Beijing
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Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...
has many neighborhoods, some of which are new and others with a long history.
Prominent neighborhoods
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Qianmen
Qianmen () is the colloquial name for Zhengyangmen (; Manchu:; Möllendorff:tob šun-i duka, literally meaning "Gate of the Zenith Sun"), a gate in Beijing's historic city wall. The gate is situated to the south of Tiananmen Square and once guar ...
Di'anmen
Di'anmen () or Bei'anmen was an imperial gate in Beijing, China. The gate was first built in the Yongle period of the Ming dynasty, and served as the main northern gate to the Imperial City (the southern gate is the much more famed Tiananmen
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Chongwenmen
Chongwenmen (; Manchu: ; Möllendorff: šu be wesihulere duka) 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 Beiji ...
Fuchengmen
Fuchengmen (; Manchu:;Möllendorf:elgiyen i mutehe duka) was a gate on the western side of Beijing's city wall. The gate was torn down in the 1960s, and has been replaced by the Fuchengmen overpass on the 2nd Ring Road. Fuchengmen Station is a ...
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Xizhimen
Xizhimen () was a gate in the Beijing city wall and is now a transportation node in Beijing. The gate was the entrance of drinking water for the Emperor, coming from the Jade Spring Hills to the west of Beijing. The gate was demolished in 196 ...
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Deshengmen
Deshengmen (; lit. "Gate of Virtuous Triumph") is a city gate that was once part of Beijing's northern city wall. It is one of Beijing's few preserved city gates and now stands as a landmark on the northern 2nd Ring Road. Latimer D. (2014) ''The ...
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Andingmen
Andingmen (; lit. "Gate of Stability") was a gate in Beijing's Ming-era city wall. The gate was torn down along with the city wall in the 1960s. Andingmen is now a place name. Where the gate once stood is now Andingmen Bridge, a roundabout ove ...
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Sanlitun
Sanlitun () is an area of the Chaoyang District, Beijing containing many bars, restaurants, and stores. It is a popular destination for shopping, dining, and entertainment.
The area has been under almost constant regeneration since the la ...
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Dongzhimen
Dongzhimen (; lit. "East Straight Gate") was a gate in the old Beijing city fortifications. It is now a commercial center and transportation node in Beijing. Latimer D. (2014) ''The Improbable Beijing Guidebook'', Sinomaps, Beijing, , p.69
Histor ...
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Chaoyangmen
Chaoyangmen (; Manchu:; Möllendorff:šun be aliha duka) was a gate in the former city wall of Beijing. It is now a transportation node and a district border in Beijing. It is located in the Dongcheng District of northeastern central Beijing. R ...
Guangqumen
The Beijing city fortifications were walls with series of towers and gates constructed in the city of Beijing, China in the early 1400s until they were partially demolished in 1965 for the construction of the 2nd Ring Road and Line 2 of the Beij ...
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Guang'anmen
__NOTOC__
Guang'anmen, also known as the , Guangningmen and Zhangyimen, was a city gate of old Beijing, constructed during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (1521–1567) of the Ming Dynasty. This gate was part of Beijing's city wall, situated s ...
Hepingmen Hepingmen (), literally meaning the Gate of Peace, was a gate in Beijing's former city wall
A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple ...
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Fuxingmen
Fuxingmen () is the name of a gate that used to be a part of Beijing's old city wall. It is also the name of a road situated in central Beijing and on the northwestern stretch of the 2nd Ring Road.
Origin
Fuxingmen means "Gate of Revival". An o ...
Wangfujing
Wangfujing () is a shopping street in Beijing, China, located in Dongcheng District. The majority of the main area is pedestrianised. Since the middle of the Ming Dynasty there have been commercial activities in the area. In the Qing Dynas ...
Xidan
Xidan ( Chinese: 西 单; Pinyin: Xīdān) is a major traditional commercial area in Beijing, China. It is located in the Xicheng District.
The Xidan commercial district incorporates the Xidan Culture Square, North Xidan Street, as well as man ...
Zhongguancun
Zhongguancun () is a major technology hub in Haidian District, Beijing, China.
Zhongguancun occupies a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road, in the northwestern part of Beijing. Zhongguancun is ...
Yayuncun
Yayuncun Subdistrict (), or Asian Games Village Subdistrict, is the site of the 1990 Asian Games, a major residential area and a subdistrict of the Chaoyang District of Beijing.
Overview
Yayuncun originally referred to a series of residential ...
In the case of some enclaves the name starts with the name of the originating
province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...
and the name ends in ''cun'' (C: 村, P: ''cūn'') or "Village". For instance, Anhuicun or "
Anhui
Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze Riv ...
