Located in the heart of Beijing, facing Chang'an Avenue, Tiananmen Square is one of China's most emblematic buildings, and its graphics are included in the national emblem.
Tiananmen Square was originally the main gate of the imperial city of the Ming and Qing dynasties, was built in the fifteenth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1417), was built in 1420, and was originally named "Chengtianmen", which means "inheriting the heavens and receiving orders from the sky". At that time, Chengtianmen was far from being as magnificent as today's Anmen, but only a three-story wooden archway, and the plaque of "Chengtian's Gate" was hung in the middle of the archway. This archway was destroyed in a fire in 1451, rebuilt in 1465, destroyed in the war at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and was rebuilt in the eighth year of Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty (1651), before it became the style of today, and was renamed "Tiananmen". In the Kangxi period, two large-scale repairs were carried out.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the country was seriously corrupt and weakened. Due to the war and disrepair, Tiananmen Square was no longer glorious by the time of the founding of New China, and its interior was seriously damaged and deformed, until 1969, when it was reborn like a phoenix. The Tiananmen Tower we see now in Tiananmen Square was rebuilt in 1969. The total height of Tiananmen Square is 347 meters, the bottom is the white marble Sumeru seat, on the seat is more than 10 meters high red pier platform, with each weighing 43 kilograms of large bricks. The main hall of the city tower on the pier platform is nine rooms wide from east to west, five rooms deep from north to south, with the number of "nine, five", it is to take the emperor as the honor of "nine, five", the meaning of supremacy.
At the beginning of March 1968, in order to ensure the safety of the construction of the Tiananmen Tower on May Day that year, Beijing Municipality specially mobilized 14 technical cadres and veteran workers to form an inspection team to conduct a comprehensive physical examination of the tower for nearly half a month. The results of the inspection made everyone gasp: the golden pillars in the middle hall had one center rotten and the other more than half empty, and six of the eight five beams that had borne the largest roof load had been broken. In addition, other deformations and decays abound.
The Beijing Municipal Government quickly sent the inspection report and more than a dozen on-site photographs of the city tower to **. After seeing the materials, several people in charge also realized the seriousness of the problem, agreed to rebuild, and selected the third plan among the three plans reported, that is, to completely demolish the existing gatehouse and red wall base, and rebuild the old site with reinforced concrete structure.
The structure of Tiananmen Tower is complex, and the process is extremely difficult. The Communist Party of China (CPC) and the CPC formed a "Leading Group for the Reconstruction of the Tiananmen Tower" with the participation of the General Staff Department, the Beijing Garrison, the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee, and other relevant departments, and designated the Beijing Fifth Construction Engineering Company as the main construction unit. At the same time, considering the special symbolic significance of Tiananmen Square, under the complicated domestic and international situation at that time, the news of the demolition and reconstruction would cause unnecessary misunderstanding and speculation, and it was decided to "rebuild it secretly".
All those involved in the reconstruction treated the reconstruction as a political task, keeping it a secret and not even telling their families. Due to the good secrecy work, not only the citizens of Beijing, but also the staff of the nearby Zhongshan Park and the National Cultural Palace also thought that this was just an ordinary repair.
The new building not only retains its original shape, size and structural layout, but is also fortified with a seismic capacity of 9. The east and west roll sheds and city platforms have been heightened, the parapet wall has been thinned, the slogan board has been replaced, the elevator has been installed, and modern facilities such as power supply and lighting, water supply and water supply, heat and heating, TV broadcasting, and news photography have been added. According to statistics, a total of 216 departments from 21 provinces and cities across the country participated, and more than 2,700 people were employed at the peak of construction. After May Day in 1970, the citizens suddenly saw the brand new and splendid city tower, and they were overjoyed and lingered. Tiananmen Square is a brand new building with advanced functions and modern equipment.
On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the city walls were repainted on a large scale because the paint was peeling. The original old lanterns were replaced with red lanterns, and the pillars supporting the frame were repaired to varying degrees depending on the situation. In March 2021, the Tiananmen Tower was identified by the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Relics as the first batch of immovable revolutionary cultural relics in Beijing.
Tiananmen Tower is one of the most magnificent buildings in the People's Republic of China, which represents the spiritual outlook of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Like the Chinese nation with a long history, it has never given up hope despite being weathered along the way.