Beijing - a personal journey of discovery amidst rapid change

The more time spent in Beijing the more obvious there was a lot of history just waiting to be both discovered and explored. Unlike today, with an ever expanding metro network reaching now almost every corner of this vast city, travels needed some planning. In late December 1995 one such destination in southwestern Fengtai District was Marco Polo Bridge or Lugoqiao. It of course is associated with an an infamous incident on 7 July 1937 culminating in starting the Second Sino-Japanese War that lasted up to 1945.

I was fascinated with both the bridge and the fact that Wanping had remained as a walled settlement. Getting there involved a local bus from near today's Lianhuachi Coach Station out to what then felt almost rural suburbia. The area is crisscrossed by several railway lines for Fengtai remains a major rail junction with several lines approaching Beijing. That stone bridge I had come to see had carried historically a trade route into the city across the Yongding River. Indeed its line can still be traced heading towards Qianmen via Guanganmen and Dashilar. Today's often crowded streets and expressways of course bear no resemblance to the packhorse carriageways of such long gone eras.