China Millennium Monument

The monument faces south in accordance with Feng Shui principles, and is accessed through a monumental stairway. Its central structure, branded the Century Altar,[9] features 20,000 m² of exhibition space, much of it underground.[10]

The Century Altar is structurally divided between a truncated conic base representing earth (Chinese: 坤; pinyin: Kūn) and a sundial-shaped rotunda representing heaven (Chinese: 乾; pinyin: Qián). The latter can rotate around a vertical axis and supports an inclined metal spire branded the "Time and Space Probing Pin" above a central circular platform.[3] The base's diameter is 85 meters, and the rotating sundial's is 47 meters.[5]^: 189

The monument's central room is branded the Great Century Hall.[9] At the center of that room, and thus of the entire monument, is a gilded pillar decorated with traditional Chinese imagery and surrounded by eight cylindric columns.[5]^: 191

The Great Century Hall's 5-meter-high circular wall is adorned with episodes of idealized Chinese 5000-years-long history, sculpted in precious stone low relief. In the mid-2000s that sculpted frieze, described as the largest stone relief sculpture in China, was referred to in the monument's official documentation as "Ode to the Chinese Millenia" (pinyin: Zhonghua Qiqiu Song) and divided into four sections: "the rational spirit in Chinese civilization of the pre-Qin period (3000 BCE - 221 BCE); "the magnanimous spirit in Chinese civilization from the Han to the Tang dynasties" (221 BCE - 907 CE); "the loyal integrity during the period from the Song to the Qing dynasties" (960-1911); and "the historical duet of enlightenment and national salvation in recent and modern Chinese history" (1912-1999). It features heroic description of historic characters from Qin Shi Huang to Deng Xiaoping and ends with a calligraphy by Jiang Zemin that reads "The Chinese nation will achieve a great renaissance based on the final attainment of the unification of the motherland and the construction of a rich, powerful, democratic, and civilized socialist modern country."[5]^{: 191–192}

On the upper level, a 140-meters-long circular corridor features 40 bronze statues of important figures of Chinese culture and science, and (on the rotating qián) 56 sculpted stone slabs representing China's officially recognized ethnic groups. The series of characters starts with political adviser Guan Zhong (c. 725-645 BCE) and ends with nuclear scientist Deng Jiaxian (1924-1986). Other individuals featured include Laozi, Confucius, Sima Qian, Zu Chongzhi, and for the modern era, Zhan Tianyou, Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mei Lanfang, Mao Dun, and Liang Sicheng.[4] The statues, installed after 2005,[5]^: 190 are sponsored by individual donors, many of them businesspeople from Hong Kong. Another donor, Stanley Ho, is singled out on the monument’s ground floor with a bronze bust celebrating his gift.

Tourists walking on the bronze thoroughfare

Leading to the monument is a monumental causeway that starts at the intersection of the monument's north–south axis with Fuxing Road, the western part of Beijing's major axis that becomes Chang'an Avenue further west. Just north of Fuxing Road is a screen bearing the monument's name calligraphed by Jiang Zemin, and a circular plaza flanked by two arcs of water, symbolizing China's two iconic rivers the Yellow River and the Yangtze. In the center of the plaza is a sunken square space with a permanently burning flame of "Chinese Holy Fire", kindled in 1999 at the Zhoukoudian site where Peking Man was discovered in the 1920s, and symbolizing the continuity of human experience in China since times immemorial.[9][11] The plaza's northern side features a map of China in a circular gilded medallion fringed by sculpted dragons. Between it and the monument's main structure is the 270-meters-long causeway proper or "bronze thoroughfare", a three-meter-wide installation with events of China's history inscribed on bronze plates, starting 300,000 years ago, on a year-by-year basis (some left blank) starting in 3,000 BCE, and with longer notices and indications of Chinese zodiac animals starting in 1901. The choice of events mentioned has been described as framed in a teleological narrative that legitimizes China's socialist revolution.[11][5]^: 188

Century Bell in the monument's park

To its west, north and east, the monument is surrounded by a parking lot and beyond it, by a green space carved out from Yuyuantan Park, the Millennium Monument Park. The park features two rotundas on both sides of the monument. The eastern rotunda's pavilion features a monumental Chinese bell, branded the Century Bell, which celebrates China's progress during the 20th century that started with the humiliation of the 1901 Boxer Protocol and ended with the 1999 transfer of sovereignty over Macau back to the People's Republic of China.[9] The western rotunda's pavilion has been left empty.