In the Forbidden City, there is a strange thing called "Menhai", it is not a scenic spot, but a tank, why is it called Menhai? It is this "door sea" that can have 3 tons of water, and there are 308 "door seas" in the Forbidden City, each of which stores 3 tons of water, so what is the Forbidden City used to store so much water?
Although the Forbidden City has always been an imperial power in history, it is still inevitable to have all kinds of fires, but in that era when there were no firefighters, people had to prepare the water in advance, and with the water in the door sea to save the emergency, it was really protected from many fires.
Of course, as the card face of the Forbidden City, there is one detail that will certainly not be overlooked, that is, the shape of the Door Sea, on the whole, the Door Sea is divided into three categories, namely: black iron, bronze, gilded.
It goes without saying that the most valuable of them is gilding, it is worth saying that gilding is not a metal, strictly speaking, it is a combination of gold and mercury, and then applied to the metal is a gold plating method, which is a very common process in the metal industry.
However, during the Qianlong period, the Qianlong Emperor gave the task of gilding the Door Sea to Hezhen, when the Qianlong Emperor planned to make the Menhai into pure gold, and the result was that he was not honest, and directly used the gilding method to paint the bronze door sea into the color of gilding, and then the Qianlong Emperor did not see it, and the remaining kickbacks were all in Hezhen's pocket.
In 1799, after the death of the Qianlong Emperor, the Jiaqing Emperor succeeded to the throne, and the crimes of Hezhen were finally counted over and over again, and finally Hezhen was given death, at that time, it was said that Hezhen was sentenced to Lingchi, but considering that Hezhen's seniority was enough to be considered a senior, he did not choose this punishment in the end.
After that, the so-called Menhai slowly became a fire-fighting prop in the Forbidden City, until after the eight-nation invasion in 1900, they suddenly looked at the golden glittering Menhai and looked at these "pure gold cylinders", and finally the soldiers decided to smash the Menhai so that it could be easily transported.
After receiving unanimous confirmation, The Menhai was blown to pieces, and as a result, the brown bronze ware of the Menhai was revealed.
The soldiers immediately cursed and grinned at the sight, and in a fit of anger, they had to scrape off the gilded gold little by little.
Until now, many intact gilded gate seas still have obvious scratches, which have become a very obvious feature of the gilded gate sea, which seems to make visitors feel: this is the evidence of the invasion of the Eight-Power Alliance.
Nowadays, the door sea is not limited to a kind of material, but as long as the cylinder with a relatively large volume can be called the door sea, which is simply the large cylinder at the door, which can accommodate the sea.
Different from the ordinary cylinder, Menhai is relatively exquisite in terms of shape, not just as a water-holding appliance, so the masters who designed Menhai are using their brains to play the shape of Menhai to the extreme, so that Menhai has the qualifications to be placed in the Forbidden City.
Whenever you see these doors and seas, each one is a representative of the painstaking efforts of the craftsmen, it is their ability to turn decay into a magical ability, the cylinder of the ordinary, into a piece of art, it can be seen that many times as long as a little bit of brain hole, ordinary design will become extraordinary, more importantly, they also have a strong Chinese style, which is enough to make them love everyone.