On the eastern pathway leading down the Prospect Hill there once stood a diminutive scholar tree, which was surrounded by a red brick wall.
It was here that the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty hung himself on the morning of March 19, 1644. Two days earlier, Li Zicheng had led a peasant army into Beijing and accepted the surrender of Ming troops outside the city. On March 18, the troops guarding Fuchengmen and Xibianmen opened the gates and allowed the insurgents to enter the city. Before dawn on March 19, Chongzhen (reigned 1628-1644) ran out of the palace without his crown, his hair loose and unkempt. He wore a long white gown embroidered with a dragon and a single soft-soled shoe (history failed to record what happened to the other one) borrowed from Wang Cheng' en, a court eunuch. His hands stained with the blood of Concubine Yuan and two princesses, he reached the top of the hill and said, "I have always treated my subordinates well, yet today, finding myself in this wretched state, why is it that not a single one of them is here with me to sacrifice his life? Perhaps because they don' t know that I am here, which would explain why they are not hurrying after me." He walked down the hill and hung himself with his belt on an old scholar tree. There used to be a stone stela with this inscription: "The place where Emperor Sizong (his posthumous title) died for his country." In the 1950s, this stela was replaced by a wooden plague reading, "The place where Emperor Chongzhen hung himself."
