a small chapel built by the Russians to commemorate the soldiers who died in Shenyang after the Russo-Japanese War in 1904.
△ Chapel of the Russian cemetery behind my house. Sun Yexin/Photo
In the following ten years, as Russians continued to come to China, in 1684, the Qing court set up the Russian Pavilion in Dongjiaomin Lane, historically known as "South Pavilion", which was different from the russian ghetto "North Pavilion" in the pepper garden before, and the name "Beiguan Hall" was derived from the sound of "North Pavilion".
So far, the Russians in Beijing have formed two circles of the North and South Pavilions, and this pattern has continued for more than 300 years.
For 300 years, the Russian Orthodox Church has been stationed in the North Pavilion, and Russia has sent 18 missions from the mainland, with the spirit of "success does not have to be in me", stubble after stubble, collected a lot of intelligence, and also achieved a lot of Russian sinologists.
In the absence of modern diplomacy, it also became Russia's de facto "consular protection center" and a spiritual landmark in the East. It is not difficult to understand why Mr. Xiao Qian will meet the Russian family who came to flee in the Yangguan Alley where he was born.
In the past 300 years, the capital outside the museum and the Qing Empire have gradually declined, and the world has undergone drastic changes due to the Industrial Revolution. Although the Romanov dynasty was also on the verge of collapse several times and was on the cusp of the revolution, after all, the family was great, and its national strength also ranked among the great powers, becoming a member of the Eight-Nation Alliance army that invaded China.
In 1902, modern diplomacy finally knocked on the door of the Qing Dynasty, and Russia expanded two embassies according to the "Xinugu Treaty", and settled its legations together with the legations of the various countries at the location of the "South Pavilion" in Dongjiaomin Lane. After the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Soviet legations were also settled in and became one of the places of activity in the early days of our Party.
△ The Russian side expanded the church in the north hall, with three "garlic heads" on the roof
In the North Pavilion, Russia rebuilt the Orthodox Church, and included most of the areas of the Prince of Lu and Chengbele Mansion (that is, the "Four Masters Mansion" in the old map above) that had been burned down by the Eight-Power Alliance, and the size of the "North Pavilion" was basically equivalent to that of today's Russian Embassy at this time. Later, the Russian side built a number of Orthodox buildings here, and also built a milk factory, which is now Nanguan Park.
It seems that in addition to faith, eating habits are also deeply rooted national imprints.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the embassies of various countries in Dongjiaomin Lane were recovered, and due to the special relationship with China in the Soviet Union, the embassy was temporarily retained in Dongjiaomin Lane, but the property rights were recovered and rented. It was also because of this special relationship that when the Beijing Orthodox Church was dissolved in the late 1950s, the building of the North Pavilion was handed over to the Soviet Embassy and was not taken over to the state. The Soviet Embassy then moved from the "South Pavilion" in Dongjiaomin Lane to here – its own place was better than renting a house.
Since then, the Russian Embassy has begun to stand in a detached posture in the second ring road, standing on this land soaked with faith, staring east at the Embassy brothers at the Temple of the Sun and the Liangma Bridge.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="147" > mansion</h1>
Passing through Nankan Park, which used to be a dairy mill, you will be greeted by two high-rise houses with gray tones and floor-to-ceiling windows.
△ Looking south from inside Nankan Park, there is a mansion hidden in the trees
Gray stone on the wall, 3 security guards on duty, showing that it is beyond the surrounding old residential buildings of extraordinary dignity, low-key, but also luxurious.
On August 14, 2014, more than seven years ago, one of the owners here, Chen Mousheng's son, was taken away by the police along with Ke Moumou in his mansion, and they were suspected of allowing others to take drugs and hide drugs.
In September 2020, Chen Mousheng's house was hung on the judicial auction website, and public opinion was in an uproar. The starting price of 1217 square meters is only 71.91 million, and the unit price is 60% to 70% off the surrounding "old and broken". That's right, 1217 square meters.
This Chen Mousheng, you should have guessed, is Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan's real name is Chen Gangsheng, a very contemporary name.
In 1947, his father, Fang Daolong, came to Hong Kong from the mainland to earn a living, worked as a cook at the U.S. Embassy in Hong Kong, and gave birth to Jackie Chan in 1954.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Hong Kong's population surged, most of which came to escape the war on the mainland, crossed the ocean and struggled to make a living. In every big city, there are many people named X sheng, such as Jingsheng, Husheng, hangsheng, when they are born, their parents often just settled in the city, using such a name to commemorate the second half of a family's new life in the city.
If it weren't for drug use and legal photography, many people might not have known that Jackie Chan had such a secret mansion in the northeast corner of the old Beijing city.
△ Mansion floor plan, trench to your imagination
This 1217 square meter mansion, according to the announcement of the legal auction, is actually two sets of large flat floors formed after opening up, and the spaciousness of the apartment type and the luxury of the decoration are above the super-first-class level.
