World cultural heritage sites

Great Wall

"You are not a true man if you have not been to the Great Wall." So the saying goes in China. The Great Wall, it is said, is one of the few man-made objects on earth visible from space.

From Shanhaiguan, northeast of Qinhuangdao City in Hebei Province on the east coast, the Great Wall rises and falls with the contours of the mountains spanning westwards, crossing nine provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions over 6,700 kilometers (4163.19 miles), to end at Jiayuguan, southwest of Jiayuguan City in Gansu Province.

The Great Wall was a daunting defensive project used in ancient times as early as in the 7th century B.C. For self-protection, rival kingdoms built walls around their territories, laying the foundation for the present Great Wall. When Emperor Qin Shihuang unified the whole country in 221 B.C., the existing walls were linked up and new ones added to counter attacks by the remnants of defeated states.

The Great Wall comprises walls, passes, watchtowers, castles and fortresses. The walls are made of large stone blocks. From east to west, the sections at Shanhaiguan, Jinshanling, Mutianyu, Badaling and Jiayuguan have become popular tourist attractions.

Most of The Great Wall that we see today dates back to the Ming Dynasty. The best-preserved and most imposing section is at Badaling in Beijing. This section, located at the head of the Juyongguan Pass, is made of large blue bricks and has an average height of 7.8 meters. Five to six horses can be ridden abreast along it. At regular intervals there is an arched door giving access to the top of the wall. The walls feature regular lookout holes, window embrasures and castellated crenels. Beacon towers for passing on military information also appear at fixed intervals. All of these emphasize the important role of the Great Wall in military defense.

As one of the most magnificent ancient defense works, the Great Wall was included in the World Cultural Heritage List in 1987.

Palace Museum

Also known as the Forbidden City, the Palace Museum was the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out their administration and lived. Now it is open to the public as a palace museum where people can see the great traditional palace architecture, enjoy the treasures kept in the palace, and learn of the legends and anecdotes of the imperial family and the court.

The Palace Museum is the largest and best-preserved mass group of palaces in China. The palaces are fully walled on four sides by 10-meter-high walls which extend 760 meters (0.47 miles) from east to west and 960 meters (0.6 miles) from north to south. It has 720,000 square meters (72 hectares) of courtyards, pavilions, great halls, flourishing gardens and nearly 10,000 rooms. Built by tens of thousands of people, it took over 14 years and 32 million bricks to complete.

The entire complex sits on a north-south axis, with halls and houses symmetrically arranged on the side. It consists of three parts: the outer court where the emperor received high officials and administered state affairs; the inner court where the emperor, empress and concubines lived; and the private Imperial Garden for the imperial family to entertain and relax.

The Forbidden City became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian

In December 1929, a Chinese paleoanthropologist named Pei Wenzhong discovered a complete skull of "Peking Man" on Dragon Bone Hill northwest of Zhoukoudian, in the southwest suburbs of Beijing. Later, archaeologists unearthed 40-odd individually fossilized skeletons of "Peking Man", male, female, old and young, all at the same site. Zhoukoudian, therefore, became the most common site for human remains with the most abundant fossils in the world from the same period. The discovery pushed the history of Beijing's civilization back to some 600,000 years. These fossilized remains prove that "Peking Man" was primitive man in an evolutionary process from ancient ape to modern man, and is the ancestor of the Chinese nation.

Inside the 140-meter-long Peking Man Cave, stratum accumulation was of a depth of 40 meters. The inhabitants spanning more than 300,000 years left their remains, stone tools and traces of fire here. On Dragon Bone Hill were also found fossilized remains of Upper Cave Man, who lived 18,000 years ago, as well as sites of New Cave Man, who lived between Peking Man and Upper Cave Man.

In 1987, the Zhoukoudian caves were listed as one of the world cultural heritage sites.

Summer Palace

The Summer Palace lies in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, about 5 kilometers (3.11 miles) northwest of Beijing University. Occupying an area of 290 hectares, the park consists mainly of a hill, called Longevity Hill and a lake, Kunming Lake, with halls, towers, galleries, pavilions, bridges and islands dotted all over the land, hill and lake. Blending southern China-style garden architecture with northern China's natural landscapes, the gardens are probably the best of their kind in Chinese garden architecture.

