INSIDE RED CHINA'S CAPITAL

THE Altar of Heaven, according to ancient Chinese belief, was the center of the universe. But it was carefully placed in a remote corner of the city, as if to keep the greatness of the universe from interfering with the grandeur of Peking.

Peking was already more than 2,000 years old when one of its invading conquerors decided to make it a place of splendor. The Mongol Emperor Kublai, grandson of Genghis Khan, ordered the building of Green Mount, a hill that was dotted with evergreens brought from far and wide by imperial elephants, paved with a layer of green copper ore and topped by a green pavilion. Marco Polo reported in wonderment: "The great Khan caused all this to be made for the comfort of his spirit."

Golden Water. A mere five centuries ago, long after the Mongols were driven out, Peking was rebuilt. Ming Emperor Yung Lo followed his astrologer's plan to make the city a geomantic portrait of No Cha, a three-headed monster with six arms. Its heads became the main gate, its intestine an open gutter and its navel a well. When Yung Lo had finished, Peking was a series of walled cities within cities, like a Chinese puzzle, box within box (see map).

Inside the four-mile square of Tartar City rose the pavilion-studded Imperial City, and, inside that, the Forbidden City. Yung Lo scooped out portions of the Imperial City to make the Pool of Great Fertilizing Spume, used the excavated earth to build Coal Hill as a protection for the palace against zephyrs from evil spirits of the North. Fed by Golden Water River flowing from Jade Fountain, the pool was actually a necklace of three lakes named North, Middle and South Sea.

The North Sea flowed around Kublai's Green Mount (also called the Hill of Ten Thousand Years), converted it into an island serenely adorned by the White Pagoda, the Pavilion of Perpetual Southern Melodies, the Tower of Felicitous Skies, Wisdom's Fragrant Terrace.

From the West Flowery Gate to the Well of the Pearl Concubine, the Forbidden City is crammed with a sequence of halls, austere courtyards, and a garland of delicate gardens. Here emperors strutted on stiltlike shoes, empresses basked under peacock fans, concubines lustered their hair with elephant dung, and eunuchs plotted palace intrigues.

Warrens. Today China's new rulers have taken over the Forbidden City (see color pages). They populate the nearby Hall of Political Diligence and have ensconced their National People's Congress in the Hall of Magnanimity.

Beyond this serene-looking inner box throbs the metropolitan life of Peking itself. Leading off from Kublai's broad roads, which checkerboard the city, are warrens of hutungs, narrow lanes of deep dust or mud lined by windowless walls of inward-facing houses, and named in keeping with their history: Ditch of a Thousand People, Dog's Neck Lane, Human Hair Lane, Chase the Thief Lane.

Tradesmen elbow their way through the hutungs hawking veil-finned goldfish, caged crickets, fried greaseballs, herbs to promote longevity. Each peddler indicates his wares by a distinctive call produced variously by flutes, rattles, bells, drums, clashing metal, tuning forks, or vocal cords. It has been this way for centuries, and even under Communism customs die hard or must be subtly transformed. Morrison Street, in the once-European shopping district, has been renamed Former Morrison Street. On Former Morrison, a merchant of electronic computers computes his accounts on an abacus.

Blue Dungarees. Since the Communist conquest of 1949, Peking's population has trebled, until now, with 3,000,000 people, it is one of the world's fifteen largest cities. Most Pekingese, men and women alike, now wear a baleful, blue dungaree uniform that gives them, and the city streets, a monotonous look. The exceptions are children and pedicab drivers.

As if to offset the drabness of their own dress, parents clothe their toddlers in the gaudiest of colors. The pedicab drivers, rugged individualists in motley rags, are, to the visitor, the backbone of Peking's transportation system; but to Peking's masters they are an abhorrent remnant of private enterprise. Since ordering all pedicabmen from the streets would create an unemployment problem, the Communists seek the same end gradually by shutting off the flow of pedicab spare parts.

To avoid the throngs of people and bicycles on either side, Peking's automotive traffic hurtles down the center of the street, each driver trying to dishonor the other by forcing him to swerve out of the way first. The drive from the Eternal Peace Street to the Gate of Heavenly Peace can be a hair-raising experience.

Forgotten Harmony. Peking has lost its cosmopolitan glitter. Street cars stop at 10 p.m. Night life and prostitution have been abolished and Physical Interludes substituted. These take place three times a day, when a city-wide loudspeaker system exhorts everybody everywhere to do squats and knee-bends to the rhythm of its faceless voice.

Once a center of religion and culture, Peking has now become a hive of the People's bureaucracy. The Communists have doubled the city's office space, built four first-rate hotels, 20 hospitals, new suburbs, even a new theater. New skyscrapers are changing the city's skyline, defying the ancient rule that buildings should nestle in harmony with nature.

Today Peking's architecture is reaching for the stars; but the Communist dream of heaven on earth has yet to touch the grandeur of Peking's ancient sublimity.

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