In the hearts of Chinese, the meaning of the Forbidden City is very unusual, and the famous "Tiananmen" has even become a symbol of China and is world-famous. As the imperial city of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Forbidden City has too many secrets, and almost every building here has its own story.
Almost all Chinese know about the Forbidden City, but many people know nothing about it, and even make some common sense mistakes, the most likely to be mistaken is the statement that the minister "pushed out the noon gate and beheaded", a scene that has been influenced for generations by the spread of film and television dramas.
Where is the noon gate? We start from the more familiar Tiananmen, along the central axis, the first gate after Tiananmen is the Duanmen, which is the main gate of the Forbidden City of the Qing Dynasty, and then the second gate we pass is what we know as the "Noon gate", because its position is in the middle of the sun, the position is the meridian, which has the title of the noon gate. The Noon Gate is also the main gate of the Forbidden City, there is a 30,000-square-meter venue between the Duanmen Gate and the Noon Gate, and only by entering the Noon Gate can it be considered to have truly entered the Imperial City.
Noon Gate is actually a general term, in fact, it has a total of five door openings, the two door openings located on the far side are located on the inside of the Noon Gate (not through), on the outside it seems that there are only three door openings, so there is a saying about the Noon Gate " Dark Three Bright Four ", to see the complete five door openings can only be seen after entering the Noon Gate.
Why five doorways? This is very elaborate.
The middle door opening specifications are the highest: the emperor can enter and exit at will, and the empress can only enter once in her life, that is, when the big wedding; in addition, the top three of the imperial examination can enter and exit once; the rest of the personnel have no treatment of entering and leaving the middle gate.
The two openings closest to the middle door are also slightly different: the right door is dedicated to the royal family, and the left door is the passage of the Minister of Culture and Military Affairs, and in terms of identity, the right door is more honorable.
The two openings on the two sides are more functional: they are not open at normal times, and only when the emperor holds a grand ceremony, they are only available for hundreds of officials to enter and exit.
In addition to serving as a passageway, the most important function of the Noon Gate is to "establish the edict". Another function, "noon gate beheading", belongs to folk rumors, because the Forbidden City belongs to the royal forbidden land, ordinary people can not enter, its mysterious sense caused everyone to speculate, coupled with various court events were "distorted facts", noon gate was rumored to be a place of "execution of prisoners", film and television dramas let this "misunderstanding" affect the people of the country.
Of course, the Noon Gate also has a very bloody scene in history, especially in the Ming Dynasty. During the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Zhu Houzhao advised more than 130 ministers at noon because of the beauty pageant, of which 11 died on the spot; the second large-scale massacre occurred during the Jiajing period, and more than 100 ministers were also canonized and 17 people died.
The real place in history that was punished with "beheading" was the vegetable market, and noon gate only carried the "black cauldron"!