Beijing

Brief History of Beijing

Beijing has one of the longest histories of any city in the world. It was one of the four great ancient capitals of China. As early as 700,000 to 230,000 years ago, Beijing had been the habitation of the so-called Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis), found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District in 1927. The Paleolithic Homo sapiens (Upper Cave Man, first found in 1930) also lived there about 34,000 to 27,000 years ago.

The first recorded name of Beijing in the documents is Ji, the capital of the state of Yan in the Spring-Autumn and Warring States Period (770–221 BCE). In the Liao Dynasty (907–1125), Beijing was established as a secondary capital, called Yanjing (“Capital of Yan”). The Jin Dynasty (1115–1234, found by Jurchen People, or Nü zhēnrén in Chinese pinyin) made Beijing its capital and called it Zhongdu, meaning the “Central Capital.” In the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), Beijing again was the capital and was called Dadu, meaning the “Great Capital.” In the following Ming (1368–1662) and Qing (1636–1911) dynasties, Beijing remained China's capital, called Jingshi or, generally, Beijing. So from the Jin to the Qing dynasties, Beijing, for more than 700 years, had been the capital and the political center in China's history.

The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 put an end to the dynasty reign in China. The capital of the new Republic of China (1911–1949) remained at Beijing during the early period (1912–1927). When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Beijing once again became the capital.

Religions in Beijing

All the five religions officially recognized by the Chinese central government, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, and Catholic and Protestant Christianity, have their believers in Beijing. According to the 1988 official statistics (there is no updated official statistics), the total believers of the five religions are about 50,000, of which 30,000 are Catholics and 12,000 are Muslims. But the present figure must be much bigger, as the so-called Protestant “underground churches” or “house churches” have been developing very fast these years, though the numbers of Catholics and Muslims may remain relatively definite (the number of Muslims is almost equivalent to the population of the Hui ethnic group).

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