I mentioned a lot of inner gates above. This city must not only have gates, but also have walls, right? I visited the Yuan City Wall Ruins last time, and the earth walls were basically filled with loess piles. There is still a relic of the Ming City Wall. In 2000, Beijing City carefully organized a renovation. It is now the "Beijing Ming City Wall Relics Park."

This section of the city wall is from the east of Chongwenmen to the southeast corner tower. You can see that at the bottom is a large bluestone, with external bricks on top of the bluestone. You can see new bricks that were repaired during the renovation in 2000. The outer city bricks are still rammed earth inside, but it is not soil from the Yuan Dynasty. This section of the city wall has been moved south in the Ming Dynasty.

A trail has been built on the grass, and men, women and children in the surrounding Chongwen District often work out here, walking and running.

A trail was also paved to the base of the wall for people who like to see city bricks, so that they could carefully observe the Ming Dynasty wall base and wall bricks. It's okay to look at the wall, but it's okay to climb it.

There are many trees outside the wall. I wonder if they were original in the Ming Dynasty or transplanted from the Xiao Xing 'an Mountains? I wanted to find someone who knew what to do, but couldn't find it.

In addition to trees that have not blossomed, there must also be trees that have blossomed.

Of course, there are those that will not bloom. They are very miserable and are dug out of the ground and imprisoned in wooden barrels.

In Beijing, when someone is shameless, they usually say,"His skin is thicker than a corner of the city wall, and it cannot be penetrated by machine guns." Look at the turn of the city wall.

Below is the bend of the Ming Dynasty city wall, with some broken Ming Dynasty bricks deliberately left on it. You see, the outside of the city wall here is not flat, it protrudes out at a certain distance. This is called the "abutment", commonly known as the "horse face". Deploying troops on it can carry out three-dimensional attacks on the enemy attacking the city. It is said that there are horse faces in the Yuan Dadu city walls, but no traces are seen in the Yuan Dadu city walls ruins in the north.

The damaged wall is shining with gold, which is the "golden mountain of Beijing".

Walking to the easternmost end, you can see a building on the city wall.

Look up at the towers in the city.

You can find a way to climb into the city wall and collect tickets. A eight-figure ladder was rebuilt, but there was no horse path.

The horse road in the Ming Dynasty should look like this. This is the ancient city of Guangfu, Hebei Province.

Tucheng before the Ming Dynasty also had horse roads, which were also made of masonry. Like the one below, they were collected from Zhangbi Castle in Shanxi.

The horse path is for coolies to walk on, which is the ancient transportation of soldiers to transport guns, ammunition and the like.

Climbing the city wall and looking, it turned out that the building we saw just now was the Arrow Tower.

Because it is at the southeast corner of the city wall, this is the same as the arrow tower at Deshengmen, which is the smaller one.

Go in and have a look. Inside is a framework composed of several heavenly pillars and transverse arches. Along each arrowhole are floors and stairs. These were all rebuilt in 2000.

Looking out from the arrow hole facing east, you can see the train.

When I came out and took a look, I saw Beijing Station below, and the train on Platform 14 was leaving the station. This is the arrow tower that the Jingshan Line railway train saw outside the window when entering Beijing Station.

The top of the city wall is very wide, and it does not appear narrow even when building small houses. These small rooms are called shop rooms. The soldiers keep watch outside during the day and lock the gates and enter the house to sleep at night.

The Corner Arrow Tower is very neat when viewed from a distance on the city wall.

There is a new row of official houses downstairs, nothing new. But there are two stone lions at the door, which are very special.

There is also a historical site here called the "Beijing-Feng Railway Signal Station", commonly known as the Signal Building.

The first section of the Beijing-Fengfeng Railway is the Tangxu Railway built in the seventh year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1881). It is 9.7 kilometers from Tangshan to Xugezhuang and used for coal transportation in the Kaiping Coal Mine. The Qing royal family was afraid that the train would damage the Dongling Tomb and shocked the ancestors in the underground palace who had not yet ascended to heaven, so it was originally a real horsepower car. The Beijing-Fengzhou Railway stopped and stopped, and it was not until 1930 that the entire line was completed. Here is Zhengyangmen Station, and there is Liaoning Station (Shenyang Old North Station), covering a total of 862 kilometers. Look at Zhengyangmen Station on the east side of Qianmen. It is officially called "Zhengyangmen East Station of Beijing-Fengshan Railway", commonly known as "Qianmen Railway Station". During the construction of the Ring subway, this building was moved a bit. Now all the south side of the bell tower has been moved from the north and has been rotated 180 degrees. This kind of movement is called a "mirror image".

The Beijing-Fengfeng Railway at that time was designed by the British. It was the same as the current railway standards, with 50Kg/m rails, 1435mm gauge, wooden sleepers, and gravel track beds.

The railway signaling station of that era was equivalent to the current dispatch center and was the hub for directing train operations. Dispatchers sit behind large windows on the second floor of the picture above for easy viewing. The signaling equipment at that time was very simple, and the switches were manually pulled; there were no traffic lights, but flags were raised, which was called a "arm signal". Speaking of turning switches, a section of steel rail was dug out when the Ming City Wall Ruins Park was being built in front of this old signal building to clear the ground.