The capital is the capital city, which can not only attract missions and refugees from thousands of miles away, but also attract rich businessmen and giants at home and abroad to make a name for themselves here, and a vote is popular. And this mansion is the "heirloom work" of Baoding businessman Li Jianguo.
The mansion is located at No. 9 Dongzhimen Inner Street, and the community is called "Naga Upper Courtyard".
△ The main entrance to Naga's upper court is next to a Cuban cigar shop
Li Jianguo once explained the origin of the name in an interview, "Naga is revered in Indian legend as the god of water and the god of the sea, equivalent to the Chinese dragon, which can give human security, prosperity and wealth, and was worshipped by the ancient Indian nobles as the god of exclusive offerings." In 2002, he photographed this plot of less than 20 acres, and after taking it at any cost, he carefully polished it for 4 years, and all the building and decoration materials were of the international top.
Perhaps, in his heart, this place less than 1 kilometer away from the Lama Temple, Guozijian and Dongzhimen can carry all his dreams as a man.
△ Interior and interior decoration of Naga Upper Courtyard Park. Image credit: Liz Line
Li Jianguo saw through the cultural significance behind the house. He once said that he planned all the Naga upper courtyard into units of more than 300 square meters, and there were only 99 households in the 3 buildings of the entire community, the purpose of which was to ensure that the owners were neatly hierarchical, "The scale of the mansion cannot be very large, and the top mansion can only be sold to a few people." Moreover, the mansion is also a circle of life, emphasizing purity, otherwise there is no way for the owners to communicate with each other. The threshold for entering this circle, he declared to be "high-quality, responsible, charitable", not just a large amount of money with money can be moved in.
Naga also has a private club of more than 9,000 square meters in the upper courtyard, which contains a cigar bar, wine shop, restaurant, gym, SPA and so on. Li Jianguo believes that this is to give the elite circle a private communication space, and many business matters are fixed here. He made no secret of his love for the place, moving in as the first owner, and declaring that he could "do a lot of things without leaving home" after moving in, and the business talks were moved to Naga.
At the end of 2005, Naga's upper court opened, which was the last highlight of the Beijing real estate market. The real estate born after the large-scale demolition has entered the sales cycle, a hundred flowers bloom, each showing its ability, from the network to the paper media, the hottest advertising is the real estate. At that time, the group that spent a lot of money to become a landlord became the "bottom- bottom" family in everyone's mouth today, and these second-hand houses also formed the "sub-new house" group in today's second-hand housing market, and the price can always be higher than the old and broken around it.
At that time, Li Jianguo saved up a "cross-border release", and the concept seems to be unique today, 16 years later: the opening ceremony of naga's upper house was held together with the premiere of Director Chen Kexin's upcoming film "If Love".
At that time, Feng Xiaogang, Zeng Zhiwei, Jin Chengwu, Zhou Xun, Jacky Cheung, Gu Juji, etc. all came to the scene, and the crew auctioned 30 main props and the costumes worn by the main creators. In order to help, Li Jianguo also auctioned a 600-square-meter house in Naga's upper court. At the same time, Jackie Chan became the spokesperson of Naga's upper court, and as a token of gratitude, Li Jianguo "sold" these two sets of mansions worth 33.6 million yuan at that time to Jackie Chan in the form of 20.6 million endorsement fees, and Jackie Chan actually only paid 13 million.
△ Li Jianguo published album covers, in the "literary circle", he gave himself the stage name "Li Jianheng", and also starred in the TV series "Never Look Back" with Yan Ni and others.
This transaction laid the groundwork for it to be auctioned later: because Jackie Chan was unwilling to publish the actual bid (13 million) as the online signing price, the property rights certificates of the two houses were never processed, that is, the property rights were still in the hands of Li Jianguo's Yujia Real Estate.
△ Li Jianguo's Yujia Landmark Building and film and television company are just outside the north gate of Naga's upper court.
A few years after the handover, Li Jianguo, as the "most favorite literary and artistic person in the business circle", may be because he bought too many orders for love, the business fortune took a sharp turn, and he was involved in dozens of lawsuits, involving billions of dollars.
Jackie Chan not only did not get the house certificate, but the house was also seized as An asset of Li Jianguo. As an outsider, Jackie Chan raised an enforcement objection and asked for the unsealing, but because the reason for not handling the certificate at that time was his own reason rather than an objective reason, he was rejected by the Beijing High Court and the Supreme People's Court, and finally entered the legal auction link to repay Li Jianguo's debts.
Today, this mansion, which has experienced 15 years of wind and rain and silence, should have been covered with an inch of dust.
△ In front of the courtyard clubhouse next to Naga's upper courtyard, an old woman takes her dog to rest
Except for some old photos, all the pictures in this article are taken by the author
If there is any suspected infringement of the image without indicating the source, please contact me as soon as possible