The Tale of the Forbidden City, by Zhang Cheng, October 2020 edition of Chinese Publishing House.
In July of the fourth year of Yongle (1406), a number of ministers, led by Shangshu Songli of the Ministry of Works, left the capital Nanjing and went to Sichuan, Huguang, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shanxi and other places. They were instructed to go to the local overseers to collect wood, burn bricks and tiles, and collect manpower and supplies in preparation for an upcoming national project. This project is to build a magnificent palace city in beijing, thousands of miles away from Nanjing!
This palace city embodies the dream of Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and pins on Zhu Di's grand plan and far-sighted thinking to govern the country. As a former king of the clan who seized the throne from his nephew and a new emperor who had just experienced the baptism of the bloody civil war, the nightmare of "not getting the right position" always haunted Zhu Di's heart.
This nightmare is not only spiritual and moral, but also manifests itself in real instability. Zhu Di hoped to escape the former capital of his nephew Emperor Jianwen and move the capital to beiping, the land of Longxing. As early as the first year of the seizure of the throne, Zhu Di ordered that Beiping City be renamed Beijing, revealing a clear signal to move the capital. Of course, his reason on the table is that the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty are entrenched in the Mongolian plateau, "the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country", and moving the capital to Beijing is conducive to opposing the Northern Yuan. He wanted to emulate his father, Zhu Yuanzhang, and establish an immortal deed, which would go down in history. Under the high-sounding reasons, Zhu Di forcefully suppressed the voices opposing the relocation of the capital, and continued to send various resources to the city of Beijing.
A great palace city worthy of Zhu Di's political blueprint is about to come out!
Such as the palace in the painting (Photo by Hao Lei). Illustration of the inner page of the Tale of the Forbidden City.
The collection of raw materials lasted for 10 years
When Shangshu Song Li of the Ministry of Works was ordered to cut down the fine timber of Jiamu, he did not expect that the collection of raw materials would last for 10 years. They go deep into the virgin forest in search of the best golden trees in the sun. This nan wood is tall and strong, the fragrance is timeless, and it is not afraid of insect erosion and is not easy to decay, which is an excellent material for the beams and columns of the palace. The biggest problem with Nanmu is that the growth cycle is as long as 300 years, and by the Yongle years, only the sparsely populated Nutao cliffs exist. The logging team led by Song Li "entered the mountain for a thousand and out of the mountain for five hundred", and nearly half of the builders did not see the moment when Miyagi began construction. These giant trees, which have experienced danger and harvested from the deep mountains in the southwest, with the help of the yangtze River, go down the river, "out of the valley overnight, to the river, the sound is like thunder." They will roar all the way, and in the astonished eyes of officials and people on both sides of the strait, they will reach the far north of Beijing.
At the back of the present-day Bohol Hall, the stone in the middle of the Royal Road is a whole piece of Mugwort bluestone, the stone is 17 meters long, more than 3 meters wide, 1.7 meters thick, and weighs more than 200 tons. This boulder was mined from the Big Stone Nest in Liangxiang, southwest of Beijing. Regardless of the difficulty of excavation, tens of thousands of laborers were requisitioned in the year of transportation alone. Even tens of thousands of people can not move such a boulder, can only choose in the cold winter waxing moon, first on both sides of the road every mile or so to dig a well, and then draw water from the well to build an ice road, and then pull forward and backward, it took 28 days to transport the stone to the construction site, and finally carved into a stone majesty. The floor tiles of the palace come from Suzhou, the hometown of fish and rice. The Suzhou area has good soil quality and exquisite firing, and the Suzhou craftsmen who were responsible for building the palace in the early Ming Dynasty recommended the products of their hometown. The Ministry of Works finally selected Yuyao Village, Lumu Town, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, for production. Yuyao Village has excellent soil quality, square firing, fine brick particles, "knocking sound, broken holes", Zhu Di gave this place as "Royal Kiln Village".
The floor tiles produced by the imperial kiln are named "golden bricks". Why are clay bricks named Golden Bricks? One theory is that the gold bricks are hard in quality, have a metallic texture, and emit a metallic sound when tapped, so they are named gold bricks; the other is that the production of gold bricks is strict, the production is exquisite, the process is complicated, and it takes a year and a half from taking soil to polishing the kiln, and it takes hundreds of days to light the kiln. The finished product from the kiln must be delicate, the edges and corners are intact, and if there is a flaw, it will be discarded. Each piece of gold brick transported to the construction site is extremely expensive, the price is the same as gold, so it is called gold bricks. In addition, Shandong Linqing produces bricks for construction.
