Tiananmen

About Tiananmen

Tiananmen (simplified Chinese: 天安门; traditional Chinese: 天安門; pinyin: Tiānānmén), literally the "Gate of Heavenly Peace", is a famous monument in Beijing, the capital of People's Republic of China. It is a widely used national symbol. First built during the Ming Dynasty in 1420, Tiananmen is often referred to as the front entrance to the Forbidden City. However, the Meridian Gate (午门) is the first entrance to the Forbidden City proper, while Tiananmen was the entrance to the Imperial City, within which the Forbidden City was located. Tiananmen is located along the northern edge of Tiananmen Square.

The gate was originally named Chengtianmen (simplified Chinese: 承天门; traditional Chinese: 承天門; pinyin: Chéngtiānmén), or "Gate of Accepting Heavenly Mandate", and it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. The original building was first constructed in 1420 as an exact replica of a gate in the form of paifang of the imperial building in Nanjing with the same name and hence inherited the name Chentianmen. The gate was damaged by lightning in July, 1457, and was completely burnt down. In 1465, Chenghua Emperor ordered Zi Gui (自圭), the minister of Engineering Ministry to rebuild the gate, and the design was changed from the original paifang form to the gatehouse that is seen today. It suffered another blow in the war at the end of Ming Dynasty - in 1644 the gate was burnt down by rebels led by Li Zicheng. Following the establishment of the Qing Dynasty and the Manchu conquest of China proper, the gate was once again begun to be rebuilt in 1645 and was given its present name in 1651 when the construction completed six years later. The Tiananmen gate was reconstructed again between 1969-1970. The gate as it stood was by then 500 years old, and had badly deteriorated, partly due to heavy usage in the 1950s-60s. As the gate was a national symbol, then-Premier Zhou Enlai ordered that the rebuilding was to be kept secret. The whole gate was covered in scaffolding, and the project was officially called a "renovation". The rebuilding aimed to leave the gate's external appearance unchanged while making it more resistant to earthquakes and featuring modern facilities such as an elevator, water supply and heating system.

The Chinese name of the gate, Tiān'ānmén 天安門, is made up of the Chinese characters for "heaven," "peace" and "gate" respectively, which is why the name is conventionally translated as "The Gate of Heavenly Peace". However, this translation is somewhat misleading, since the Chinese name is derived from the much longer phrase "receiving the mandate from heaven, and stabilizing the dynasty." (受命于天，安邦治國). The Manchu name of the gate, Abkai elhe obure duka, lies closer to the original meaning of the gate and can be literally translated as the "Gate of Heavenly Peacemaking." The gate has a counterpart in the northern end of the imperial city, Dì'ānmén 地安门 (Manchu: Na i elhe obure duka), which may be roughly translated as the "Gate of Earthly Peacemaking".