When Was Tiananmen Square Built?
There used to be Tiananmen Gate where the Tiananmen Square now stands. The Tiananmen Gate was built during the reign of the Ming Dynasty in 1417. The place was destroyed during the transfer of power to the Qing Dynasty. The Qing emperors rebuilt the place in 1651. The area near the Tiananmen Gate was used as a camp in 1860 by the British and the French troops during their invasion of China. The Chinese rebelled against the imperial powers and fought against eight nations – Austrian-Hungarian Empire, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – during the Boxer revolution of 1900s. The eight-nation consortium leveled the Gate in their efforts to stifle the rebellion; thus, an empty place was left which would later become the Tiananmen Square. The modern Tiananmen Square was built in the 1950s when the late Chinese premier Mao Zedong quadrupled the size of the place.
The square lies between two gates: Tian’anmen to the north and Qianmen to the south. To the west of the gate in the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum of China overlook the square from the east. The Tian’anmen square spans an area of 400,000 square meters.
Tian’anmen Square is also associated with some of the important political events of the People’s Republic of China. The proclamation by Mao Zedong of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October, 1949 was made at the square. Tian’anmen became an international issue when the Chinese government found itself unable to deal with the students’ protest in 1989, which had surfaced mildly for the first time in 1987. The protests were getting out of control and the Chinese government had to resort to force to bring everything to normal. The military was called in and hundreds of people died—most of them at the Tian’anmen Square. This is still a controversial issue but perhaps, it is only because of this that people around the world became aware of the existence of the Tian’anmen Square.
