Qianmen Street, Beijing

1 · POSITION

Qianmen Street runs south from Zhengyangmen, the front gate of old Beijing, for 840 metres. It has carried trade for more than 570 years, was called Zhengyangmen Street under the Ming and Qing, and took its present name in 1965. What makes it a hospitality street rather than a shopping one is the age of the houses on it: restaurants, a tavern and a pharmacy that have been receiving the public for two centuries and more. [1]

2 · THE HOUSES ON THE STREET

Quanjude, the roast-duck house, was established in 1864; its first manager, Yang Renquan, began by selling chickens and ducks and opened his first shop, Dejuquan, in Yangrou Hutong at Qianmen, then one of the busiest quarters of the city. Its main house stands at No. 30 Qianmen Street. Yitiaolong, a Muslim restaurant, opened in 1785. Duyichu began as a tavern, and Changchuntang is a pharmacy of more than two hundred years. [1, 2]

3 · REBUILT FOR THE OLYMPICS

The street reopened on 7 August 2008, on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, after more than a year of renovation. It is 21 metres wide and given to pedestrians. The trams that ran between Qianmen and Xizhimen from 1924 were withdrawn in 1966; two have returned as sightseeing cars, each carrying up to 84 passengers along the street. [1]

4 · WHY A STREET IS ENTERED HERE

The register files streets of this kind beside the bazaars because the reader arrives for the same reason: to eat and buy where the city has eaten and bought for generations. Quanjude’s original location still operates in Qianmen while its other branches spread across Beijing, so the street holds the source of a house the city now exports. [2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The China Daily report of the reopening could not be retrieved, and the scale of the 2008 rebuilding — what was demolished, who was moved and what was reconstructed in an older style — is not described here because no source read gives it. The age of more than 570 years is the city tourism office’s figure. Quanjude’s founder is not named by the sources read; Yang Renquan is named as its first manager. [1–2]