Although Meng Yuan is powerful and good at conquering the country, he does not have the good genes to rule the country. In less than a hundred years from Kublai Khan to the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty in the first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1271), many peasant uprisings broke out in various places in the tenth year of the Zhizheng period of the Yuan Dynasty (1350). One of them was initiated by the White Lotus Society, but it was finally taken over by Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang first grew stronger in the south, and after gaining momentum, he began the Northern Expedition in the 27th year of Zhizheng (1367). In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne in Yingtianfu (now Nanjing). He was Emperor Gao. His country was named Ming Dynasty and the year was named Hongwu. At that time, General Xu Da attacked Dadu City, and Yuan Huizong opened the back door and fled without fighting. Zhu Yuanzhang believed that this Yuan Huizong did not oppose the celestial army and fled north to Xandu in time. This was a move in compliance with the destiny of heaven, so he posthumously named him "Shun". This was the reason why later generations called the last Yuan Emperor Huizong Emperor Yuanshun. The Yuan Dynasty lasted only 97 years from the founding of the People's Republic of China in the first year of the Yuan Dynasty to the loss of Dadu in the 28th year of the Zheng Dynasty. From Kublai Khan, Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty to Tuohuan Timur, Emperor Huizong of the Yuan Dynasty, a total of eleven Mongolians served as emperors. The Yuan Dynasty was the period with the largest territory in China in all dynasties at that time. Culture also developed greatly and trade with overseas flourished. However, the royal family's awareness of integrating into the Han nation was not implemented by the aristocrats, resulting in its downfall in less than a hundred years. It was a short-lived dynasty in Chinese history.

After Xu Da took over the Yuan Dynasty, he inspected the occupied area and found that the northern city was quite deserted and there was nothing to worry about. He decided to build a new north city wall from Chongren Gate (Dongzhimen) to Heyimen (Xizhimen) to defend the inner city of the Yuan Army and also counted as the inner city wall in the north. Not only did Xu Da build a new north city wall, but Xu Da also built bricks on the rammed earth of the four city walls to strengthen the defense of the city wall. Before the Ming Dynasty, most of the city walls were earthen cities. Since the Ming Dynasty, bricks have been built on the outside of the earth walls. The famous ancient city of Pingyao in Shanxi is also a brick wall of the Ming Dynasty. The best-preserved ancient city wall is Xi'an, and the Xi'an city wall is also made of bricks in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang changed the name of the Yuan Dynasty to Beiping Prefecture and became an emperor in Nanjing for his whole life. In the 31st year of Hongwu (1398), Zhu Yuanzhang died and was buried in the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Nanjing, with the temple name Taizu. Zhu Yuanzhang's eldest son died early, so he passed the throne to his eldest grandson Zhu Yunwen for Huizong, who was also known as Jianwen because of his year title Jianwen. When Emperor Jianwen came to power, he cut off the vassals and demoted a group of kings granted by Zhu Yuanzhang. When it was his turn to kill Zhu Di as King of Yan, Zhu Di gave up. He used the excuse of "Qing Jun's side" to lead his troops to kill the capital. After Zhu Di captured the capital, Emperor Jianwen lost contact. Of course, Zhu Di dragged the dragon chair roasted in the fire and sat on it. After Zhu Di sat down, he changed his year title and became Emperor Yongle. This was the first year of Yongle (1402). In the third year of Yongle, Zhu Di changed the name of Peiping to Beijing.

Although Zhu Di ascended the throne, he felt that he was surrounded by the minions of Emperor Jianwen, and although Emperor Jianwen lost contact, his ghost lingered. There was no choice. Zhu Di built a factory called "East Factory". The products manufactured by the East Factory were cases. It seemed that it often created unjust cases, and it did not solve the neurasthenia problem of Zhu Di's poor sleep at night. Therefore, Zhu Di began planning to move his capital to Beijing in the fourth year of Yongle. Why moved the capital to Beijing? Zhu Di was granted the title of King Yan in the third year of Hongwu of Zhu Yuanzhang and established a vassal in Peiping in the 13th year of Hongwu. Zhu Di operated in Peiping for decades. His family and relatives have all developed mansions in Peiping, and he has many henchmen in Peiping, and they are all controlled locally by cronies, which is very conducive to consolidating his position.

