Vistopia
Cover of Memoirs of Beijing
Memoirs of Beijing
The Beijing that remains—and the Beijing that has vanished
Completed · 36 episodes
Buy for ¥68.00
Audio in Chinese
Duan Zhiqiang: To Understand China, Begin with Beijing Fu Xiaoxing: Understanding Every Sign That Belongs to Beijing through Everyday Life Yue Yongyi: Telling Beijing's Rise and Fall, Joy and Sorrow, within the Depth of World and Human History Xu Teng: Let's Make This Program an Open Dinner Table and Talk over Food Leung Man-tao: Perhaps I Still Love Beijing Because This City Allows People to Speak Ill of It Take an Unhurried “Historical Walk” through Beijing 01. The Secret beneath Oriental Plaza: A Starting Point for Imagining Beijing as a Water City 02. The Grand Canal and Fayuan Temple: How Did the Frontier Become the Center? 03. From the Zhongdu Palace to Qionghua Island: Reproducing Another Bianjing 04. Diagonal Streets and Earthen Walls: Life in the Twin Cities of Yuan Dadu 05. Nanjing or Beijing—that Is the Question 06. The Forbidden City: Version 4.0 of the Center of the Cosmos 07. Is the Forbidden City the World's Largest Palace? 08. The City Walls: Beijing's Most Monumental Structure 09. Five Altars and Eight Temples: A Sacred Diagram of Empire 10. Three Hills and Five Gardens: A Garden City Three Centuries Ago 11. Coffin Temples, Taoran Pavilion, and Princess Tombs: Living beside Death 12. Jingshan at the City's Center: Beginning with a Mysterious “Human Figure” 13. The Miracle of White Stupa Temple: A Nepali Architect, a Vast Daoist Complex, and a Market inside a Temple 14. Suzhou Street and Market Street: Theme-Park Boulevards of the Eighteenth Century 15. Canopies That Transformed the City: A Splendid Temporary World 16. The Courtyard House in Detail: The Lifestyle of Beijing's Middle Class 17. From Keyuan to the Guichun Residence: How to Design a Beijing Garden 18. Beijing's Native-Place Guildhalls: Student Lodgings, Theaters, and Hometown Clubs 19. The Qianmen Commercial District: Street Life and the “Old Beijing” It Produced 20. Lunar New Year in Beijing: Changdian's Urban Carnival 21. Quanjude, Huixiantang, and Hongqinglou: Dining Out in Beijing 22. What Exactly Is Beijing Cuisine—and Is It Really That Bad? 23. A Church inside the Compound: The Window Opened by Missionaries 24. From the European Palaces at Yuanmingyuan to an Unbuilt Parliament: Beijing's Western-Style Dreams 25. “Long Live Public Urination,” the Circular Railway, and a Lost “Model District”: Beijing's Difficult Modernization 26. From “Cataloging the Old Capital's Monuments” to Japan's Urban Plan for Beijing 27. The Liang-Chen Plan for Beijing, Part I: Origins and Process 28. The Liang-Chen Plan for Beijing, Part II: The Final Proposal 29. How Should We Understand Beijing's Old City Today? Beginning with an Extraordinary Temple Bonus | Call for Extra-Episode Ideas