Old Peking was a secretive, proud, impenetrable place. This site concentrates on the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the city's history goes back many hundreds of years before that. It first became a serious poloitical centre when the Mongol invaders made it the capital of their Chinese empire.

Until the early 1980s, the city was known by English speakers as Peking, and while the spelling "Beijing" has now won out, it seems impossible to write of Old Peking without calling Peking. Forgive us if it seems anachronistic -- This site deals exclusively in anachronisms.

This site first gives a glimpse of the Old Peking, home of the Emperors, unchallenged center of the Central Kingdom. The arrival of the Europeans in the 19th century tested Old Peking's impenetrability to its limits, and we look at the impact of the intruders on the city.

The 20th century saw a cavalcade of political upheavals in the city, from the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the warlord period, from the Japanese occupation to the triumphal arrival of the Communists in 1949, which is where this particular story ends.

Physically, the city proper was little affected by the political changes (although the Old Summer Palace -- Yuanmingyuan -- outside the city was burned to the ground by English and French troops). Most of Old Peking remained as it was before the arrival of the Red-haired barbarians - walls within walls, inner courtyards and outer courtyards, palaces and hutungs. Foreign architecture only really established two beachheads in the city -- the legation quarter and the Wangfujing shopping street.