Tiananmen Square

Just outside the Forbidden City rests Tiananmen Square, the giant, historically-infamous public plaza that can hold 1,000,000 people and is surrounded by government buildings and national museums. As a visitor, you really are awestruck by the enormity of the place's size and the mass of people gathered around inside it. From beggars missing limbs to vendors seeking to capitalize on tourists' dollars, and from Chinese school children on field trips to European and American tourist groups, it is a phenomenal pilgrimage of persons from all backgrounds. Not surprisingly, there is no recognition of the 1989 protests that took place there, and our tour guide, a Chinese citizen, made no mention of that historical event either. At one point as an aside, our professor pointed out to a couple of us the location of the tank incident.

According to Wikipedia:

"Tiananmen Square (Simplified Chinese: 天安门广场; Traditional Chinese: 天安門廣場; Pinyin: Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng) is the large plaza near the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen (literally, Gate of Heavenly Peace) which sits to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. It has great cultural significance as a symbol because it was the site of several key events in Chinese history (See below: Events). Outside of China, the square is widely known for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

"The square is 880 metres south to north and 500 metres east to west, a total area of 440,000 square meters, which makes it the largest open-urban square in the world.

"The Tiananmen was built in 1417 in the Ming Dynasty. In 1699 (early Qing Dynasty), the Tiananmen was renovated and renamed to its present form. During the Ming and Qing eras, there was no public square at Tiananmen, and instead the area was filled with offices for imperial ministries. These were badly damaged during the Boxer Rebellion and the area was cleared to produce the beginning of Tiananmen Square.

"Near the centre of today's square, close to the site of the Mao Zedong Mausoleum, once stood one of the most important gates of Beijing. This gate was known as the "Great Ming Gate" (大明门) during the Ming Dynasty, "Great Qing Gate" (大清门) during the Qing Dynasty, and "Gate of China" (中华门) during the Republic of China era. Unlike the other gates in Beijing, such as the Tiananmen and the Qianmen, this was a purely ceremonial gateway, with three arches but no ramparts, similar in style to the ceremonial gateways found in the Ming Dynasty Tombs. This gate had a special status as the "Gate of the Nation", as can be seen from its successive names. It normally remained closed, except when the Emperor passed through. Commoner traffic were diverted to two side gates at the northern and eastern ends of today's square, respectively. Because of this diversion in traffic, a busy marketplace, called Chessgrid Streets (棋盘街) developed in the big, fenced square to the south of this gate.

"In the early 1950s, the Gate of China (as it was then known) was demolished along with the Chessgrid Streets to the south, completing the expansion of Tiananmen Square to (approximately) its current size."