The oldest surviving building in Beijing

To our knowledge, the Pagoda of the Tianning temple is the oldest building in Beijing. The 58 meter high buddhist shrine was a towering presence in the old capital and its hundreds of small roof bells could be heard across large areas of the city. This venerable old construction stands outside the boundary once marked by the city wall of Beijing, the site of today’s second ring road.

The pagoda at the Tianning temple is the oldest building of Beijing known to us, but since 1976 it has been belittled by 180 meters high chimney

The reason for this is because the Tianning pagoda is, strictly speaking, older than the city of Beijing itself. When the pagoda was built more than 900 years ago the city we know was Beijing was called Nanjing, as it was the Southern capital of the Liao dynasty. At this point, the temple stood right in the middle of the city center. Later, when the city of Beijing was moved North East by the Mongolian khan Kubilai Khan, the beautiful building found itself outside the new city wall.

The beautiful carvings on the Tianning pagoda are almost 1000 years old

At 58 meters tall the pagoda was higher than any building within the city proper throughout the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (if you don’t count the coal hill). However for the last forty plus years the pagoda has been dwarfed by a 180 meter tall chimney. It beggars believe that anyone could think of placing a gigantic smokestack only a little more than a hundred meters away from the grand old nestor among Beijing architecture, and it also bears witness to a time where the idea of cultural preservation was very different from what it is today - some would say when it did not exist at all.

However in 2016 an interesting debate regarding the chimney unfolded. After the electricity works moved further out of the city the chimney was no longer in use, and a decision had to be made - should the chimney be torn down or left as it was? Many historians favored demolishing to restore a balanced view of the pagoda, but some argued a demolition of the chimney might destabilize the foundation of the pagoda. Yet another line of argument was that the chimney had become history itself and should therefore be preserved. The discussion was interesting to observe and showed how conscious Beijing has become of its own history and ways to preserve it.

The chimney has become the landmark of an art district and is not likely to be torn down

In the end It seems that the final argument won, as the west district has converted the old electricity works in to an art district using the chimney as a landmark. So, for the foreseeable future at least, the odd couple of the chimney and the pagoda will still be greeting the passers by as they journey along the second ring road.

Hear more at our upcoming walk: Evolution of Modern Beijing