This is part of the turnout, called the "fork center". This track looks like it is 43Kg/m, not 50Kg/m.

The nine doors in front were opened on the old city wall of Beijing. They were all works of the Ming Dynasty and continued to be used into the Qing Dynasty. Although the economy of the Qing Dynasty was very developed, there was no qualitative change caused by quantitative change, and there was no pursuit of transportation and logistics. Moreover, Manchu people are short-sighted and have no long-term strategic vision. When the Manchu entered the Pass and won the Ming Dynasty, his strategic goal was achieved and he believed that he had reached the top of the world. Therefore, although the Qing Dynasty was established on the shoulders of giants of the Ming Dynasty, it did not innovate much. It just continued to rule according to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty and extremely excluded Western scientific and technological progress. By the time the progressive forces discovered that the development of the Qing Dynasty had fallen behind the West, or even the Japanese, it was already too late to rise up. The Japanese occupied Beijing during the July 7th Incident. They believed that a city like Beijing could no longer adapt to the needs of modern transportation and logistics development. They dug holes in the east and west city walls and built two city gates. The east one was called Qiming Gate and the west one was called Chang 'an Gate. Japanese cities have no city walls, but are like in the West, centered around fortress castles, usually built on highlands. This method of city building was not learned from China. They have been like this since ancient times, and they certainly did not learn it from the West. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the National Government renamed the Qiming Gate in the east to Jianguo Gate, and the Chang 'an Gate in the west to Fuxing Gate, which has been used to this day.

In 1926, in order to facilitate transportation, an additional channel was added between Nancheng City and Inner City Residence, and another gate was opened between Xuanwumen and Zhengyang Gate. This gate does not have a tower or anything, but two 10-meter-wide ticket gates are opened on the city wall. This gate connects the north and south Xinhua Street. It was originally called Xinhua Gate and renamed Peace Gate in 1927. In 1958, the two gate tickets were no longer passable, so the city wall was dug open and made a gap. There was also a gap on the inner city wall in the north, and there is still the place name, namely Xinjiekou and Beixiaojie Gap.

After the Second Opium War in 1860, the Qing court agreed that certain Western countries should open legations in the inner city outside the Imperial City of Beijing. In addition to envoys, there were also many people in each museum. When the emperor was still alive, everyone except the royal family were citizens, and even foreigners were also citizens. The citizens who handled international exchanges were Jiao Citizens. These legations were all located on the north and south sides of Jiangmi Lane at that time. Later, Jiangmi Lane was renamed Jiaomin Lane, and it was divided into Dongjiao Min Lane and Xijiaomin Lane with Yuhe as the boundary. In the Qing Dynasty, the Yuhe River passed through the water pass between Zhengyang Gate and Chongwen Gate from north to south and flowed into the south moat. Horses and horses could be traveled along the east and west rivers. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion Movement loved to beat foreigners, and once shouted,"Eat noodles without sauce, and hit people in alleys." Later, those Jiao Tong people were afraid of being trapped inside again and could not live, so they opened a door at the water gate, allowing them to climb directly out of the city and run to Xiangmen Railway Station, and then go to Tanggu Port to get on the boat home. This is the "Shuiguan Gate", which is located at the south entrance of Zhengyi Road, facing Zhengyi Road. There is only one arched gate for the water door. Later, a cover was added to the Royal River and became an underground river. Above it was a green belt, and the river edges on both sides were now Zhengyi Road.

These are the city gates of Beijing's inner city. There are nine old city gates, four new city gates, and two gaps in the north. The Beijing Ring Line subway is now Line 2, which runs along the inner city wall. Part of the city gate and city wall were demolished in the 1950s. When the ring subway was built in the 1960s, they were all demolished, leaving Deshengmen Arrow Tower, Zhengyangmen Tower and Arrow Tower. Zhengyang Gate is okay, but it is not easy to preserve the Arrow Tower of Deshengmen. Why should the city wall be demolished to build a subway? In the 1960s, the open-cut method was used to build subway tunnels and stations, which was to open the covers widely on the ground. It was really earth-shaking. After the underground tunnel and station were repaired, it was buried with soil, and then the Second Ring Road was built on it. The earliest South Second Ring Road was now Qiansanmen Street. You can imagine how big the subway project was, and several divisions of the infrastructure engineering corps at that time were dispatched to participate in the construction. The soil layer above the top of the subway tunnel is called the buried layer. Nowadays, there are no open-cut tunnels in subway construction. Even if the buried layer is very shallow, hidden excavation construction can be used. It is called the shallow buried and hidden excavation construction method. Underground digging started with manual work and was very hard. Nowadays, machinery is used, which is a large drill bit. This drill bit used to dig a tunnel is called a shield machine. The station is not good, the area is too large, and the support and lining are too difficult. Nowadays, many open excavation construction is still used. Therefore, when Beijing built a loop subway, it cleaned up all the remnants of the inner city wall.

Since there is an inner city, there must be an outer city, right? Talk about it next time.