The dragon is the most mysterious of all the creatures in the Chinese zodiac. As its only mythical animal, it leaps out from the rats and roosters as the most savage, regal and decidedly enigmatic character in the cycle. It's traditionally associated with passion, intellect, nobility and sometimes violence and tyranny, and the Year of the Dragon is historically notorious for bringing about significant, earth-shaking events. To know the future, you’ve got to look into the past, and as we prepare for what 2012 may bring, we dug into history to bring you a retrospective of Beijing’s last six Years of the Dragon.

1940: War and Resistance

The Second Sino-Japanese War, or The War of Resistance to Japanese Aggression, as it’s known in China, had brought phenomenal damage to the country, and despite decisive victories against the Japanese at Changsha and Guangxi in 1939, and the spectacular destruction of a Japanese airport by Chinese guerrillas, this Year of the Dragon saw Beijing economically strained and occupied by the Japanese. Although occupation was not as harsh in Beijing as in other places, there was still resentment and resistance. On November 11, 1940, on Dong Huang Cheng Hutong (near the south end of Nanluoguxiang, where Di’anmen Wai Dajie is today), just outside the American Evangelical Church, a Chinese assassin shot two Japanese military officers who were out riding their horses. One died, and the other was severely injured. The assassination attempt was well planned, and while the Japanese scoured the neighborhood that day, they could find nothing. Days later, they caught a man who claimed responsibility for the crime, but his statement contained many flaws, and the Japanese were unconvinced. It was months later when the Japanese finally caught the real assassin, Ma Kedi, who was at the time trying to break into a house to carry out another assassination. Ma and his partner, Qiu Guofeng, were executed on February 15, 1941. Also in 1940, parts of the old city wall at Jianguomen and Fuxingmen were knocked down, opening up space to create today's Chang’an Jie.

1952: New China, New Capital

1952 was a year of peace and prosperity for the brand new People’s Republic of China. Other countries were establishing formal diplomatic relations and China’s national income was estimated at US $15 billion, a record high and a particularly impressive feat given the country’s recent transition from capitalism to socialism.

The early years of the People’s Republic also brought great changes and development to Beijing, which was reinstated as China’s capital city on October 10, 1949. Throughout the beginning of the 1950s, many universities were founded and reorganized in the city, and 1952 saw the creation of Beijing Forestry University and Beijing Science and Technology University. This was also the year in which Peking University moved from a humble spot on Wusi Dajie to its current location, and the year in which it started accepting foreign students, with a group of 33 from a smattering of Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries.

1952 was also the year in which Finland, which established diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1950, opened an embassy in Beijing. That same year, construction started on the Monument to the People's Heroes. The 10-story obelisk, which still stands tall in the middle of Tian’anmen Square, was built to commemorate those who fought in the communist revolution.

Beijing’s longest-standing drama group, Beijing People’s Art Theater, was founded in 1952. The physical theater still stands in Wangfujing, and the troupe—better known as Renyi—has produced plays from Guo Moruo to Molière in the meantime, even traveling to the U.S. in 2005 to put on a version of Laoshe’s Teahouse at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

Also in Beijing in 1952, COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation) was founded. A state-owned enterprise, COFCO today makes Great Wall wine and has bought up entire vineyards in Bordeaux.

1964: Explosive Developments

The PRC celebrated its 15th anniversary with a mammoth parade of more than 700,000 people at Beijing’s Gate of Heavenly Peace. Chairman Mao himself viewed the time period as one of great anticipation, saying in a speech that year: “We will break away from conventions and make China a powerful, modern socialist country in not too long a historical period. Is this impossible? Is this boasting or bragging? Certainly not! It can be done!” This year also saw the first edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (aka “The Little Red Book”). The famous revolutionary tome went through numerous edits and additions throughout the year and was finally released to the public in 1965.

1964 is also an especially significant year in the history of the PRC, as it is when China detonated its first atomic bomb, on October 16, becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power. Relations with the Soviet Union had hit a rough patch in the early 1960s, and the bomb was an important assertion of China’s role as an independent world power. At the time, 83-year-old Beijing resident Wan Yichang was working on research for the guided-bombs program at the Fifth Research Academy of the Ministry of Defense, which helped develop the atomic bomb. In 1964, he remembers, “Our entire lives were located inside the dayuanzi, the residential compound that housed where we lived, worked, ate and slept. Back then the head of the academy was Qian Xuesen (the father of Chinese rocketry). Even though my wife and I were not specialists in the field, we were extremely proud to work under Qian Xuesen and on China’s military defense systems: atomic bombs, guided bombs and satellites.”

In a show of much softer power, Beijing hosted the Beijing International Table Tennis Tournament from October 18-21 in 1964. The competition was attended by eight Asian countries, but China unsurprisingly dominated, with the exception of Japanese Naoko Fukatsu, who won the women’s singles, and the Japanese mixed doubles team.

