Beijing Tan Sitong's Former Residence

Beijing Tan Sitong's Former Residence

Beijing Tan Sitong's Former Residence is a cultural tourism attraction.

Originally the Hunan Liuyang Guild Hall, this was the residence of Tan Sitong during his time in Beijing in 1898. The place of his birth and death were just a stone’s throw apart, and Tan Sitong’s former residence stands simple and prominent on the edge of Caishikou. Walking a few dozen steps south along the western side of Caishikou Street, atop an earthen slope by the sidewalk, you’ll find a siheyuan (courtyard house) marked with a “Tan Sitong’s Former Residence” sign—now No. 41 Beibanjie Hutong, once the “Liuyang Guild Hall.” Red walls and grey eaves are cluttered with miscellaneous items, and the red paint on the door pillars is smeared in a way that resembles splattered blood. Most of the entire hutong has been demolished, leaving only this small courtyard and a few adjacent houses standing conspicuously by the wide road.

The main hall of the Liuyang Guild Hall still stands with five rooms, the northern two of which were where Tan Sitong lived. The front courtyard is cramped with low-rise buildings, leaving only narrow pathways, but the tall structures are still clearly visible, overgrown with weeds, their pillars stripped of paint, revealing the grain of the wood. The tightly shut northern room is Tan Sitong’s “Mangcangcang Studio.” His living quarters were in the northern suite of the western five rooms, which he named “Mangcangcang Studio.” Many of his poems, essays, and letters were written here. The Mangcangcang Studio originally bore a couplet handwritten by Tan himself: the upper line read “No grain in the home,” the lower “Spirit dauntless as ten thousand men.” Later, the upper line was changed to “See how blind you are, why is Heaven so drunk?” and the lower to “Everywhere you look, people have something to say.” The inner courtyard also housed the northern room where reform activists held meetings.   At the execution ground at Caishikou, he declared: “I had the heart to kill the traitors, but not the power to turn the tide; I die where I should, how swift and joyful!”   After Empress Dowager Cixi launched a coup, reform activists were hunted down. Friends from both China and abroad tried to rescue him and urged him to flee abroad, but Tan Sitong firmly refused, saying: “In all reforms throughout the world, there has never been one without bloodshed. If reform in China must be sealed with blood, let it begin with me!” Determined to sacrifice himself for the cause and awaken the nation, he was arrested at the Liuyang Guild Hall on September 24, 1898, and subsequently executed at Laifusi.   The Liuyang Guild Hall has since undergone major alterations, but much of the original architectural layout remains intact.

Address: No. 41 Beibanjie Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing (near Caishikou Street)