There has been an urban center on the site of what is now Beijing for some 3,000 years. A number of Chinese dynasties have made the city their capital. Three "conquest" dynasties - non-Chinese people who came from the north, conquered large areas of China proper and proclaimed dynasties of their own - made Beijing their capital city from roughly 900 to 1368 CE. The third of these conquerors, the Mongols, established their Yuan dynasty in Beijing under the leadership of the legendary emperor Kublai Khan.
The indigenous Ming Dynasty wrested the Mandate of Heaven from the Mongols in 1368 and, after a few years in the southern city of Nanjing, moved the imperial capital back to Beijing in 1421. In Chinese, Beijing means "northern capital". Much of the imperial city which remains today was built by the Ming - the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are two of the best known examples. The Manchus - the last and greatest of the conquerors from the north - established the Qing Dynasty in Beijing after replacing the Ming in 1644. Beijing remained the capital until the Qing collapsed and China's imperial era came to an end in 1911. There was a brief interlude beginning in 1928 when China's capital was moved back to Nanjing by the Nationalist government and then to Chongqing during World War II. After the Communists came to power in 1949 Beijing again became the capital of what is now called the People's Republic of China.
Much of the old imperial city has disappeared to make way for the enormous megalopolis which Beijing has become. Most of the images in this gallery are recent; some were taken in the 1980's when I first came to China. There are photos of well known sites and others of lesser known places - taken together I hope they give a feel for what once was.
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