Every building raw material, all slow and meticulous work, all strive for excellence, ten years of time unconsciously passed. "Pouring out the power of the world" is nothing more than this.
During this period, Zhu Di's grand blueprint gradually unfolded, the northern expedition to the grasslands, the west to the South China Sea, the establishment of rules and regulations, and the breaking of the road. In the fourteenth year of Yongle (1416), Zhu Dijun unified the idea of moving the capital, and officially selected "the northern pillow Juyong, the western zhitaihang, the east mountain and sea, the south overlooking the Central Plains, the fertile wilderness, the mountains and rivers are victorious, enough to control the four Yi, and dominate the world"—Beijing is the new capital of the Ming Dynasty (MingHui Want)." Everything is ready, only work is not started. In February of the following year, the construction of the new capital, with Marquis Chen Jue of Taining as the mainstay and Liu Sheng and Wang Tong as deputies, officially began.
The spiritual culture and material civilization accumulated by the ancient Chinese Empire for thousands of years will be condensed in the city of Beijing, and Zhu Di's lifelong grandeur and the learning and thinking of all participants will be poured into the miyagi castle that is about to rise from the ground. If the capital is the essence of the empire, then Miyagi is the most dazzling crystallization of it.
A great palace is the most important material carrier of a civilization; a great palace is the most prominent pearl of the development of a civilization.
The name of the Forbidden City,
There is no legal text and no public plaque
Under the command of Zhu Di and under the preparation of the early ten years, the Ming Empire rebuilt the city of Beijing with full horsepower. The Chinese capital form system was a "single-city system" during the Five Emperors period, which developed into the "two-city system" (Miyagi and Guocheng) in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and the "three-city system" (Miyagi, Imperial City, and Guocheng), the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, was first established, which continued until the capital design of the Zhu Di period. With the continuous development of society and the increasing prosperity of the city, the city of Beijing developed into the political, economic, cultural and transportation center of the country, and it was the center of civilization at that time. On the basis of the Yuan capital, the Ming Dynasty defined the three cities of Beijing, the outermost of which was the "Guo City" composed of the inner and outer cities, and the moat surrounded the tall city wall. Its scope is now within the second ring road of Beijing. The former Sanmen Street divides the inner and outer cities, and the south side of the street is the outer city, also known as the "south city" of Beijing; to the north of the street is the inner city. There are three gates on the south wall of the inner city, two gates in the east, west and north, a total of nine gates, and the imperial city is in the south of the inner city.
Within the Imperial City, there were the Imperial Court Office and all the institutions related to the Imperial Family. The Imperial City stretches from Chang'an Avenue in the south to Di'anmen Avenue (then known as the Northern Imperial City Root) in the north, to the East Imperial City Root in the east, and to the West Imperial City Root in the west. The four main streets were originally enclosed into a regular north-south vertical rectangle, and since the Yuan Dynasty Great Ci'en Temple was built in the southwest, the Imperial City recessed into a small rectangle in the southwest corner, which is now the southwest area of Fuyou Street and Lingjing Hutong. Folk refer to the "Imperial City Root" as Beijing City.
Forbidden City (Photo by Zhang Zehua). Illustration of the inner page of the Tale of the Forbidden City.
The Imperial City opened four gates, the main gate is the Chengtian Gate (Tiananmen) at the southern end, the north gate is called Di'an Gate, and the east and west gates are Dong'an Gate and Xi'an Gate. The Imperial City has four city gates, the inner city has nine city gates, and the folk also use the "Four Nine Cities" as Beijing City. Chen Jue and others vacated the buildings in the imperial city, relocated the residents, began to lay various streets, built various offices, and built a large number of civil engineering in the core of the south-central region to build Miyagi. The emperor is the son of heaven, and he is carried by fengtian and acts as a herdsman for heaven. From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Sheng Tang Dynasty, the palaces where the emperors of the world lived imitated the ZiweiYuan where God lived, and called the palace "Purple Palace"; the emperor's residence was a forbidden area, and officials and people were not allowed to enter without reason, also known as the "Forbidden City". The planned Miyagi Castle was named the Forbidden City.
