Beijing possesses multiple ring roads. 1st Ring Road When the city of Beijing had tram lines in operation from the 1920s to the 1950s, Line No. 4's route formed a ring-shaped loop, running 17-km clockwise through Tiananmen - Xidan - Xisi - Ping'anli - Dianmen - Gulou - Jiaodaokou - Beixinqiao - Dongsi - Dongdan - Tiananmen. This route was known as the "Ring Road" (環形路). After the tramlines were removed in the 1950s, this name lost its meaning as it was simply a collection of surface streets (in contrast, each of the other ring roads today is a single expressway). Plans in 1954 and 1957 show a different "1st Ring Road", a slightly larger rectangular loop between Beixinqiao - Ciqikou - Caishikou - Xinjiekou. Most maps in Beijing do not actually show the 1st Ring Road as such; only very few maps give a faint yellow highlight of a possible variant of it. However, the original name remained to be used later for other ring roads constructed decades later. The notion of "1st Ring Road" briefly reappeared after the end of the Cultural Revolution, during which the original names of the roads described above were changed to names with strong political propaganda meaning that eulogized and advocated the ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, and when the political turmoil had ended, the names changed. One suggestion was to completely rename those roads as "1st Ring Road" to symbolize the new start in the era of reform, as well as to reflect the willingness of China to embrace modernness and globalization, but this suggestion was quickly turned down because most people favored the original names of the roads and believed in their historical meaning and cultural heritage, and more importantly, they felt that returning the original names also had more symbolic meaning of denouncing Cultural Revolution. Therefore, the original names of the roads were adopted once again, and the phrase "1st Ring Road" was seldom heard again. 2nd Ring Road Beijing's first (innermost) ring road, the 2nd Ring Road was built in the 1980s and expanded in the 1990s. It now forms a rectangular loop around central Beijing, an area that is roughly equivalent to the old city, which includes the four districts: Dongcheng District, Xicheng District, Xuanwu District and Chongwen District. Its four sections begin at Xizhimen, Dongzhimen, Caihuying and Zuo'anmen. The 2nd Ring Road passes through very central parts