Puzzle pieces

It's easy to find historical information about Beijing, or, at least, the core of Beijing City. For locations like Changping, once independent towns now incorporated into Beijing Municipality, it is a little bit more difficult. The Ming Tombs (referred to in Chinese as 十三陵, the Thirteen Tombs) are nearby, as well as a few Great Wall locations. In many contemporary guide books and even travelogues of years past, Changping is mentioned only in passing, as a place on the way to the more famous attractions. However, Changping has been in historical record for more than 1000 years. Certainly I should be able to learn something.

I started with more recent history first. I knew from old maps we saw at Beijng Postcard's presentation last month that Changping was a walled town (which is a pretty safe assumption anyway, but it was good to see confirmation), and we have a Gulou Street, so named for a Drum Tower that once stood.  I wondered when these disappeared. Over lunch a few weeks ago I asked two of our local friends about Changping's City Walls and Gulou.   Both of these two friends's families have lived in this area for generations. One, Mr. Zhang, is about my age and from Changping town, his family having migrated from Hebei a few hundred years ago, though his wife (who wasn't with us at lunch) has no record of her ancestors not living in Changping. The other friend, Mr. Guo, is closer to 50 years old, and has a centuries' long family presence in the Ming Tombs villages. Neither of them remember Changping's City Walls or Gulou standing in their lifetimes, or knew when they came down.  Yet another friend eating lunch with us, Ms. Wang, suggested they may have come down at the end of the Qing Dynasty, as that was common.  A more recent arrival from Dongbei, Ms. Wang is not from Changping, but she studied a bit of Chinese history at University.

I wanted to know more, of course, so I've been digging in what few resources I can access from here right now, namely whatever I can find posted online and Google Books, and in English. That leaves for some great pieces of information (always pieces) but not a whole lot of depth, and especially not much continuity.  When I piece them together, I don't have a complete satisfying narrative, but a timeline full of gaps which will be fascinating to fill.

• I've found a mention of Changping that dates to the Tang Dynasty.  In 685, Turkic invaders reached Changping.
• The Ming Dynasty was certainly a very good time for Changping, especially since the Imperial geomancers selected the area for their necropolis. During the first 200 years of the Ming Dynasty, the Muslim community grew by migration, sizable enough to note alongside Beijing and Tianjin in this contemporary government-published history of Islam in China. This corresponds with other information I have found online a year and half ago about the Changping Mosque. Times were good, perhaps, until the unpaid garrison at Changping mutinied at the end of the Ming Dynasty, contributing to the eventual fall of Beijing to rebels, which then eased the arrival of the Manchurian invaders.
• If this is truly a travelogue from Russian diplomats' journey across North China from 1706, the description of Changping is wonderful: In the evening, we reached a large neat city called Zang-Ping-Jew [Changping-zhou]. In the market place, stood a triumphal arch, whereon were hung a number of streamers, and silken pendants, of various colours. The streets were clean, straight, and broad; in some places covered with gravel, in others paved with flat square stones. There is also a description of a governor's palace and the warm hospitality the travellers received here.
• More than a century later, though, travellers described what seems to be a different city, using words like "now wretched" and being "in a very decayed state, but was formerly a place of much consequence." Changping had been where in 1860 British and Sikh prisoners (including Harry Parkes) had been imprisoned and torture, and some finally executed. This led to the British burning the Old Summer Palace in retaliation.
• In the late 19th century, Methodist Episcopal missionaries established a presence in Changping, despite its notoriety from the Second Opium War. In that same link, a bookseller is mentioned as wanting to preach the Gospel in "Yen-ching Chou," which is now called Yanqing. Following the Boxer Rebellion, they recovered their mission activities, and by 1905 there were chapels built in Changping and Yanqing. This is particularly interesting as that today, both Changping and Yanqing are sites of recently constructed government-registered Protestant churches. It makes me wonder at the missionary expression, "church-planting," because no matter what has happened in the 20th century, today there are Protestant churches in these same towns again. 
• Changping was not untouched by the Boxer Rebellion. The United States' 6th Cavalry engaged and routed Chinese troops here.

This is merely a start. The gaps are obvious and large, though I was surprised how much I was able to find, for free, on the Internet. In addition, I am interested in learning more about Yongning, and particularly the history of the Catholic Church there, though I have come up short using the same resources as above. I am sure that part of my problem is not having the older romanization correct, or perhaps even a different name the town was called in history.