The name of the Forbidden City has no legal text or public plaque, but under the blessing of imperial power and the circulation of folklore, it is deeply rooted in the hearts of Chinese. Most of the areas selected by the Forbidden City coincide with the Imperial Palace of the Yuan Dynasty. After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Di, the King of Pingyan in northern Ping, built the Yan Palace on the basis of the Yuan Imperial Palace. The Yan Palace has inherited many Yuan Palace buildings and slightly renovated them. Today's planned Forbidden City can certainly not be as ugly as the royal palace of the clan. The first thing Chen Jue and others needed to do was to completely suppress the "wang qi" of the Yuan Dynasty.
The People completely destroyed the Yan King's Mansion, and the old buildings of the Yuan Dynasty disappeared with smoke. The rising Forbidden City will cover the imperial palace of the Yuan Dynasty as a whole. Dynastic changes, in a slightly exaggerated and primitive way, are presented here. After destroying the ground building, the foundation of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace was then planed off, the foundation was remade to ram the foundation, and then manually backfilled. This method of reworking the foundation as a whole is commonly known as "full of red", and the new foundation is called "a piece of jade". The old foundations of the Yuan Dynasty were dug up as a whole, and the migrant workers backfilled with layers of 37 gray soil and broken bricks, alternating repeatedly. The so-called "three seven gray soil" is made of quicklime and clay in a ratio of 3:7. Why not backfill all the dirt? Broken bricks and mortar are compacted layer by layer, which can reduce the potential for settlement of future buildings. In addition, the new foundation does not care about the cost, and the boiled glutinous rice juice and alum are sprinkled on the matching sanchi ash soil. The viscous glutinous rice is mixed into the gray soil, which enhances the integrity and flexibility of the foundation, making the new foundation a hard whole, completely avoiding uneven settlement of future buildings.
Looking north from shenwu gate to banzai mountain (photo by Guo Huajuan). Illustration of the inner page of the Tale of the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is built on a large, intact artificial foundation. Measured, the new foundation is 3-3.5 meters at its shallowest point and 8-8.5 meters at its deepest point. The foundations in the lower parts of the core building are thicker, and the other lots are relatively thin. This kind of layered and compact foundation is difficult for people to flatten with a pickaxe. The "royal spirit" of Genghis Khan's descendants was sealed under this thick layer of hard soil. Around the foundation, people dug a square moat and named it "Tube River". The old foundation of the Yuan Imperial Palace and the newly excavated moat soil, the amount of earthwork is quite large, coupled with construction waste, people in the middle of the North Moat River built a ridge in the middle of the north of the mountain ridge east-west hill, named "Banzai Mountain" (Coal Mountain, Jingshan). Banzai Mountain is narrow from north to south, like a screen that protects the Forbidden City to the south. The peak of Banzai Mountain, facing the central line of the Imperial Palace, is both the geometric center of Beijing's inner city and the commanding height of the whole city. There is a Wanchun Pavilion built here, and standing on the platform of wanchun pavilion can overlook the imperial palace, which is extremely eye-catching to the nine cities. Banzai Mountain is not a simple rockery, but an ingenious design that achieves multiple purposes, not only dealing with construction earthwork and waste, but also adding a tight curse to the king qi of the previous dynasty, and optimizing the feng shui of the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City was built on the yang land in the south of Banzai Mountain and surrounded by the Guanzi River, which is a good homestead with the mountains facing the water and the negative yin and the sun. In addition, the Forbidden City opened a stone cave from the northwest corner, and the River of Tubes was introduced into the Ming River. According to the old saying, this river flows from the dry side of the northwest Bagua and flows out from the southeast Xunfang and returns to the Tube River. The five elements are located in the west for gold, the north is water, and because they live in Miyagi Castle, they are named "Neijinshui River". The Neijinshui River is like a white streamer on the Body of the Forbidden City, meandering and meandering, flowing and agile, further optimizing the feng shui of the Forbidden City.
Nowadays, when tourists visit Wanchun Pavilion, almost no one notices that at the bottom of this artificial rockery is the Yanchun Pavilion of the Yuan Dynasty Emperor's residence. The Ming emperor used a waste hill to press squarely on the bed of the former emperor to ambush the enemy. Banzai Mountain is also known as "Zhenshan Mountain". So, in addition to Yanchun Pavilion, where is the former site of the Yuan Dynasty Palace? In the underground of the garden of the present-day Cining Palace, archaeologists have found part of the ruins of the Yuan Dynasty Imperial Palace; in 1964, the Archaeological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences explored the Wenhua Hall and the Wuying Hall in the Forbidden City, proving that the east-west parallel line between the Wenhua Hall and the Wuying Hall should be the Jinshui River of the Yuan Palace. The Forbidden City is nearly 400 meters smaller than the Yuan Palace in the north and nearly 500 meters in the south, and the location of the east and west palace walls is basically the same, and the overall area has increased slightly. The Chongtian Gate, the southern gate of the Yuan Imperial Palace, is roughly located in the Taihe Hall of the Forbidden City, and the North Gate is on the south side of the Children's Palace in Jingshan Park.