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace an "outstanding expression of the creative art of Chinese Landscape Garden Design, incorporating the works of humankind and nature in a harmonious whole."

Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven, is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in southeastern Beijing. The Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) visited the complex annually when they prayed to Heaven for good harvests. It is regarded as a Taoist temple, although Chinese Heaven worship, especially by the reigning monarch of the day, actually pre-dates Taoism.

The temple complex covers an area of 270 hectares, about three times the size of the Forbidden City. The main buildings in the park were built in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) by Emperor Yongle for worshipping the heaven and the earth. The complex was extended during the reign of Emperor Jiajing in the 16th century and was renovated in the 18th century by Emperor Qianlong.

The temple was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998.

Ming Tombs

The Ming Tombs lie at the foot of Tianshou Mountains, about 50 kilometers (31.07 miles) northwest of Beijing, in Changping District. Thirteen of the sixteen Ming emperors were buried here, so that the Ming Tombs are known in Chinese as Shisanling (Thirteen Tombs).

The tombs are spread over an area of over 40 kilometers (24.85 miles) in circumference. The site was chosen by the third Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Emperor Yongle, who moved the capital of China from Nanjing to the present location of northwest Beijing.

The Ming Tombs were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in August 2003. They were listed along with other tombs under the "Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties" designation.

Grand Canal

The Grand Canal is an ancient man-made waterway that dates back to the 5th century B.C. during China's Spring and Autumn period. With a history spanning over 2500 years, it travers- es the North China Plain and the Yangtze Plain, encompassing three sections: the Sui and Tang Grand Canal, the Beijing-Hang- zhou Grand Canal, and the Eastern Zhejiang Canal. Stretching over 3000 kilometers, it passes through eight provincial-level regions and connects the five major river systems, namely the Haihe River, the Yellow River, the Huaihe River, the Yangtze River, and the Qiantang River. The canal served as a major artery of transportation between the north and south in ancient China.

The Grand Canal was a massive engineering project built and managed by the state, aimed at ensuring safe transportation of grain and maintaining political stability and national unity. It was also intended to address natural resource imbalances between northern and southern China and development needs, by facilitating large-scale distribution of goods across the country and connecting the political and economic centers. The canal facilitated economic and cultural exchanges between different regions and played an irreplaceable role in ensuring national security, political stability, economic prosperity, and social development.

One of the greatest engineering marvels of ancient China, comparable to the Great Wall, and a magnificent project of water conservancy, the Grand Canal holds the record for being the longest canal in the world as well as the earliest and largest one ever excavated. In 2014, the Grand Canal was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Central Axis

The Central Axis runs for 7.8 kilometers, from the Drum and Bell Towers in the north to Yongdingmen in the south, passing Wanning Bridge, Jingshan Park, and the Palace Museum. Running through the old city of Beijing, the Central Axis first started taking form during the Yuan Dynasty, but took more than 700 years to complete, witnessing the rise and fall of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) and continuing to develop through modern and contemporary China. The buildings along the Central Axis are strictly symmetrical and the landscape reflects the order of the city. The Central Axis is an epitome of traditional city design that the central position is the emphasis, indicating the purpose of constructing social order and standardizing social life through the city layout. It is also the grandest and best-preserved city central axis existing in China, and a model for the development of a mature Chinese capital.

With rising awareness of cultural heritage protection and better understanding of the value of the Central Axis, cultural heritage protection and historic site improvement and reconstruction have been carried out in Beijing. I

In 2011, Beijing launched the UNESCO World Heritage application for the Central Axis. In 2013, the Central Axis of Beijing was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. The year 2022 marks a key point in time as all documents will be submitted officially for the listing of the Central Axis as a UNESCO World Heritage. On July 27, the 46th session of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee adopted a resolution to inscribe "Beijing Central Axis: A Building Ensemble Exhibiting the Ideal Order of the Chinese Capital" on the UNESCO World Heritage List.