Journey to the Far East / Journey to the World: QianMen adventure

Yesterday Mark and I attempted to find Beijing’s old underground city. I read in our travel book how the city had a maze of underground bombproof tunnels constructed during the 1960s. We arrived at the QianMen about 4pm, a bit late in the afternoon. We had never been to the QianMen before though I think we had seen it from a distance. We viewed two of the old gates that used to be on the double wall around ancient Beijing. According to our book, the walls were destroyed in the 20^th century, probably during the Cultural Revolution. The mantra of the era seemed “Out with the old, in with the new”, thus destroying so many ancient relics.

Before we attempted to local the underground city, we discovered QianMen Dajie, a street lined with many 1920s style buildings and walkways, although many of the buildings actually looked newly built. After a while we wandered streets following our map. We asked people along the way where the old underground city was and they kept pointing us to one particular area. We walked around in circles, rode a rickshaw because the driver said he knew where it was, and felt like we circled an area blocked off by construction barriers. We finally concluded that the underground city must have been inside those barriers and was now being destroyed. As we wandered the area, we realized that we were the only foreigners walking around. We had walked away from the touristy area of QianMen Dajie. We have never felt unsafe anywhere that we have walked in Beijing so we weren’t concerned for our safety. It’s just an odd feeling when we realize all of a sudden that the chances of finding English speakers diminishing the further in we wandered. However, one or two people did speak English who could help us find our destination. Again, they all pointed us to the construction area. Oh well, so much for that idea. We worked our way back to the Dajie to explore that area further and ended up in old hutong areas.