During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the gates of old Beijing were not simple passages, but a set of carefully designed fortifications. Each gate consists of a tower, an arrow tower and an urn connecting them. In the urn, a closed space is formed. Once the enemy forces break in, they will "catch turtles in a jar".
Heping Gate, Fuxing Gate and Jianguomen do not have the above facilities. They are just passages opened on the wall of the old city for the convenience of transportation after the demise of the Qing Dynasty.
The Peace Gate was opened in 1926, with the purpose of communicating North Xinhua Street and South Xinhua Street separated by the inner wall.
North Xinhua Street used to be a north-south drainage ditch in Qing Dynasty. 19 13, Zhu Qiqian, Minister of Internal Affairs of Yuan Shikai's government, converted this drainage ditch into an underground ditch, and built a street on his land, starting from West Chang 'an Street in the north and reaching the inner city wall in the south, and named it North Xinhua Street. It was originally planned to open the city wall, connecting the North Xinhua Street in the outer city with the newly-built South Xinhua Street, and then connecting it with the newly-built street outside the west wall of Yuan Presidential Palace in Zhongnanhai, forming a new north-south trunk road connecting the inner and outer cities. However, because the wealthy businessmen outside Zhengyangmen were worried that this would lead to pedestrian diversion and affect the business of the business district outside Zhengyangmen, they bribed the authorities, saying that opening the city wall would leak feng shui, which was not conducive to the president. Yuan Shikai, who was superstitious about geomantic omen, believed it and stopped the plan to break through the city wall.
1in April, 926, after Feng Yuxiang was appointed as the commander of Beijing garrison, he ordered to open the wall of the north-south Xinhua Street pass, open two doorways, divide it into upper and lower passages, install iron gates, and name it Heping Gate. 1958, in order to improve traffic, the entrance of Heping Gate was demolished, forming a wider gap in the city wall.
Fuxingmen and Jianguomen were two gaps in the inner city wall when the Japanese invaded Beijing.
Looking at the map of Beijing, we can know that Chaoyangmen, Dongzhimen in the east and Fuchengmen and Xizhimen in the west of the old Beijing are all in the north, but the south of the inner city really lacks the east-west main roads. However, in the era of warlord melee, no one dares to tear down the wall easily.
According to the Beijing Archives Historical Materials No.4 1999 and the Survey of Urban Construction in North China during the Japanese Puppet Rule, the Japanese invaders began to build a "West Street Town" for business and residence in the western suburbs of Beijing and an "East Street Town" for industrial areas in the eastern suburbs from 1939. In order to communicate the traffic between the two new market areas and the city, a new city gate (called "Qi Ming" in the east and "Chang 'an" in the west) is specially built on the east and west walls ... The new city gate has only a gap without doors and openings, which is a symbol of its poor material resources.