China Guide
Beijing
Qianmen
The Qianmen area, to the south of Tian'anmen, offers a tempting antidote to the prodigious grandeurs of the Forbidden City – and a quick shift of scale. The lanes and hutongs here comprise a traditional shopping quarter, full of small, specialist stores, which, to a large extent, remain grouped according to their particular trades – though how much character will survive the present huge demolitions is debatable. Down Qianmen Dajie, once the Imperial Way, now a clogged road clustered with small shops, the Natural History and Architecture museums are worth a browse, and Tiantan, the ravishing Temple of Heaven, perfectly set in one of Beijing's best parks, is an example of imperial architecture at its finest.
The entry to this quarter is marked by the imposing, fifteenth-century, double-arched Qianmen gate just south of Tian'anmen Square. Before the city's walls were demolished, this sector controlled the entrance to the inner city from the outer, suburban sector. Shops and places of entertainment were banned from the former in imperial days, and they became concentrated in the Qianmen area.