The Center of the World

The Chinese name for itself is Jung Gwo, which literally means “the central kingdom.” Traditionally the residents of this nation have considered it as the center of the world, the focus of civilization. The farther from the Jung (center) you get, the more barbaric you are. Today we were at the Jung, the center, as we walked from Tien An Men Square through the Forbidden City, an area open only to the emperor.

Since I became a Chinese student in 1971, I have always wanted to come here, to the center. Today I fulfilled that dream. Our bus took us along the eight-lane highway where a lone student stopped a tank in 1989, and all the world watched. That road empties into the front gate, where a mile-long queue waited to view the preserved corpse of Mao Tse Tung. Some of the people we saw standing in line at eight o’clock this morning will stand in line until sunset. We absorbed the beauty of the seventeenth-century buildings of the Ming Dynasty, built on the site of the ancient capital of Kublai Khan six hundred years before. The detailed ornamentation was breathtaking. Finally we got to see the private residence of the last of the Qing Dynasty, who were forced to vacate their palace in 1924. The last emperor, Pu Yi, was crowned emperor of the Middle Kingdom at the age of three, was deposed in 1924, became the Japanese puppet ruler of Manchuguo during World War II, and ended his life in 1967 working as a gardener in Hawaii under the name of Henry Puyi. In this beautifully restored version of the Forbidden City it seems as though time has stopped. Yet moments after leaving we drove past shapely sky scrapers that surpass those being built in my home country. In Tien An Men Square it seems that time has stopped, but this stasis serves to remind us that everything changes. Nothing remains the same. There is nothing permanent except change. That is the lesson from Tien An Men—the Gate of Heavenly Peace.Read more