a street called Righteous
Beijing, of course, is an immense, sprawled city of broad avenues and monumental architecture. It is also a city built on a fundamentally humane scale. These two statements do not contradict each other.
Early on in my explorations of Beijing, probably while I was still living in Taiyuan and visiting Beijing for the occasional weekend or holiday, I discovered a little street.
Well, plenty of people knew about this street long before I did, of course, including the people who built it, but there I was, walking eastwards along Chang'an Jie, and to the right this intriguing little street opens up.
Well, it's really two streets running in parallel with the space between them occupied by a park. There are many mature trees, and the streets are lined with old European-style buildings. After the rush of Chang'an Jie, and Qianmen Dong Dajie, which this street meets at its southern end, this little street, or two parallel streets separated by a park, is a little slice of calm and quiet. After the immense edifices that line Chang'an Jie, the 19th century European-style buildings are relaxed, sedate.
This street is Righteous. Literally, check it out on the map - 正义路/Zhèngyì Lù/Righteousness Street.
The old European-style buildings are explained by Zhengyi Lu running through the old Legation Quarter, known as 东交民巷/Dōng Jiāomín Xiàng, the hutong that runs west-east from Tian'anmen Square to Chongwenmen Nei Dajie. Dong Jiaomin Xiang meets Zhengyi Lu about a third of the way up from Qianmen Dong Dajie.
That Wikipedia article mentions the Grand Canal passing through the area in the Legation Quarter days, but there's no hint of a canal on the map and I don't recall ever finding any sign of a waterway running through the area. There's a clue on the map - if you look at Chang'an Jie where it meets Zhengyi Lu, there's a street running northwards called 南河沿大街/Nán Héyán Dàjiē - South River Edge Street. There does not seem to be a river there any longer, but place names referencing water that is no longer there are quite common around Beijing. It looks like Baidu Baike might have the answer:
明代为御河河道，建有北、中、南三座石拱桥，清后期划入使馆界，1901年起河道改为暗沟并逐步形成道路
In the Ming Dynasty is was the course of the Yu River, and three stone arch bridges were built in the north, centre, and south. In the late Qing Dynasty it was included in the Legation Quarter, and in 1901 the river course was enclosed in an underground channel and the surface gradually formed into a road.
Yes, my translation skills have withered, I need to practice more, but you get the point. Zhengyi Lu is built over the now-undergrounded canal.
From the rest of the Baidu Baike article, the undergrounding happened in stages starting in 1901, when the southern bridge was demolished and that section of canal covered over. Another section, from the middle bridge north, was covered in 1926, with the surface over the old canal becoming the park, and the former banks becoming roads. The remaining section of canal was undergrounded in the 1930s. Originally, the road running along the former east bank of the canal was called 兴国路/Xīngguó Lù/"Invigorate the Country" Street, and Zhengyi Lu applied to the road running along the former west bank. Zhengyi Lu was applied to both roads after the founding of the People's Republic.
Of course, this being the old Legation Quarter, this was the scene of the Siege of the International Legations from 20 June to 14 August 1900. In 1900, of course, Zhengyi Lu was still an open canal. I'm guessing that the "water gate" the British forces relieving the siege entered through would have been where modern Zhengyi Lu meets Qianmen Dong Dajie.
It seems odd that the site of such horrific violence could now be such a quiet, peaceful street.