Inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, there is a special ornamental stone called "Cloud Making Stone". As for why he claims to be the first among the ornamental stones of the Forbidden City? Just for three important reasons. If you want to know, let Xiaobian reveal the secret for you:
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The Forbidden City, also known as the "Forbidden City", was the place where the kings of the Ming and Qing dynasties handled political affairs and lived, and its grandeur and huge architecture can be called a classic of ancient architecture on the mainland. At the same time, the Forbidden City is also an important treasure house of the mainland's cultural heritage, which displays the classic cultural relics of the Chinese nation over the past thousand years and is an artistic treasure house for people all over the world. It is worth mentioning that in the imperial garden of the Forbidden City, there are also many strange-shaped stones, although they have different shapes and come from different regions, they can be listed as "strange stones".
On the left and right sides of tianyimen road in the Forbidden City, there are two Zhuge Bai Dou Stones and Sea Cucumber Stones, both of which have natural stone markings, and one of the stones shows a little white scar, similar to the Seven Stars of the Big Dipper. The other stone is more like the bowing of Zhuge Liang, the name of the Shu state in the Three Kingdoms period, and the combination of the two is exactly the shape of Zhuge Liang's visit to the stars. Sea cucumber stone is more interesting, this stone is oval-shaped, and the outside of the body is full of protrusions, both in terms of color and form, it is very similar to sea cucumbers, hence the name.
But you may not know, in fact, the above three kinds of strange stones together, are not as valuable as another strange stone, which is a marble. In 1935, the 433rd and 434th issues of the "Old Palace Weekly" introduced that the "Marble Stone" was originally located in the northwest corner of the Huifeng Pavilion behind the Fuchen Hall. It is one foot nine inches high, seven inches and four minutes high at the left end, two feet one inch one minute wide, one foot six inches and five minutes high on the side, one foot seven inches wide on the top, one foot five inches in the middle, and one foot two inches and eight minutes wide on the bottom. The stone is lingbi, the color is dark brown, and the stone pattern is yellowed, and the sound of tapping is clearer and clearer. This means that the marble is a spiritual stone with a dark brown appearance, but there are many yellow halo stripes in it, and if it is gently tapped, it will make a pleasant metallic sound. It is only because the appearance of this stone is similar to that of white clouds that it is called "cloud making". Speaking of this, many readers may be curious, why is the marble so precious? In fact, there are three main reasons:
The first precious reason for the creation of marble is that it is the old ancestor (one of the earliest ones) that can be examined in the Forbidden City, and the only Yuan Dynasty stone with an exact inscription in the Forbidden City. The marble was originally in the Yushan Caotang of Gu Ying on the banks of the Jiexi Creek in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, but after experiencing the war at the end of the Yuan and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the Caotang was destroyed by the war, and then the cloud stone was lost, and no one knew why it appeared in the Forbidden City. However, it is certain that it is a cultural relic that entered the palace shortly after the construction of the Forbidden City, and its age is beyond the reach of other cultural relics.
The second precious reason for the marble is the special shape of the marble itself. The shape of the marble is like a beautiful white cloud, and its ethereal feeling is as if it can float to the sky. Often tourists who have watched this stone will have the illusion of riding the clouds and driving the fog, and even many people mistakenly recognize it as "artificial white clouds", and its appearance is absolutely amazing.
The third precious reason for the creation of marble is that many celebrities have carved handwriting on the stone. There are many inscriptions of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties on the marble (there are a total of eight inscriptions, four Yuanren and three Mingren). The word "zhaoyun" is written between the stones, and the money belongs to Lianfu, which is the handwriting of Yang Weizhen in the Yuan Dynasty. "Yushan Caotang Jing play" seal text six characters, arranged in the upper part of the side, is the Yuan Dynasty People's Zheng Yuanyou handwriting. In addition, Yuan Ziying, Li Tingbi, Fang Waiyou, Zhang Boyu, Qi Yuanpu and other talents have also written inscriptions on the stone body, which has greatly increased the value of the marble, almost becoming the most valuable treasure in the Forbidden City.
Regrettably, due to the long age, the inscription on the marble has been slightly blurred and needs to be protected. For such a valuable cultural relic, we need to focus on protection, after all, it is one of the important cultural heritages in the treasure house of mainland culture and deserves everyone's attention.
References: The Forbidden City, by Cao Jianwei, published by Beijing Publishing House
Wen xiucai, editor-in-chief of Wenlan Hairun Studio, written by: Special history writer: Changshan Zhao Zi worm