As we all know, the Forbidden City in Beijing was a painter's palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, formerly known as Bauhinia City, and the palace began construction in the fourth year of Ming Chengzu Yongle (1406), with a length of 961 meters from north to south and a width of 753 meters from east to west. There are also 10-meter-high walls on all four sides, and there is a moat tens of meters wide outside the city. Covering an area of 720,000 square meters, it is almost to be described by the word "vast". The treasures in the Forbidden City are simply innumerable, but one hundred and twenty years ago, the palace suffered a disaster.
In 1900, the British Empire, the United States of America, the French Third Republic, the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the Great Japanese Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire launched a war of armed aggression against the Qing Empire, which is often heard of as the "Eight-Power Alliance" War.
The total number of this army was about 50,000 people, and the number of Qing troops was about 200,000. However, due to the influence of the Qing Dynasty, the armaments and weapons of the two sides were very different. The Eight-Power Alliance soon entered the city of Beijing, and on August 14, 1900, after the fall of Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi fled west with the Guangxu Emperor.
Before fleeing, Empress Dowager Cixi did not forget to bring gold and silver jewelry. However, there were too many treasures in the Forbidden City, and when Sun Dianying excavated the Cixi Mausoleum, he pulled five or six carriages of treasure from it. The treasures in the Forbidden City, I am afraid that there are not dozens of carriages that cannot be pulled. Moreover, time is also limited, where to find so many carriages, so what to do?
Cixi did not stop and threw countless treasures in the Forbidden City into the wells of the Forbidden City. This is not a rumor, in 1995, in a well in the west of the Forbidden City, a piece of exquisite Porcelain from the Ming Dynasty was inadvertently salvaged. People can't help but wonder, there are so many gold and silver jewelry in the well, why is no one salvaging it?
The first reason for this is that people in ancient times were very superstitious, and everyone now watches horror movies, and many ghost images that scare people's backs are climbed up from some ancient wells. Such stories are not on a whim, but have a certain historical basis in them. In addition to throwing gold and silver treasures into the well, Cixi also threw people into the well!
Those who are familiar with the history of the Qing Dynasty must know that Princess Zhenfei was thrown into a well by Cixi and drowned alive. Just because Princess Zhen was favored by the Guangxu Emperor and often fought against herself, Cixi killed the killer, even from a scientific point of view, there are no ghosts and gods in the world, presumably in everyone's impression that the well is already full of resentment.
Princess Zhen was still like this, and some palace ladies who had offended Cixi were thrown in, and no one would pay attention. Over time, almost all the wells in the Forbidden City were filled with supernatural and mysterious colors. For this one reason alone is enough to deter many people. Moreover, many of the wells are the same as the Dark River, and the treasures that were thrown down by Cixi do not know where they were washed away.
The treasures that were washed away were not enough to be salvaged at the technical level at that time. Even if it is put to the present, it is necessary to dig three feet into the ground, and experts naturally will not destroy the Forbidden City for treasures that do not necessarily exist. Even if there are really cultural relics in it, many of them are afraid of irreversible destruction under the erosion of the years and the decay of the dark river bacteria. So no one has gone to salvage it so far.