1976: Earthshaking, Literally

Each year of the Chinese zodiac is associated with not just an animal, but one of the five Chinese elements. 1976 bore the elemental sign of fire, which symbolizes creativity and enthusiasm, but fire can also lead to aggression and danger—we’re not sure if it was an overabundance of fire this Dragon was breathing, but 1976 brought disasters one after the other, and shook Beijing—literally and politically.

The Tangshan Earthquake on July 28 was the worst natural disaster of the 20th century, in terms of loss of life. The earthquake leveled Tangshan, and shook Beijing, 180 km away, where buildings were also destroyed. Beijing native Hong Wan was 14 years old at the time. “I was woken up by this huge noise like I was standing near a fast approaching train, and I remember my mother trying to push me under the desk. She said it was an earthquake, even though I had no idea what was happening. After we got outside, I saw that a huge crack had split our apartment buildings apart. We could see all the way through to the other side of the street. After the earthquake, we weren’t allowed back into our building for over a month. Everyone slept in a “shelter” built along Chang’an Jie. It was a long, tunnel-like structure with only a roof and no walls. In retrospect, it must have been extremely inconvenient, but at the time, it was really fun. There was no school and everyone got to sleep outside like a giant slumber party,” she remembers.

The Year of the Fire Dragon also saw the deaths of China’s most important and powerful revolutionary leaders. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, who had together laid down the cornerstone of the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tian’anmen in 1949, both passed away, in September and July, respectively. Premier Zhou Enlai had also died in January, a little over a month before the Year of the Dragon began.

Official responses to the earthquake plus these significant deaths led to protests in Beijing the eventual downfall of Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four, who had proclaimed that denouncing Deng Xiaoping was more important than the earthquake, which killed over 250,000 people. By the end of the year, Hua Guofeng, who had visited Tangshan in the aftermath, had taken over as Chairman of the Communist Party of China.

1988: Feeling Free

1988 was a year of incredible freedom in Beijing. Editor and columnist for Sanlian Life Weekly Wang Xiaofeng was in his third year of university at the time. “One of the first things I remember from that year was the naked art exhibition at the art museum (NAMOC). I went to the museum, just like every other week, and the lines to get into this exhibition were ridiculously long. I didn’t have the time to wait in line, so I skipped it. I thought it was kind of a senseless thing—why were people queuing to see body art? But the lines outside the exhibition, and the attitudes of those waiting in line, left a very deep impression on me. They were waiting with a sense of anticipation and joy.” Beijing was also awash in bookstores. Wang reminisces about the Shatan and Meishuguan area, where multitudes of little bookstores stocked works on Western academic ideas and other reactionary topics. “Every weekend, I’d ride my bike down there and leave with a backpack full of books. These stores all disappeared in the early 1990s, during one of Beijing’s city-beautification campaigns. The whole area west from Meishuguan Houjie to the intersection where the Sanlian bookstore is, is now gone.” The freedom of 1988 wasn’t only intellectual. The city also saw what was to be its very first beauty pageant since the revolution, although it was eventually cancelled, and the 50 finalists invited to attend a tea party rather than compete. Far more surprising is that famous American evangelist Billy Graham was allowed to give a sermon in Beijing in 1988. The Baptist preacher spoke to a congregation of over 1,000 Chinese Christians, and told them of his hope for a “great moral modernization program.”

2000: Millennium Boom

As billions of people breathed a sigh of relief when Y2K didn’t herald a digital apocalypse, China was ready to have some fun. Club Orange opened in Beijing, with a young Mickey Zhang as resident DJ. Chinese cinema was put on the map with the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the beginning of the 21st century saw a baby boom. “Everybody wanted their child to be born in the year 2000. China had three million more babies born than in previous years,” says Fu Dehua, a professor of history at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

In Beijing, the city was developing new avenues of leisure and entertainment. Hip-hop group Yin Ts’ang was founded, kicking off the development of that genre of music in Beijing, and Huaibei Ski Resort opened, giving locals a new way to have fun and spend rising incomes.

American journalist and co-owner of Susu Jonathan Ansfield was managing editor of City Weekend—originally called City Edition—in 2000. “The first wave of Chinese dot.coms was beginning to bubble, but it was a vastly different expat media world from today. There was far less to read, far less of a scene to cover, fewer readers and advertisers, and perhaps as a result, less to lose by taking chances on some serious subjects,” says Ansfield. The Year of the Dragon saw CW stories on Amway in China, the restoration of St. Joseph's Cathedral, and the murders in Nanjing of a German DaimlerChrysler executive and his family. “By the end of the year our staff had quadrupled or quintupled and we were launching a bilingual city-life portal headily dubbed 66 Cities,” he says. “But by the next year it had flamed out like so many other casualties of that initial boom.”