Village" houses people from that room, and Henancun or "
Henan
Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is a ...
Village" has settlers from that region.Friedmann, p 70
Several ethnic enclaves house rural
migrant workers
A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have the intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.
Migrant workers who work outsi ...
based on their origin, such as Henancun and
Zhejiangcun Zhejiang ( "Zhejiang Village") was a community of migrant workers around the Nanyuan- Dahongmen area, within Fengtai District, Beijing. These workers originated from Zhejiang, with most of them from Wenzhou.Liu, Xiaoli and Liang Wei, p. 98.Michael ...
(
Zhejiang
Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Ji ...
Village).Wang, Zhou, and Fan, p. 112. Other ethnic enclaves consist of
ethnic minorities
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
who are established as permanent Beijing residents, including several
Hui people
The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the ...
settlements,Wang, Zhou, and Fan, p. 111-112. such as
Niujie
Niujie () is a subdistrict in Xicheng District in southwest Beijing, China.Madian,Wang, Zhou, and Fan, p. 104.
Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and Cindy Fan wrote that Hui people, despite being permanent Beijingers, are "highly segregated" from Han people "socially and spatially". They added that the survival of Hui neighborhoods in Beijing is "solely dependent on the existing Hui residents and communities" because the communities are "not as readily replenished by new migrants" and because Hui see themselves as Beijingers and their communities as having "more permanent meanings" compared to migrant worker communities.
Migrant worker enclaves
Residents of the migrant worker enclaves support each other in looking for jobs and dealing with the local government. Inhabitants consider themselves "compatriots" (S: 同乡, P: ''tóngxiāng''), a word equivalent to the English "homies". In the rural migrant worker communities there is a high turnover as members arrive for work and leave to go back to their hometowns. Some residents work in family workshops and go to the city to sell their wares while others commute to work within the city.Deng, F.F. and Y. Huang, p. 228-229. Most residents plan to eventually return to their home lands and do not consider themselves to be from Beijing. Even though the rural migrant workers are also
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive v ...
they are considered to be of a lower status because they are not permanent residents and because they have rural upbringings and low socioeconomic statuses, so each community, in the words of Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and Cindy Fan, "connotes a native place–based ethnicity distinct from the urbanites".
During periods the Beijing government has attempted to dismantle ethnic villages in the periphery of Beijing.Deng, F.F. and Y. Huang, p. 228. In the 1990s the government made attempts to dismantle
Zhejiangcun Zhejiang ( "Zhejiang Village") was a community of migrant workers around the Nanyuan- Dahongmen area, within Fengtai District, Beijing. These workers originated from Zhejiang, with most of them from Wenzhou.Liu, Xiaoli and Liang Wei, p. 98.Michael ...
,Deng, F.F. and Y. Huang, p. 229. including one time in 1995, and had also acted against Henancun (C: 河南村, P: ''Hénán-cūn'') and
Xinjiangcun
Xinjiangcun () or Xinjiang Village was an ethnic enclave of Uyghur people in the Ganjiakou and Weigongcun areas in Haidian District, Beijing. The Beijing government demolished the settlement in 1999. It is in proximity to a historical Uyghur enc ...
.
While Uighurs, like the Hui, are Muslim, the Uighurs in Beijing had migrated there more recently than the Hui. Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and C. Cindy Fan, authors of "Growth and Decline of Muslim Hui Enclaves in Beijing," stated that the Beijing Uighur communities are "much smaller in size" compared to Hui communities.
* Deng, F. Frederick and Youqin Huang (Department of Geography and Planning,
SUNY Albany
The State University of New York at Albany, commonly referred to as the University at Albany, UAlbany or SUNY Albany, is a Public university, public research university with campuses in Albany, New York, Albany, Rensselaer, New York, Rensselae ...
Archive . '' Progress in Planning'' 61 (2004) 211–236. Accepted October 27, 2003.
* Friedmann, John. ''China's Urban Transition''.
University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018.
Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its boo ...
Eurasian Geography and Economics
''Eurasian Geography and Economics'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering economic and political geography as well as macroeconomics of the Eurasian continent. It primarily covers geography also publishes interdisciplinary works. ...
'', 2002, 43, No. 2, pp. 104–122.
Notes
{{reflist
Neighbourhoods of Beijing Beijing has many neighborhoods, some of which are new and others with a long history.
Prominent neighborhoods
* Qianmen
* Tian'anmen
* Di'anmen
* Chongwenmen
* Xuanwumen
* Fuchengmen
* Xizhimen
* Deshengmen
* Andingmen
* Sanlitun ...