Great Hall of the People

The China Numismatic Museum (Chinese: 中国钱币博物馆; pinyin: Zhōngguó Qiánbì Bówùguǎn) is a museum about currency in Beijing, China.

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) (simplified Chinese: 国家大剧院; traditional Chinese: 國家大劇院; pinyin: Guójiā dà jùyuàn; lit. 'National Grand Theatre'), and colloquially described as The Giant Egg (巨蛋), is an arts centre containing an opera house in the Xicheng District of Beijing, People's Republic of China. Designed by French architect Paul Andreu, the NCPA opened in 2007 and is the largest theatre complex in Asia. The NCPA is semi-spherical in appearance, with a long axis length of 212.20 meters in the east-west direction, a short axis length of 143.64 meters in the north-south direction, a height of 46.285 meters, an area of 119,900 square meters, and a total construction area of approximately 165,000 square meters, including 105,000 square meters of main buildings and 60,000 square meters of underground, auxiliary facilities, with a total cost of 3.067 billion yuan. The centre contains an opera hall, music hall, theater and art exhibition halls, restaurants, audio shops, and other supporting facilities.

Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng; Wade–Giles: Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3) is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananmen ("Gate of Heavenly Peace") located to its north, which separates it from the Forbidden City. The square contains the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in the square on October 1, 1949; the anniversary of this event is still observed there. The size of Tiananmen Square is 765 x 282 meters (215,730 m2 or 53.31 acres). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. Outside China, the square is best known for the 1989 protests and massacre that ended with a military crackdown, which is also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June Fourth Massacre.

The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth Clearing or June Fourth Massacre, troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement or the Tiananmen Square Incident. The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Workers' protests were generally focused on inflation and the erosion of welfare. These groups united around anti-corruption demands, adjusting economic policies, and protecting social security. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the square.As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Among the CCP's top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law. It mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of the CCP and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

The Monument to the People's Heroes (Chinese: 人民英雄纪念碑; pinyin: Rénmín Yīngxióng Jìniànbēi) is a ten-story obelisk that was erected as a national monument of China to the martyrs of revolutionary struggle during the 19th and 20th centuries. It is located in the southern part of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in front of the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The obelisk monument was built in accordance with a resolution of the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference adopted on November 30, 1949, with construction lasting from August 1952 to May 1958. The architect of the monument was Liang Sicheng, with some elements designed by his wife, Lin Huiyin. The civil engineer, Chen Zhide (陈志德) was also instrumental in realizing the final product.The monument has also served as the center of large-scale mourning activities that later developed into protest and unrest, such as the deaths of Premier Zhou Enlai (which developed into the 1976 Tiananmen Incident) and Hu Yaobang (which later developed into the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, which was claimed as an anti-government movement by the Chinese Communist Party at that time).

Hepingmen Station (simplified Chinese: 和平门站; traditional Chinese: 和平門站; pinyin: Hépíngmén Zhàn) is a station on Line 2 of the Beijing Subway.

The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall (simplified Chinese: 毛主席纪念堂; traditional Chinese: 毛主席紀念堂; pinyin: Máo Zhǔxí Jìniàn Táng), also known as the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, is the final resting place of Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party from 1943 and the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1945 until his death in 1976. Although Mao had wished to be cremated, his wishes were ignored and his body was embalmed. The construction of a memorial hall as his final resting place began shortly after his death. This highly popular attraction is located in the middle of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It stands on the previous site of the Gate of China, the southern (main) gate of the Imperial City during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The embalmed body of Chairman Mao is preserved in the cooler, central hall of the memorial hall in a glass case with dim lighting; it is guarded by a military honor guard. The memorial hall is open to the public every day except Mondays.

The Gate of China (traditional Chinese: 中華門; simplified Chinese: 中华门; pinyin: Zhōnghuámén) was a historical ceremonial gateway in Beijing, China, located near the center of latter-day Tiananmen Square. It was demolished in 1954. This gate formed the southern gate of the Imperial City during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was situated on the central axis of Beijing, to the north of Zhengyang Gate, and south of Tiananmen. Unlike these two defensive gates, the Gate of China was a purely ceremonial gateway, with no ramparts, but was a brick-stone structure with three gateways.

The Zhongshan Park (Chinese: 中山公园/中山公園) was a former imperial altar and now a public park that lies just southwest of the Forbidden City in the Imperial City, Beijing. Of all the gardens and parks surrounding the Forbidden City, such as the Beihai and Jingshan, Zhongshan is arguably the most centrally located of them all. The Zhongshan Park houses numerous pavilions, gardens, and imperial temples such as the Altar of Earth and Harvests or Altar of Land and Grain in some translations (Shejitan, 社稷坛), which was built in 1421 by the Yongle Emperor, and it symmetrically opposite the Imperial Ancestral Temple, and it's where the emperors of Ming and Qing dynasties made offerings to the gods of earth and agriculture. The altar consists of a square terrace in the centre of the park. By 1914, the altar grounds had become a public park known as the "Central Park". That park was then renamed in 1928 after Sun Yat-Sen (Zhongshan Park), in memory of China's first revolutionary political leader who helped bring about the first republic era in 1911, which is what the park is known as today. Many parks in China during that period also took on this name (see Zhongshan Park). The Zhongshan Park includes various halls and pavilions built for the members of the imperial family, stone archways and a greenhouse which houses fresh flowers on display all year round. The greenhouse includes 39 varieties of tulips presented to the park in 1977 by the Princess of Holland.

The Beiyang government (Chinese: 北洋政府; pinyin: Běiyáng Zhèngfǔ; Wade–Giles: Pei-yang Chêng-fu), officially the Republic of China (Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá mínguó; Wade–Giles: Chung¹-hua² Min²-kuo²), sometimes spelled Peiyang Government, was the government of the Republic of China which sat in its capital Beijing between 1912 and 1928. It was internationally recognized as the legitimate Chinese government during that time. The name derives from the Beiyang Army, which dominated its politics with the rise of Yuan Shikai, who was a general of the Qing dynasty. After his death, the army split into various warlord factions competing for power, in a period called the Warlord Era. Although the government and the state were nominally under civilian control under a constitution, the Beiyang generals were effectively in charge of it. Nevertheless, the government enjoyed legitimacy abroad along with diplomatic recognition, had access to tax and customs revenue, and could apply for foreign financial loans. Its legitimacy was seriously challenged in 1917, by Sun Yat-sen's Canton-based Kuomintang (KMT) government movement. His successor Chiang Kai-shek defeated the Beiyang warlords during the Northern Expedition between 1926 and 1928, and overthrew the factions and the government, effectively unifying the country in 1928. The Kuomintang proceeded to install its nationalist government in Nanking; China's political order became a one-party state, and the Kuomintang government subsequently received international recognition as the legitimate government of China.

The Empire of China was a short-lived attempt by statesman, general and president Yuan Shikai from late 1915 to early 1916 to reinstate monarchy in China, with himself as the Hongxian Emperor. The attempt was unsuccessful; it set back the Chinese republican cause by many years and fractured China into a period of conflict between various local warlords.

The 2nd Ring Road (Chinese: 二环路; pinyin: èr huán lù) is the innermost ring road highway which encircles the city center of Beijing, People's Republic of China. (The first ring road had been a circular tram route.) The ring road can be divided into two parts: the original ring road (the southern section of which is now excluded from the current ring road), and the newly extended ring road. This article only covers the current (new) 2nd Ring Road.