Words are difficult to describe the toil of the builders, and posterity can hardly imagine the amount of work. The direct construction of the Forbidden City was 200,000 to 300,000 requisitioned migrant workers and officers and soldiers of the health center, and if the surrounding participants are counted, the total number of the Forbidden City construction team should exceed one million. Shi Zai "served in officials with millions of people all their lives." After the original building materials arrived in the capital, five secondary processing factories were built inside and outside the imperial city, and off-site processing was used to reduce the pressure on the Forbidden City. The five major factories are shenmu factory, large wood factory, taiji factory, ink kiln factory and liuli factory, which continue to deliver semi-finished products to the Forbidden City. Their figures still remain in the city of Beijing.
"Xiangshan Gang" Suzhou craftsmen,
It was the main force in the repair of the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties
Who was the designer of the Forbidden City? This is one of the many problems surrounding the Forbidden City. Song Li, Chen Jue, and others were imperial court officials who were ordered to direct the construction of the Forbidden City, not designers, let alone front-line builders. It has been mentioned that the Forbidden City was designed by the eunuch Nguyen An. Nguyen An was from Jiaotong (present-day Vietnam) and was chosen as a castrated boy in the early years of Vinh Le. He was intelligent and capable, had studied the traditional Chinese construction of the French style, had ingenuity, and was ordered to design the city, the palace and the Baisifu Temple when he built the city of Beijing. Shi Zai, Nguyen An "aimed at the camp, the regulation of the Central Committee, and the Ministry of Works only practiced", and the story of his design of the corner tower of the Forbidden City inspired by the cage is a common version of many stories of the construction of the Forbidden City. Ruan An contributed a lot to the design of the Forbidden City, but the macro layout of the Forbidden City was not designed by him alone, and it was also deeply influenced by Zhu Di's personal will and the Etiquette System of Chinese imperial power. Nguyen An's design of specific palaces also draws on the nutrients of the traditional French construction. Nguyen An's contribution is focused on the micro level.
Moat (Tube River) (Photo by Zhang Bijun). Illustration of the inner page of the Tale of the Forbidden City.
Others say that the Suzhou Ku family is the designer of the Forbidden City. At the beginning of the construction of Beijing City, Suzhou architect Ku Siming took his son Ku Fu and grandson Qu Xiang to leave his hometown of Wu County to beijing and became the original builders of the Forbidden City. At that time, Ku Siming was already a well-known royal architect, who participated in the construction of the Nanjing Imperial Palace during the Hongwu Period and became a royal architect admired by Zhu Di. His son Kufu served as the "head of carpentry" in the Forbidden City, similar to the leader of the construction craftsmen. Ku Fu's hometown - Wuxian Xiangshan on the shore of Taihu Lake is a skilled craftsman with exquisite and meticulous skills, and since ancient times, there is a saying that "Jiangnan carpenters are all from Xiangshan". Kufu organized a large army of buildings mainly composed of fellow villagers, and built the West Palace in Beijing, the Noon Gate, the Fengtian Gate, the Renshou Palace, the Wanchun Palace, the Changchun Palace, the Jingfu Palace, the Fengtian Temple, and so on. This batch of "Xiangshan Gang" Suzhou craftsmen were the main force in repairing the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
After KuFu returned to his hometown in his old age, Ku Xiangzi inherited his father's business and became the head of carpentry. He was born in the last year of Hongwu and died in the twelfth year of Chenghua, and was in Beijing for more than 40 years. After the Forbidden City was built, it was soon hit by many serious fires, and three main halls and harems were destroyed. Ku Xiang was ordered to rebuild these important buildings, became the presiding officer of the restoration project during the Orthodox and Chenghua years, and also built the tombs of the early Ming Emperors such as Changling, Xianling, and Yuling. He is proficient in scale calculation, the real scene after the completion of the project is no different from the design before the construction, and the tenon skeleton is slightly interlocked, which is known as "Kuluban". Ku Xiang also rendered the art of Jiangnan to the royal palace in Beijing, and the palatial halls and pavilions added a lot of gentleness and delicacy.
