Park in Chongwenmen
Yulanyuan Park （West Gate）
Listen to this story 1 min
The story of Yulanyuan Park （West Gate）
Yulanyuan Park sits by Chongwenmen, a place that was once one of Beijing’s city gates in the southeastern part of the inner city. The old gate stood immediately south of the former Beijing Legation Quarter, and in the 1960s the gate and much of the wall were torn down to make room for Beijing's second ring road.
What remains useful to notice here is the way the old layout still shapes the district. Chongwenmen is now marked by the crossing of Chongwenmen Nei and Chongwenmen Wai Street, which run north–south through the former gate, and Chongwenmen East and Chongwenmen West Street, which follow the line where the wall stood. Beijing Station West Street also cuts diagonally northwest toward Beijing railway station, so this is still very much a transport node. Chongwenmen Station on Lines 2 and 5 is part of that same network.
The name survives too: Chongwen District, an administrative division from 1952 to 2010, was named after Chongwenmen, and is now folded into Dongcheng District. If you are standing at the west gate of Yulanyuan Park, you are at a point where the park meets a part of Beijing shaped by a lost gate, a demolished wall, and streets that still trace their line.
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
- Address
- VC4R+MJ3, Fang Zhuang Nan Lu, Feng Tai Qu, Bei Jing Shi, China, 100079