Beijing Postcards: Something I forgot in The Master Plan

In yesterday's post about the Beijing Postcards talk I forgot to add one part of the discussion that is part mystery: Where was the First Ring Road?

Modern Beijing is no longer bound by its old City Walls, but the Ring Roads now act as defining limits of Beijing. Primarily, the Ring Roads exist to ease traffic around the capital. In practical use, though, there are times the number assigned to the Ring Road has socioeconomic meaning as well. When the young chefs at Changping's 6ème started out, their intentional all along was to abandon Changping (outside the Sixth Ring) for something at the Second Ring Road, a more popular and promising location for a Western restaurant. And often when the Sixth Ring comes up in a news story, it is seldom because it is an attractive place to live.  

While Beijing has Ring Roads numbered Two through Six, none called First Ring Road show up on current maps. In his talk, Lars pointed out that not only do modern maps fail to show a First Ring Road, there are few if any historical sources that point out specifically where the First Ring Road was. I found this absolutely incredible. It's one thing to find gaps in historical record from centuries or millennia ago, but another thing entirely for events of less than 100 years ago. It wasn't uncommon for a government to cleanse the record of undesirables (remember The Book of Laughter and Forgetting?), but it's hard to believe that the First Ring Road is Tamas Clementis and the Second Ring Road is his hat. 

There are theories and urban legends regarding the existence of the First Ring Road, and Lars pointed to the streetcar line theory as the most plausible. However, I can't help but be amazed that a clear record of something so basic as the Ring Road that surely must exist inside the Second Ring Road