Traditional Chinese architectural culture has a long history, rich skills and profound accumulation. The Forbidden City Project provided a stage for craftsmen, migrant workers, and soldiers to practice. For example, according to the angle of the winter and summer shadows in Beijing, the craftsmen scientifically calculated that "the height of the column is one foot high, and the eaves are three feet", that is, the eaves of the palace are 1/3 of the height of the column, which can best achieve the ideal effect of shading the eaves before and after the summer solstice and the indoor sunshine before and after the winter solstice. In addition, the thick and wide herringbone roof, the tightly seamed masonry walls, and the 30 cm thick mud back layer laid by the craftsmen on the base layer of the roof planks make the forbidden city houses warm in winter and cool in summer. These are the embodiments of Chinese architectural wisdom in the Forbidden City.
Three generations of Ancestors and Grandchildren of Ku Xiang have devoted almost their entire lives to the Forbidden City, creating the legend of the "Xiangshan Gang". The Ku family is the representative of countless skilled craftsmen, who are grassroots and front-line builders who have devoted their efforts to writing the forbidden city architecture into the history of Chinese architecture. However, they are also not the designers of the Forbidden City. China's thousands of years of accumulated ideology and concepts, the exuberant imperial system, is the planner of the Forbidden City. Those nameless craftsmen who inherit Chinese skills and pay silently are the true creators of the Forbidden City. In November of the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), the walls of the Forbidden City, the Zuozu Right Society, and the main building were completed, marking the official entry of the Forbidden City onto the historical stage.
The "Great Ming Huidian" records that the plan of the Forbidden City is rectangular from north to south, with 236.2 zhang (753 meters) in the east and west, and 302.95 zhang (961 meters) in the north and south, covering an area of 720,000 square meters, an area of about 1/50 of the inner city; there are hundreds of existing courtyards, more than 980 buildings (of which more than 90 still maintain the pattern of the early Ming Dynasty), 8,707 houses, and a construction area of 163,000 square meters.
The Forbidden City in the broad sense, in addition to the city surrounded by the Tube River, also includes banzai Mountain in the north, Taimiao Temple in the southeast, Sheji Altar in the southwest, and also includes Xiyuan and Dongyuan, which are closely related to the function and history of the Forbidden City. Xiyuan is located in the west of the Forbidden City, including the Beihai, Zhonghai, Nanhai and its surrounding gardens, which was expanded on the basis of the Yuan Dynasty's Great Inner Tailiu Pond and Qionghua Island in the early years of the Ming Dynasty. Sanhai follows the ancient name of the Royal Pool, collectively known as the Tailiu Pool. There is a wanshou palace complex on the west side of the middle sea, and after the assassination of the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he often lived in the Wanshou Palace in his later years. The Guangxu Emperor of the late Qing Dynasty lived in seclusion in Yingtai on Zhongnanhai for a long time. The Manju shrine is also known as "Sineuchi".
Dongyuan is located in the southeast of the Imperial City, east of the Taimiao Temple, and during the Yongle period, it was the venue for the royal "watching the batting and shooting willows", and Emperor Xuanzong built the Zhaiju Annex here. Dongyuan is also known as "Little South City" and "South Inner". After the change of Tumu Fort, Emperor Mingying was first captured by the Mongols, released and returned to China and placed under house arrest in Dongyuan. After the successful restoration of Emperor Ming Yingzong, a large number of construction projects were built here, forming the central, eastern and western three-way palaces and many pavilions. Nannei is planted with exotic flowers and trees in the four directions, and the open space is planted with melons and vegetables, and water is poured into the urn, like a cottage. When the spring flowers bloom, the cabinet confucians and eunuchs are invited to accompany them. At the time of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Nannei became the residence of the regent Dorgon. After Dorgon's death, he was liquidated, and the palace was changed to Pudu Monastery for the reception of monks and lamas. In the southwestern part of the south, there is the Imperial Palace, a large stone chamber dedicated to the storage of royal archives, which is a precious specimen of the existing beamless hall building.
In the winter of 1420, the belated Forbidden City was finally unveiled. She will become the jewel in the crown of the Chinese Empire in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and a treasure that shines in the world for 600 years.
This article is selected from the "Biography of the Forbidden City", the subtitle is added by the editor, not the original text, and the illustrations used in the text are from this book. It has been authorized by the publishing house to publish.
The original author 丨 Zhang Cheng
Excerpt 丨An also
Edited by 丨 青青子
Introduction Proofreading 丨 Liu Jun