Red walls, high eaves, glazed tiles. The Forbidden City, which has stood for hundreds of years, is still graceful and luxurious, although it is now open as a national museum. But it remains the most mysterious building in Chinese history. Founded in 1406, it was the residence of 24 generations of emperors in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and was the center of political power in ancient China.
It has witnessed the struggle in the harem of the dynasty, and also witnessed the change of dynasties in the past 24 generations. Countless clouds have been staged in the Forbidden City. Covering an area of 720,000 square meters, the Forbidden City is a brick and tile and a glass, a flower, a tree and a garden. All of them can make people study for a lifetime and indulge in it.
As far as the architectural achievements of the Forbidden City are concerned, they have already reached the pinnacle, not to mention that each of his buildings has its own secrets. In 1972, archaeologists counted the rooms in the Forbidden City, with a total of 8,707 rooms. But the most worth exploring is the "golden bricks" on the floor in these more than 8,000 rooms.
This "golden brick" is not another gold brick, originally called "Beijing brick". Because it is a fine material square brick that is only fired in the imperial palace, it is fired locally and stored in the "Jingcang" transported to the capital, so it is called "Beijing brick". Then the reason for the so-called "golden brick" is from the perspective of its firing process.
The firing process of this brick is recorded in the "Illustration of Brick Making". First of all, the soil furniture is the delicate soil from Lumu Town, on the shore of Suzhou Taihu Lake, which is made in the local "Royal Kiln Village" Lumu Brick Kiln in Suzhou. The production of a brick takes about 720 days to complete.
And the success rate of this brick is also extremely low, because the quality it wants is very high. It must be dense and solid, and there is no hole in the break. And when tapping, you must be able to make the sound of gold and stone. If a batch of masonry leaves the kiln, 6 of the sampling inspections do not meet such requirements, and the batch of gold bricks will be directly declared scrapped.
And this requires a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, so at that time, the folk were known as "one or two gold and one brick", and then gradually became "golden bricks". It is precisely for this reason that on each gold brick must be "the name of the worker", which means that the name of the corresponding person in charge must be engraved on each turn. It must be the individual who is held accountable.
That's why experts were so worried after the aftermath of the Tangshan earthquake on July 28, 1976, which shattered several floor tiles of the Taihe Hall in the Forbidden City. They hurriedly summoned craftsmen to the Taihe Hall to repair the floor tiles, but what they did not expect was that they had discovered a secret that had never been discovered before.
When the craftsmen unveiled the bricks and intended to take them out for restoration. It was found that the bottom of the brick was still a brick, which was something that had never been expected. They continued to uncover the bricks, and the floor tiles were still underneath, uncovering layer by layer. It took fifteen full unveilings before I saw the land.
This means that the main hall of the Forbidden City has as many as fifteen floors of floor tiles. As we know earlier, the floor tiles of the Forbidden City are expensive and require a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. This estimates that fifteen floor tiles, the entire Forbidden City needs about 80 million floor tiles, why spend so much to build so much?
In fact, after experts consulted a large number of literature and classics, they found the specific reason, and they could not help but sigh that "Zhu Di's heart is really fierce." Because it was Zhu Di, the builder of the Forbidden City, who ordered the construction of fifteen floor tiles for the safety of the palace and to prevent people from entering the palace by digging tunnels.
And the advantage of this can also prevent the unevenness of the ground, and in the summer when the rain is heavy, the palace collapse can be prevented due to the instability of the foundation. But the main thing is still to prevent the purpose of the assassins, and Zhu Di also made the poison all the poisons after the craftsmen laid the bricks; to prevent them from telling this secret, it is no wonder that they always say "the most ruthless imperial family".