The City of Beijing-A Historical Perspective

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The city of Beijing has been the capital of the People’s Republic of China for only Seventy years. But her history can be traced back to remote antiquity.

As early as half a million years ago, in the place now called Zhoukoudian District, which is located in the southwestern suburbs of Beijing, there lived Chinese ape-men, who are now well-known as”Beijing man.

In the caves inhabited by Beijing Man were excavated fossils of the skulls and bones of primitive ape-men. Simple tools used by the primitive ape-men and animalfossils were also found out there. These discoveries have provided very important scientific basis for the study of the origin and evolution of mankind. They are not only gems of China’s ancient cultural legacy, but also rarities in the treasure-house of the world’s culture.

Among these discoveries there are traces of fire used by beijing man. In that vast and wild world, Beijing Man succeeded in starting a fire and burning it into raging flames, and learned how to keep fire, thus proclaiming the coming of the age when man would be free from darkness and begin his early cultivation Beijing Man made its appearance at the initial stage of primitive society and lived a gregarious life then. With the simplest tools made of sticks and stone, they engaged themselves in fruit-gathering and hunting, so as to keep themselves alive and breed and bring up their offspring. For this purpose, they had to carry on arduous and tenacious struggles against nature.

Hundreds of thousands of years passed and primitive society evolved into its last stage. About 4,000 years ago, it happened that a few tiny dwelling places began to emerge on the plain near the present-day city of Beijing. This is one of the placeswhere those practicing farming and hunting first settled down. They no longer moved round in search of fruit and wild animals as food. Having settled down there, they started to farm and raise livestock as their chief means of life. these earliest settlers were pioneers who opened up the Beijing Area.

With the rise of productivity, the quantitative increase of surplus products, andthe division of labour, there appeared private ownership and a few exploiters who lived on other people’s labour. Then primitive society began to disintegrate. At the same time slave society which was the first society with class oppression in human history gradually came into being.

The appearance of the earliest cities marked the formation of slave society.