Built during the Yongle period of the Ming dynasty in the early fifteenth century, this gate occupied the most symbolically charged position in Beijing's imperial geography. It was the southern entrance to the Imperial City, and in traditional Chinese cosmology, south was the most eminent direction -- the direction the emperor faced when he sat on his throne. The gate therefore enjoyed the status of "Gate of the Nation," and its name changed with each new ruling power. Under the Ming, it was the Great Ming Gate, inscribed with couplets declaring "The Sun and Moon illuminate the virtues of Heaven; The Mountains and Rivers make magnificent the home of the Emperor." When the Manchu Qing dynasty replaced the Ming in 1644, the gate was renamed the Great Qing Gate.

Unlike its neighbors Zhengyang Gate to the south and Tiananmen to the north, both of which served defensive functions with ramparts and military architecture, the Gate of China was purely ceremonial. It was a brick-and-stone structure with three gateways, flying eaves, and a perfectly square plaza before it, flanked by stone lions and dismounting steles. These steles marked where officials had to leave their sedan chairs or horses -- only the Emperor, Empress, and Empress Dowager could ride through. During the Qing dynasty, the space between the gate and Zhengyang Men was a stone-fenced plaza, though under the Ming it had been a bustling marketplace known as "Chessgrid Streets" for the narrow alleys between vendor stalls. Perhaps the most exclusive regulation: the Empress could enter the Forbidden City through the Great Qing Gate only on the occasion of her wedding.

The main tablet was no ordinary sign. It was carved from stone, with individual characters made of lapis lazuli fitted into the surface -- a detail reflecting the gate's supreme importance in the imperial hierarchy. When the Republic of China government decided to rename it on October 9, 1912, the day before the first anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, they expected a simple reversal would suffice. The discovery of the Ming inscription underneath -- the Qing builders had apparently planned for the possibility of regime change and pre-empted it -- added an unintentional comedy to the renaming ceremony. The hastily carved wooden tablet that replaced it, bearing the three characters for Gate of China, was a visual downgrade that perhaps suited the republic's more modest aspirations.

By the 1950s, the gate's days were numbered. In 1952, consultants from the Soviet Union recommended its demolition as part of the expansion of Tiananmen Square into the vast public plaza that exists today. The gate came down in 1954. Its removal was part of a broader campaign to transform Beijing from an imperial capital into a socialist one -- a transformation that required erasing certain physical reminders of the old order while creating new monuments to the new. In 1976, after Mao Zedong's death, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall was built on the exact site where the Gate of China had stood. The layering is extraordinary: beneath the mausoleum of a revolutionary who abolished monarchy lies the foundation of a gate that served three dynasties and a republic, each of which renamed it in their own image.