The most important Yuan construction project was expanding and extending the Grand Canal so that it stretched all the way from Dadu to Hangzhou in the Yangtze River basin. They could then import sufficient quantities of food so that Dadu grew to be twice the size of the former Jin capital of Zhongdu.
By , the city had , residents with another 2. At this time, it was one of the biggest cities in the world and second only to Hangzhou in population in the Yuan Empire. The Yuan Empire fell through natural disasters, civil war between Mongol leaders, and large-scale rebellions in several regions.
Zhu Yuanzhang captured Nanjing in and made it his capital. Then his army attacked the Yuan empire capital of Dadu in and burned down their palaces. The Yuan dynasty was driven north over the mountains.
For the first decades under Ming rule, "Beiping," as the Ming called the city, became impoverished, and the population dropped dramatically. By , the city's population had been reduced to 95,, and only , people lived in the region surrounding it. Emperor Yongle who reigned — was appointed ruler of Beiping and the Beiping region when he was young, and it became his base of power.
After conquering Nanjing in , from to , Yongle prepared Beiping to be his new capital and conducted a massive reconstruction program. He renamed the city "Beijing. From onwards, Emperor Yongle settled in Beijing to escape the opposition to his rule. He feared the people and aristocrats in Nanjing and the rest of the south who viewed him as a usurper.
Even though Beijing was largely destroyed, essential infrastructure such as the canals were still in place. They only required renovation. The Yuan had shown that the Beijing region could support a very large population and could be made very prosperous and that the location was strategic in a number of ways militarily and for trading purposes. Yongle's key building projects were the huge fortified palace called the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and rebuilding the Grand Canal.
To protect himself, he directly supervised the building of the Forbidden City that was a huge palace fortress. He hoped to make it impregnable. They started constructing the Forbidden City in and used , skilled artisans and up to a million workers and slaves.
The Guinness Book of World Records calls it the "largest palace in the world. The Temple of Heaven was another of the big projects. They built it from to together with the Forbidden City. Their Grand Canal improvements were carried out from to The canal was an essential part of the emperor's grand plan for Beijing and his fortress because it enabled them to quickly and economically transport building materials, supplies and personnel.
A total of , laborers dredged the canal bed in Shandong and built new canal locks. Once it was finished, they accelerated the construction on the new capital. In , Yongle formally inaugurated Beijing as the imperial capital. The new canal enabled deliveries of grain to exceed , tons annually to feed the growing population.
Beijing kept growing. In , the southern part of the Outer City that included the Temple of Heaven was enclosed with a wall. The outer city around the inner walled section continued to grow in size. The total population of Beijing grew to , residents in , and another 2. So it once again reached the size it had under the Mongols more than years earlier.
Beijing was the largest city in the world from to In , they built the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon in this outer ring where the commoners lived.
From about onwards until , they strengthened it particularly around Beijing and vastly lengthened it so that it stretched 8, km 5, miles from Jiayu Pass in the west to Shanhai Pass and the sea in the east, and included another stretch in Manchuria. The wall and forts along it were built especially strong around the Beijing region.
It is a world architectural wonder. It is interesting that after taking a defensive posture against their northern enemies and building the Great Wall, the Ming Dynasty retained Beijing as their capital city even though they lost much of their northwestern territory to the Jurchens by The foundation of the layout of present Beijing was laid in , when the Ming Dynasty decided to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and started a large-scale construction.
Many of the ancient palace buildings, temple structures and gardens that are still visible today can be traced back to this period or later.
Weak Ming rulers and corrupt bureaucrats finally doomed the Ming Dynasty. The last Ming emperor hanged himself behind the Imperial Palace and the Qing succeeded the Ming and ruled China in Beijing from to This system of dual capitals with Beijing being vastly more important continued for the duration of the Ming Dynasty.
Thirteen of the sixteen Ming Emperors are buried in elaborate tombs near Beijing. By the 15th century, Beijing had essentially taken its current shape. It is believed that Beijing was the largest city in the world from to and from to Other notable buildings constructed during the Ming period include the Temple of Heaven built by The Tiananmen Gate, now a state symbol of China and featured on its emblem, was first built in , and rebuilt several times later.
Tiananmen Square was built in and enlarged in The end of the Ming came in when, for 40 days, Li Zicheng's peasant army captured Beijing and overthrew the Ming government. When the powerful Manchu army arrived at the outskirts of the city, Li and his followers abandoned the city and as a result the Manchu forces, under Prince Dorgon, captured Beijing without a fight. The Qing Emperors made some modifications to the Imperial residence, but in large part, the Ming buildings and the general layout remained unchanged.
Beijing at this time was also known as Jingshi, which corresponded to the Manchu Gemun Hecen with the same meaning. The classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber is set in Beijing during the early years of Qing rule the end of the s.
Ji City became the trading center and militarily strategic place in Northern China since that time. You Zhou was called Yanjing at that time. Early in the 12th century, another minority ethnic group Nvzhen founded the Jin Dynasty , with its capital in Yanjing and renamed it Zhongdu.
During Jin Dynasty, the city was rebuilt on a scale similar to the Northern Song capital at Bianliang and expanded to the east, west and south. The new expanded city, with its splendid buildings in the center, measured roughly five kilometers in circumference, which forms the layout of Beijing we see today. Mongol armies occupied Zhongdu in and in , the Mongols finally eliminated the Southern Song and unified China to build Yuan Dynasty. The leader of the Mongolian ethnic minority Kublai Khan established its capital in Yanjing and renamed it Dadu.
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