Tell the truest history in the simplest words.
Known as the "Forbidden City" in ancient times, the Forbidden City, located in the center of Beijing, was the imperial palace of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and now has a better name: "Palace Museum". The Forbidden City covers an area of 720,000 square meters, with a construction area of about 150,000 square meters. The temple is a brick and wood structure, a yellow glazed tile roof, and a green and white stone base decorated with golden and brilliant paintings, making it the largest and most complete ancient royal complex in the world. So, how many rooms does the Forbidden City have?
Forbidden city
Regarding how many houses there are in the Forbidden City, there is a saying in the society that there are 9999 and a half houses in the Forbidden City, half of which are the stairwells on the west side of the Wenyuan Pavilion behind the Wenhua Hall seen today. Why build such a house? It is said that the Heavenly Palace of the Jade Emperor has tens of thousands of houses, and although the Emperor is a son of heaven, he is not allowed to transgress the system of heaven and earth, so 9999 and a half rooms are built.
Of course, this story cannot be taken seriously, but it also reflects the desire of the Emperor as the Son of Heaven, although he could not keep pace with the Jade Emperor, but he wanted to do his best to build the largest palace in the world. Therefore, people prefer to believe that the Forbidden City built 9999 half houses for this reason.
There is another theory that the number of houses in the Forbidden City is influenced by ancient philosophical ideas such as "anode gives birth to yin, cathode to produce yang", "full of loss, humble benefit" and so on.
Because "10,000" is a whole number, and it is the "ten thousand" of the emperor's title "Long Live Grandpa", which represents the supremacy. In order to "keep the surplus full", the emperor took the initiative to deliberately reduce half of the room, so as not to exceed the ninth to reach ten thousand and bring disasters. Of course, these claims are somewhat far-fetched, and the question of how many houses there are in all the Forbidden City is still a question.
To solve this question, we must first understand the half of the house in the "legend". The western end of the Wenyuan attic behind the Wenhua Hall, unlike the general pavilions, the gap between the two pillars is not as large as the usual palace, where there is only a gap of about 5 feet, the so-called half room is for here, for the lack of scale of the shelf here.
In the ancient housing structure of our country, there are certain rules for the scale between palaces, lobbies and houses. Take the interstitial frame between the two pillars, the Northern Song Dynasty Li Admonition "Building the French Style" stipulates that the opening of large-style buildings can reach nine, and the special case can be used to 11, the depth is not more than 11, and the special case is 13; the small building opening can only be three or five, and the depth cannot be more than 7.
The Qing Dynasty's "Engineering Practice Rules" are in the same line as the "Construction French Style", and the Qing Dynasty also included the 27 housing specifications stipulated in the "Engineering Practice Rules" into the "Great Qing Huidian" and fixed them as state formulations. Wenyuan Pavilion naturally also has to follow the architectural regulations since the two Song Dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the shelves should be the same, the same as 1 Zhangxu, and the spacing of only 5 feet is obviously not in line with the norms, so in this sense people call it Half Room.
As for why half a room can be spaced like other rooms by 1 inch, I personally think it should be due to the overall space. Because whether it is the "Construction of the French Style" or the "Engineering Practice Rules", there are "special cases", that is to say, the existence of special circumstances is allowed, and it is obvious that the stairwell on the west side of Wenyuan Pavilion is the product of the "special case".
The question about half a room is clear at this point, so the next question is, is the house in the Forbidden City (except for the stairwell on the west side of Wenyuan Pavilion) as many as the legendary 9999 rooms?
In fact, this number is not particularly accurate. According to today's accurate statistics, the total number of halls, palaces, halls, buildings, halls, halls, pavilions, pavilions, and rooms in the existing buildings of the Forbidden City is 8707. Although there are 8707 rooms in existence, it cannot be proved that 9999 rooms are half "empty".
Because in 1922, a serious fire broke out in the harem Jianfu Palace, and the fire spread very quickly, instantly burning the palace pavilions in the west garden such as Jianfu Palace, Jingyixuan, Yanchun Pavilion, Jiyun Building, Guangsheng Building, Bilin Pavilion, Jicui Pavilion, And Xiangyun Pavilion into scorched earth.
From this "natural disaster", we can at least be sure that the number of houses in the Forbidden City at the end of the Qing Dynasty must be greater than the number of 8707.
In addition, there is also a legend that when Zhu Di built the Forbidden City, Zhu Di's purpose was originally to build 9999 and a half houses; however, Liu Bowen, who was responsible for supervising building materials throughout the country, walked around the country, saw the people's living hardships, and could not bear to let the "lives be destroyed", Liu Bowen revised the design drawings, secretly deleted hundreds of houses, and finally completed the number of houses in the Forbidden City was 8707.
After the Forbidden City was completed, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di asked Liu Bowen whether the Forbidden City was 9999 and a half rooms. Liu Bowen replied yes, Zhu Di believed it to be true, so he did not pursue too much and rewarded Liu Bowen heavily. Because it was impossible for the emperor to count such a large Forbidden City alone, it became a situation in which Liu Bowen, who supervised the construction, said that as much as he wanted.
I have to say that this legend is very interesting. The delicate reader must be able to see something different from this legend, because this legend was not originally used to record the number of palaces in the Forbidden City. So this legend cannot be taken seriously here.
Readers who know a little bit of history will naturally know that the construction of the palace is actually a dynamic process, not which emperor of any dynasty said to build it, it can be built in his lifetime, and the vast Forbidden City can naturally not be built overnight.
The number of houses in the Forbidden City is not the number when the construction began during the Yongle period, and under normal circumstances, the scale will become more and more grand with the change of time, so after Yongle and in some periods of the Qing Dynasty, there have been many expansions and renovations on the basis of the original, until there is no end. After all, to paraphrase the current sentence, society is constantly improving, and the pursuit of ordinary people is improving, not to mention the emperor?
In addition, the Forbidden City actually suffered many fires, large and small, from the Yongle years to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and many temples were destroyed by the fire, so the number of rooms must not be fixed. If a palace is burned down, and the contemporary ruler rebuilds 3 pavilions on the site of the burned palace, is this not impossible? How should this situation be calculated?
Therefore, whether the Forbidden City is 9999 and a half or 8707 rooms, it is not something that any one person can casually pinch, will there be a third choice?
Single choice| which claim do you support?
9999 rooms and a half
8707 rooms
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