Beijing on the Move

For hundreds of years the city wall defined the boundaries of Beijing. The opening and closing of the city gates dictated the rhythm of city life. Just like a living organism every opening in this gigantic corpus had a purpose. The Fuchengmen gate was known as the coal gate, the Chongwenmen gate as the tax gate, the Chaoyang men gate as the grain gate and so on. It had been like this for centuries, but then it changed. “Beijing on the Move” is the story of how development caught up with the old capital, how the city gradually broke down the walls of its confinement and replaced it with ring road upon ring road. Twisting donkey drawn carts, long lazy camel caravans and wheelbarrows were overtaken by rickshaws and tramways, before they in turn were surpassed by automobiles, metro lines and bullet trains forever changing the layout of the imperial city of the Ming and Qing dynasties. This was a development that would not only affect transportation but with every modern vehicle entering the streets new ideas and notions would follow and deeply impact people’s minds. Because the way you move also determines the way you think.

2 hours