Park in Chongwenmen
Ehome Park
Listen to this story 1 min
The story of Ehome Park
Ehome Park sits in Chongwenmen, in Dongcheng District, where the old city wall once stood. Chongwenmen was a gate in Beijing’s city wall, placed in the southeastern part of the inner city, immediately south of the old Beijing Legation Quarter. In the 1960s, the gate and much of the wall was torn down to make room for Beijing’s second ring road.
That is the main story here: this park occupies an area shaped by the removal of a former city gate and wall rather than by an old monument still standing in place. If you are looking at the surroundings, you are in a part of the city where the boundary of the old inner city was once marked much more visibly.
So what you can read on the ground now is the contrast between present-day open space and a former defensive edge of the city. The nearby name, Chongwenmen, is the key clue, because it points to the gate that once anchored this part of Beijing’s southeastern inner city.
If you are exploring on foot, use the park as a pause point while you orient yourself to the old wall line and the route of the second ring road, which replaced it.
In brief
Chongwenmen was a gate that was part of Beijing's city wall in what is now Dongcheng District. The gate stood in the southeastern part of Beijing's inner city, immediately south of the old Beijing Legation Quarter. In the 1960s, the gate and much of the wall was torn down to make room for Beijing's second ring road. Today, Chongwenmen is marked by the intersection of Chongwenmen Nei (Inner) and Chongwenmen Wai (Outer) Street, which run north–south through the former gate, Chongwenmen East and Chongwenmen West Street, which run east–west where the wall stood, and Beijing Station West Street, a diagonal street, going northwest to the Beijing railway station. Chongwenmen is a transport node in Beijing. Chongwenmen Station is an interchange station on Lines 2 and 5 of the Beijing Subway. Chongwen District, an administrative division of the city from 1952 to 2010 and now folded into Dongcheng District, was named after Chongwenmen.
Before you go
- Time to allow
- 45 min-1.5 hr
- Best months
- March to June, September to November
- Address
- VC5V+QMJ, Nan San Huan Dong Lu Fu Lu, Fangzhuang, Feng Tai Qu, Bei Jing Shi, China, 100164