Beijing has a history of more than 3,000 years and is a world-famous ancient capital, where the Yan, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties were all founded. It is known as the capital of the Six Dynasties. Beijing has many ancient buildings that embody traditional culture. In this way, people carry out restoration construction and innovate forms of historical culture.

People in Beijing preserve traditional culture by restoring the original old architecture. Until the early 1950s, Beijing remained an imperial capital, with farmland outside the city walls. However, faced with the need to expand the city’s functions, Beijing spread from its original 62 square kilometers to a larger area. Some traditional buildings were then demolished, but Beijing made some adjustments. The General Secretary of China has an explicit requirement that, first of all, the old city can no longer be demolished, so that citizens should preserve everything. At the same time, under the general guiding principle, the Beijing government focused on ensuring that the overall courtyard and street pattern were identifiable. In Houhai, for example, one can still see the general scene of the countryside, and the shady trees have become an essential feature of Beijing’s hutongs. The streets have been maintained mainly in their original city street layout, including the courtyards, hutongs, flyovers, etc. These have been restored and protected to ensure their original appearance. For many foreigners, it is hard to imagine that Beijing, a metropolis of more than 20 million people, still has scenes like Shichahai in the center of the city, which is a precious historical and cultural legacy of the past decades. Therefore, the Beijing government has comprehensively improved the quality of ancient architecture preservation.

Many of Beijing’s previous histories and cultures value innovative forms. The significance of cultural and creative products is that they can enter the homes of ordinary viewers as practical objects embedded within cultural symbols, and “Up and Coming – The Forbidden City” popularizes the artistic elements and historical stories for its audience. The cultural and creative products produced by the collision of imperial life, modern design, and cultural stories have logically become the cultural symbols that audiences are eager to see. Calendars made from the Chinese calendar, bookmarks made by tracing cultural relics, balms made by ancient methods, and other cultural products highlighting history and culture have emerged. Hence, Beijing is innovating history and culture in novel forms.

People use different methods to manifest and spread history and culture in the historical and cultural city where I live. People preserve the original urban landscape and innovate historical and cultural forms. The attitude and way of preserving history in a city like Beijing may not be universal to the world. Still, this way of thinking about history is worth exploring and using to solve existing problems.