The book's accounts include "court in the front, market in the back", corresponding to the Forbidden City and the markets at the Bell and Drum Towers area, as well as "an ancestral temple on the left, an altar of land and grain on the right", denoting the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the Altar of Land and Grain, located symmetrically on the east and west sides of the Central Axis.

Construction of the Beijing Central Axis began in the 13th century and took shape in the 16th century. It has undergone constant refinement over the past seven centuries and continues to influence Beijing's urban development to this day.