There is also an oral history that said that when Zhu Di was granted the title of King Yan, before setting off from Nanjing for Peiping, the expert Liu Bowen directed him to go to Tanzhe Temple to find another expert, Yao Guangxiao, and asked him to assist the King of Yan. When Zhu Di arrived in Peiping, he really visited Yao Guangxiao, who was ringing the bell for him in Tanzhe Temple every day. Yao Guangxiao took Zhu Di to climb an unknown highland outside the temple. Here, the two exchanged secret signals and planned to set up the Ming capital in Peiping at the foot of the mountain in the future. Later generations renamed the nameless highland Dingdu Peak. In recent years, a building was built on the top of the mountain in order to develop tourism, called Dingdu Pavilion. This is the one below.

This is completely fabricated. Yao Guangxiao became a monk in Jiangnan when he was young, and later learned Yin and Yang from the old Taoist priest. When Zhu Yuanzhang selected a monk, he was selected from Jiangnan because he was a Confucian monk. Later, he was appointed by Zhu Yuanzhang to accompany Zhu Di to Peiping, where he recited sutras for Empress Ma, who died early in the morning and evening. Yao Guangxiao didn't live in Tanzhe Temple at all in northern times. It was too far away from Zhu Di's Yan Mansion. He lived in Qingshou Temple, a famous temple in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, and was the abbot. Qingshou Temple is located on the west side of the current Telegraph Building. It originally had twin towers that were demolished when Chang 'an Street was expanded. Yao Guangxiao definitely played a role in Zhu Di's move to Peiping, but not at the so-called Dingdu Peak, but at the Yan Mansion where Yao Guangxiao often visited.

When Zhu Di established Beijing as the capital, the city wall of Beijing was built by Xu Da during the Hongwu period. The north city wall shrank to the south, but there were still only two city gates. On the east is Anding Gate facing Anzhen Gate, and on the west is Desheng Gate facing Jiande Gate.

In 1915, the National Government built the Capital Ring Railway, starting from Xizhimen along the north city wall and running Deshengmen, Andingmen, Dongzhimen, Chaoyangmen and Dongbianmen to connect the Beijing-Fengshan Railway until it was demolished in 1971. Parts of Andingmen and Deshengmen were demolished during the construction of the Ring Railway. The Andingmen Arrow Tower was demolished when the city wall was demolished in 1956. The Andingmen Tower was demolished when the Ring subway was built in 1969. The Andingmen Gate has now disappeared. In the past, Andingmen was the gate back to the city for the victorious army. They usually took dung trucks. At that time, Beijing's feces and urine center was outside Andingmen, but now it has moved to Xiaocun Bridge outside the South Fourth Ring Road. When you arrive near the Xiaocun Bridge, you will smell a strong smell of the center.

The tower of Deshengmen was demolished in 1921. In 1980, the Deshengmen Arrow Tower and a section of the urn city wall were repaired once. What we see now is still the appearance of the Arrow Tower of the Ming Dynasty. All the bricks, tiles, and wooden structures that can be seen are new, only the rammed earth in the coffin is from the Ming Dynasty.

During the Yuan Dynasty, the eleven city gates in Beijing were built together with the arrow towers and the gate towers. During the Huizong period at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, in order to prevent the peasant army from easily attacking the city, Emperor Yuan Shun strengthened the surrounding city walls and built barns at each gate. As a result, Emperor Yuanshun did not make full use of these solid defenses and retreated without fighting. When Xu Da built the inner city wall, he followed the form of the Yuan City Gate and still built the Wengcheng.

Look at the Arrow Tower that has been re-oiled in recent years. It is very beautiful.

The small room below is the Guandi Temple in Wengcheng in the past.

There is a temple in the Wengcheng of Inner City Gate in Beijing. These temples are all Guandi temples, and only Anding Gate is the Zhenwu Temple. When Deshengmen was repaired in 1980, although the entire Wengcheng was not restored, this Guandi Temple was rebuilt, and now houses an exhibition of ancient coins. The gate of Guandi Temple is now the gate of Desheng Gate Scenic Spot. I ran into an expert from the Cultural Management Institute at the gate. We stood outside the door and smoked a bag of cigarettes together. He told me that the gate below was original from the Ming Dynasty. When the Guandi Temple was demolished, it was preserved with great difficulty.

Go in and have a look at Guandi Temple.

According to experts, when Desheng Gate was renovated in 1980, the small temple was completely dilapidated, and the statue of Guan Gong inside was thrown outside the door and lying on the ground. Forty years later, this small temple should be built again, and now it is closed to refuse its guests. Although it is a small temple, it will have to be rebuilt as it is.

