The Broken Bowl Tea House

Revolutionary heads rolled at this former tea house site

Close to a hutong in Caishikou is the spot where six men were beheaded in 1898 for putting forward a modernisation plan which might have saved China from its painful fate in the Twentieth Century. The six men were part of a group of prominent young Confucian scholars who presented the Emperor Guangxu with the plan in 1895, after China had twice suffered humiliating naval defeats at the hands of the Japanese and British.

Amongst other things, the plan proposed abolishing the Confucian exams and creating a constitutional monarchy. Guangxu, who was 24 and trying to escape the domineering influence of the 60-year-old Empress Dowager Cixi, liked the plan, and included most of it in the ‘100 Days Reform’ he soon pushed through. But the Empress Dowager, enjoying life in the New Summer Palace, was alarmed when she heard about the proposed reforms and acted decisively. She imprisoned Guangxu and arrested the scholars. Soon after, she announced the death sentence from the Meridian Gate, at the entrance of the Forbidden City, then marched the men directly south through Xuanwumen, colloquially known as ‘Death Gate’. The cart carrying the men was stopped outside a teahouse known as ‘the Broken Bowl Teahouse’ because the condemned would gulp down a bowl of rice wine and alcohol before the vessel was thrown away and smashed. After the men were beheaded with a sword, their heads were put in a cage and left to rot.

Today, the spot where the Broken Bowl Tea House once stood lies on the northwest corner of the crossroads by the Henian Tang pharmacy at the south entrance of Tiemen hutong. There’s nothing to mark the place where a potential new era for China was brutally ended.

Broken Bowl Tea House Close to Henian Tang pharmacy, L43-1 Guangnei Dajie, Xuanwu district

Jasper Becker’s City of Heavenly Tranquility (Allen Lane) is available online, priced around 300RMB

Jasper Becker talking to Toby Skinner