When watching Ming and Qing costume dramas, there will often be the plot of concubines being beaten into the cold palace, and many people will pay attention to the location of the cold palace when visiting the Forbidden City. There are more than forty palaces with plaques in the vast Forbidden City, and no palaces with "Cold Palace" plaques have been found. In fact, the Cold Palace is not a fixed place, it is just a general term for the place where the concubines who are imprisoned and out of favor are collectively used.
The Cold Palace sounds like a palace, but in reality, most of the Cold Palaces are just some broken houses distributed in remote corners of the Forbidden City, and even some are just aisles between the two palace walls. The area north of the Qianqing Gate is called the harem, which is the living place of the emperor and the concubines, the three main palaces, plus the six palaces of the east and the west, although there are many houses, but the many women used to distribute to the emperor are not too generous.
People who have visited the Forbidden City know that the main hall of each palace is for the empress or imperial concubines, noble concubines, this high-level identity to live, and the general concubines, concubines, nobles, promises, Chang Zai and other low-level identities can only live on both sides of the main hall, each person has a cabin, an area of about ten square meters. The concubines of normal status still lived so narrowly, and the cold palace where the concubines who had fallen out of favor lived was even more unbearable.
The harem is a place full of intrigues, and those who can survive in the harem are all human spirits, and if there is a fight, there is a loser, or they are framed by other concubines, or they offend the empress, or anger the emperor, and if they are not careful, they will be demoted. Even if he was abandoned by the emperor, he could no longer go out of the palace to marry, and could only die in the palace. These abandoned concubines were imprisoned in a remote and dark place, that is, beaten into the cold palace.
The reason why it is called the Cold Palace, one is because it is inaccessible, even the palace women are rarely involved, compared with the popularity of the Six Palaces of the East and West, it naturally appears cold; the second is that after losing the emperor's favor, the heart is sad; the third is that the winter in the capital is cold, the houses are dilapidated, the wind and rain leak, and there is no charcoal for heating in winter.
The architecture of the Forbidden City is a wooden structure that lasted for hundreds of years from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, during which the palaces were renovated every few years. The Forbidden City is said to have 9999 and a half houses, so many houses, even in the prosperous era of Kangqian, the Ministry of Internal Affairs could not take out so much silver for comprehensive repairs, and would only focus on repairing the palace where the empress concubines lived. As for the Cold Palace, it was originally a place to punish and torture the out-of-favor concubines, and of course it would not be repaired.
What places in the Forbidden City were once used as cold palaces? According to the Ming and Qing imperial archives, the most favorable cold palace was the Jingyang Palace in the northeast corner of the Eastern Sixth Palace, which was at least a regular palace, where the imperial concubine of the Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor and the birth mother of Ming Guangzong, Princess Gong, was once imprisoned here. Not only did the Wanli Emperor snub her, but the favored concubines also tried their best to persecute her, and even suffered bullying from slaves. Long-term confinement, washing his face with tears all day long, and finally crying blind eyes, ending with resentment.
Princess Zhen of the Guangxu Emperor
Part of the Area of Qianxi Wushou north of the West Sixth Palace was also used as a cold palace, during the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Yufei and Li Chengfei were imprisoned here, of which Zhang Yufei was starved to death, Li Chengfei learned the lessons of Zhang Yufei, hid food in the cracks in the wall beforehand, and was not starved to death, and later Emperor Mingxi demoted Li Chengfei to the Northern Five Houses to do coolies, and died of fatigue at the age of 19. The last concubine of the Qing Dynasty to be sent to the Cold Palace was the Guangxu Emperor's concubine Zhen, who, angering Empress Dowager Cixi, was placed under house arrest in beisansuo north of Jingqi Pavilion, where wood later decayed and collapsed.
The rooms of the cold palace will be locked with a large lock, the concubines will be restricted in their range of movement, the dark and damp will not see the sun all day long, people will inevitably get sick after living for a long time, the face wash water and the toilet bucket will be handed in and out of the small window every day, and the food they eat is the same as that of the palace women. If you want to take a bath, it is a luxury, according to the memories of the palace maids who later left the palace, when Zhenfei came out of the North Sansho, she had become confused, unkempt, and her head was full of lice.
Compared with the harsh living environment, the most unbearable thing for the concubines is the torment of loneliness, and no one speaks all day. People are social animals, losing the emotional sustenance, the heart will become depressed and desperate, many concubines will eventually go crazy, and die at a young age, so the cold palace is more resentful.
These former cold palaces are basically not open to tourists, there is a saying that the cold palace is deeply resentful, and the gloomy atmosphere is harmful to people's bodies, in fact, this is nonsense. The real reason is that these cold palaces have fallen into disrepair, Kimura has become a dangerous house, and there is little furnishing in the house, so the visit is not worth much. Another reason is that the Cold Palace is a remote place, in order to avoid interference, the office areas of cultural relics restoration experts and researchers in the Forbidden City are located near the Cold Palace.