In 2016, a documentary called "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" was reborn and broadcast on China Central Television. Once broadcast, the fire spread all over the country, as a tribute documentary for the 90th anniversary of the Forbidden City, after 5 years of research, 4 months of uninterrupted documentary shooting, a total of 3 episodes, let us people witness the restoration process of cultural relics a thousand years ago.
The workplace of these restoration masters is the Forbidden City! They would ride bicycles (transport cultural relics) in the Forbidden City, eat the fruit of the apricot trees in the Forbidden City, it may have been planted by the Ming Dynasty, the ceramics team members worked in the Cold Palace of that year, followed them, we saw the Forbidden City that we had never seen before.
This makes people sigh that what we usually see is the "fake Forbidden City" - a restored, golden and brilliant place. Today, let's take a look at the really unexplored "original" Forbidden City!
The Forbidden City, formerly known as the "Forbidden City", is located in the center of the central axis of Beijing, is the essence of ancient Chinese court architecture, as early as 1987, it was listed as a world cultural heritage, the pride of each of our Chinese.
The Forbidden City was built in the 4th year of Ming Yongle (1406), and today it has experienced 613 years of ups and downs, and in 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded, and large-scale renovations of the Forbidden City building began. From 2012 to 2018, the Forbidden City received a total of 100 million tourists, but friends who have been to the Forbidden City know that we can only see a small part of the Forbidden City, after all, it is a very difficult process to repair.
The first place I am talking about today is the "Hall of Nourishing Hearts." It was built in 1537, before and after the Qing Dynasty 8 emperors lived in the Yangxin Hall, it is about 63 meters long from north to south, about 80 meters wide from east to west, covering an area of 5,000 square meters. TV series often filmed the Yangxin Hall, that is all golden splendor, exceptionally luxurious, the real Yangxin Hall as shown in the picture, has been somewhat dilapidated, the Palace Museum is repairing it, hoping to restore the past brilliant as soon as possible.
The second place "Cining Palace", as in the TV series, Cining Palace is the place where the ancient empress dowager and the empress dowager lived, Cixi also lived here for a while, how extravagant and wasteful Empress Dowager Cixi was all her life, and everyone knows that the place where she lived is certainly not simple. However, as you can see from the pictures, it is indeed very shabby, but the exterior has been very beautifully repaired.
The third place is the "Cold Palace" that everyone is most curious about. The Cold Palace is the place where the monarch in the palace places the out-of-favor concubines and princes, yes, the prince will also be locked up, not the place where everyone usually thinks that only the out-of-favor concubines are placed.
However, according to historical records, there is no palace in the Forbidden City with a plaque of "Cold Palace", that is to say, the Cold Palace is not a fixed palace. Because of the word "cold", the cold palace is usually arranged in the darkest, wet and cold place, with the worst utensils, eating the worst food.
According to archaeologists' investigation of the living utensils in Wang Gongfei's coffin, it was found that the plates she used were all holes, and the specifications were not as good as those of the rich people. Princess Zhen, who was beaten into the cold palace by Cixi at that time, was even more pitiful, she lived in the westernmost house of the three northern houses, the door of the house was locked upside down from the outside, and only one window in the whole house could be used, and it was only opened after eating.
Everyone thinks about it, living in such a place, people absolutely have to go crazy, so when Zhenfei was released, she was already sick, and it was rumored that her scratches were everywhere in the room. The cold palace, which was originally dilapidated, is even more broken today.
Although these places are very shabby, after a hundred years of wind and rain, the Forbidden City is more real, too new but there is a sense of "distortion", what do you think of these unopened Forbidden City areas?
References: "I repair cultural relics in the Forbidden City", "World Cultural Heritage: Forbidden City"