Viewed from the outside, the main hall is three rooms wide and two rooms deep, with a building in front. The main hall is a gray tiled mountain top with single eaves, and the building is a rolling shed and hard mountain top. This main hall is of the Qing Dynasty style and must have been rebuilt in the Qing Dynasty. The mountain flower plane formed by its front and rear vertical ridges is basically perpendicular to the ground, so the ridge is very long. In the Qing Dynasty, there were usually eaves corridors under roofs like this, but there were no eaves here, so there were eaves braces under the ridge.

There are side halls on the east and west of the main hall.

There is actually a Bell and Drum Tower in front of the auxiliary hall. It is really a small bird with all its five organs. The Bell and Drum Tower here is too small, so the sound must not travel far. You can only climb the arrow tower by walking sideways.

Although the wall is circular, it has nothing to do with the original Wengcheng, just like an ear and eye. This is the west, and there is also such an ear in the east. There is a sign standing at the door of the national key cultural relics protection unit, the sixth batch. There is a small courtyard next to it, which should be the soldiers 'barracks in Wengcheng back then.

Look at the hard mountain top of the hut. This is one of the most common roofs in Beijing's residential buildings. Only brick carvings and tiles and dripping water can indicate that this is an official house.

Deshengmen should have a horse track, but there is no horse track here now. Climbing the city wall, the first thing you saw was two iron cannons.

In the early years, it was said that soldiers would come here every day at noon to set off fireworks. This is not because there are raiders attacking at noon every day, but because the time cannon is fired, which is also fired at Xuanwumen in the south. No matter what brand of clocks they have at home, the people of Nanbei City rely on the sound of cannons to keep the time.

All the arrow towers at the Inner City Gate in Beijing are almost the same, with this structure. On top of the mountain, there is a three-story building with double eaves. There is another floor between the two eaves above, and five three-story enclosed buildings behind it. Those gunholes were first equipped with crossbows, later fire blasters, and machine blasters. Although these weapons are not accurate enough, the enemy cannot withstand their saturated shooting. Generally, gangs attacking the city almost withdraw as soon as they are good.

He took off his hat and looked up at the eaves. The roof of the Arrow Tower was of a bucked structure. The lower floor of the arrow and the roof of the building are beam structures.

After going downstairs, I went to see the stone tablet in front of Guandi Temple.

The writing on both sides of the monument has been completely eliminated, and a chessboard has been carved on the front, indicating that it had been put down to make board game equipment. The writing on both sides of the monument cap is still very clear. The front is "Words to Rebuild the Temple of Gao Di" and the back is "Eternal Fragrance". In the past, Emperor Gao was Guan Gong. This is a monument of merit erected in the 21st year of Jiaqing (1797) of the Qing Dynasty. This stele was dug by a master before it was destroyed, and now there are clear rubbings.

There was once a stele in the Deshengmen Wengcheng, which was earlier than the merit stele above. In the 13th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1748), a stele of Qianlong Imperial Poetry was erected in the Wengcheng of Deshengmen. In the spring of the first year, Qianlong returned to the city from the Imperial Garden (I didn't say whether it was Yuanmingyuan or Changchun Garden) and passed through Desheng Gate. After returning to the palace, he lamented and wrote a crooked poem. The level of Qianlong's poetry is at the top today. At that time, it was probably on par with Xiang Ling in "Dream of the Red Chamber". This poem is engraved on this imperial poem stele in Deshengmen Wengcheng, and an imperial stele pavilion, also called the Yellow Pavilion, was built. This yellow pavilion and the Imperial Poetry Stele inside have been destroyed. Back then, someone had even seen the gravel after the stele was smashed. Maybe this poem by Qianlong is so weird that it didn't even leave rubbings in its existence for more than 200 years. Of course, I didn't see either the stele or rubbings in Deshengmen.

The origin of Deshengmen should be the respect for one virtue in ancient times,"a righteous man has many help, but a unjust man has few help." The Ming army claimed to be a "moral army". When they set out, they shouted "Moral army will win" and then walked out of the city through this door.

There used to be a gate building on the east and west sides outside the city gate. It was the cab for operating the suspension bridge on the moat. It was demolished when the ring railway was built. The moat outside the Arrow Tower is still there.

After crossing the suspension bridge, you will really leave the city. After leaving the city, you will have to turn back and say goodbye to your fellow villagers. The Ming army did not have a military song back then. When they lined up, they must sing Xin Qiji's song not long ago,"If you wrap a corpse in a horse's fur, you must swear to yourself, but you must not repeat it." Walking down the road below, it is still the old stone of the past.

To the west of Deshengmen is a gate in the northwest corner of the inner city. It was called Heyimen in the Yuan Dynasty, and it was renamed Xizhimen after Zhu Di made the capital Beijing. Xizhimen is a water gate, from which the water of the capital enters the city and then fills the Jishuitan. The water used by the palace also enters the city from here. The water takes a bus from Yuquan Mountain to the palace every day.

From Xizhimen to the south is Pingzemen of the Yuan Dynasty. "Fair law" means "fair law". In the past, the Mongolians did not even have words, let alone laws. Genghis Khan used stones from other mountains to create Mongolian characters, and used his instructions as "big decrees", called "Great Kongsa". The laws of the Yuan Dynasty were in a mess, including Tang laws and Song laws, but they had not yet taken shape. Kublai Khan called this door a peaceful rule, which demonstrated his pursuit of establishing a formal legal system.

Even if some of the city gates that have been demolished in Beijing have been repaired and restored, they all lack a very important component, that is, the gate plaque. There is no gate plaque on the Deshengmen Arrow Tower above it. These door plaques have all been lost, except the stone plaque of Pingze Gate has been preserved. Now the Five Pagoda Temple in the north of the zoo is the one below.

You can also see that the inscription on it is "The Sixth Year of Hongwu". It was not until the fourth year of Zhengtong (1439) that Zhu Qizhen, Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty, changed Pingze Gate to Fucheng Gate. This "fu" should be pronounced the fourth tone, but the third tone should be pronounced in Beijing dialect. Fucheng comes from "Shang Shu·Zhou Guan","The six ministers are divided into positions, each leading its subordinates, to advocate nine animal husbandry and Fu Cheng is a representative of the people." It means making the people prosperous and stable. Fuchengmen is the gate for transporting coal. Coal produced in Mentougou in western Beijing usually enters the city through this gate.

These refer to the doors on the west wall of the inner city, and there are also doors on the east wall. Starting from the north, the first gate is Dongzhimen facing Xizhimen. Dongzhimen was called Chongren Gate in the Yuan Dynasty, and it was renamed Dongzhimen in the 17th year of Yongle after Zhu Di established the capital in Beijing. It began to be demolished in 1915 when the ring city railway was built, and basically all of it was demolished in 1958. There used to be many brick factories outside Dongzhimen, and wood shipped from the south also came here to enter the city. Therefore, Dongzhimen in ancient times used building materials. There is now a large building materials city near Dongzhimen.

The meaning of Dongzhimen and Xizhimen is unclear. Some people say that it is called Dongzhimen and Xizhimen because the Ming Dynasty is vast, reaching directly to the East China Sea to the east and to Kunlun to the west. There is no textual research on this statement, and it cannot even be used as a reference only.

Down from Dongzhi Gate is Chaoyang Gate. Chaoyang Gate is a very important gate. In ancient times, it used food and fodder, including the salary of five buckets of rice for officials. Nowadays, some place names in Chaoyangmen also have words such as sea freight warehouse and rice warehouse. These were all granaries of those days. Chaoyang Gate was called Qihua Gate in the Yuan Dynasty, and was renamed Chaoyang Gate after the nine gates of the inner city were rebuilt during the Zhengdian period of the Ming Dynasty. Chaoyang Gate is named because it faces in the direction of the rising sun. When I visited Spain, I saw a Plaza del Sol in Madrid. It was the Puerta del Sol of Madrid in the past. It was also named because it faced the direction of the sun rising. Royal palaces in France and Italy all have king suites. The windows of the king's bedroom face east and are in the center of the second floor of the palace.

Zhu Di established the capital in Beijing and built the royal palace. At this time, he found that the new royal palace was too close to the south city wall. In the 15th year of Yongle, he began to move the southern city wall again, moving this section of the city wall south from Chang 'an Street line to its current location. Shuncheng Gate, Lizheng Gate and Wenming Gate in the southern wall of Dadu in the Yuan Dynasty moved south from west to east and were renamed Xuanwumen, Zhengyang Gate and Chongwen Gate. During the Yuan Dynasty, the city wall from Shunchengmen to Lizhengmen was not straight, but protruded outward. That was because the Qingshou Temple in the current place of Xidan was to be enclosed in the city. You want to ask why? That was because Kublai Khan wanted to keep Qingshou Temple for Yao Guangxiao, who later lived in it.

Look at the door on the south wall of the inner city, and listen to the next discussion.