Tiananmen, a symbol of the People's Republic of China, is located in the center of Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, at the southern end of the Forbidden City, and is a place that countless Chinese yearn for.
What is less known is that this hundred-year-old Tiananmen Tower actually hides many amazing secrets, and today we will take a look at the story that belongs to Tiananmen!
First, the basic composition of the Tiananmen Tower
Tiananmen Square is composed of a city platform and a city tower, the Meru seat of Han white jade, 60 vermilion columns on the city tower, and the ground is paved with gold bricks, which is as flat as a stone;
The tall and colorful wall platform, with two floors of heavy eaves and yellow glazed tiles, is divided into nine rooms in the east and west, and five rooms in the north and south, symbolizing the "Ninth Five-Year Dignity" of imperial power.
There are 36 vermilion rhombus doors on the north and south sides, and the ceiling, door arches, and beams are carved with traditional golden dragon paintings and auspicious patterns;
Inside the hall, there is a 450-kilogram octagonal palace lamp and 16 hexagonal palace lamps weighing 350 kilograms each.
The carved floor-to-ceiling windows on the upper floor of Tiananmen Square are exquisitely carved, and the golden dots outlined on the vermilion tone are extremely atmospheric and noble.
2. Who designed and built Tiananmen?
Tiananmen was originally the main gate of the imperial cities of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and was built in the eighteenth year of Ming Yongle (1420 AD) as a three-story wooden archway called Chengtianmen.
In the eighth year of Qing Shunzhi (1651), it was rebuilt into today's style and renamed Tiananmen.
The designer of the Tiananmen Tower was kuǎi Xiang, a great architect of the early Ming Dynasty.
Born into a family of craftsmen, he was proficient in the design and drawing of architectural structures, and his creation in architecture could reach the level of pure fire.
He is proficient in scale calculation, each project has been accurately calculated before construction, after completion, the location, distance, size and size, and the design drawings are no different, its geometric principles are quite good, and the tenon riveting technique is unique in architectural art.
Traditional Chinese architect Ku Xiang
In the fifteenth year of Ming Yongle (1417), when Ming Chengzu moved north from Jinling, he recruited craftsmen from all over the country to go to Beijing to continue the construction of large quantities.
As a member of Ming Chengzu's entourage, Ku Xiang went north first to participate in the architectural design of the imperial palace.
Due to the high level of design of Ku Xiang, he was appointed as the designer of the major project of the imperial palace.
His first task was to design the main gate of the court, the Chengtian Gate.
The project was completed in the nineteenth year of Yongle (1421) under the planning of Ku Xiang, and its castle tower was roughly similar in shape to today, but on a small scale, which was the earliest prototype of Tiananmen.
After the completion of the city gate, he was praised by the hundred officials of the Civil and Military Forces, and the Yongle Emperor Zhu Dilong Yan Dayue called him "Kuluban".
In 1644, Li Zicheng, the leader of the peasant revolt at the end of the Ming Dynasty, attacked the capital and destroyed the Chengtian Gate.
Seven years later, Shunzhi ordered the reconstruction and renamed it "Tiananmen", after which 33.7 meters, 9 rooms wide and 5 deep Tiananmen Began to take shape.
On March 8, 1966, the Xingtai earthquake caused damage and deformation of the Tiananmen Tower, and the plan to rebuild Tiananmen square with the approval of Chairman Mao was put on the agenda.
After the reconstruction, Tiananmen Square has a 9-level earthquake-resistant fortification, and even after experiencing a serious Tangshan earthquake, it has remained unchanged.
Old photos of Tiananmen Square
Iii. The little beast on the roof of Tiananmen,
What's the big deal?
The main hall of Tiananmen City Tower is a heavy eaves mountain-style roof, there is a positive ridge, and at both ends of the positive ridge there is a pair of gorgeous dragon-shaped glass ornaments, called dragon kisses, and there are 8 vertical ridges, and there is a dragon kiss at the top of the vertical ridge, so there is a saying of "nine ridges sealing ten dragons".
Dragon's kiss, also known as "partridge's kiss", the shape of the owl's tail is moon-shaped, a bit like the tail of a fish, and a bit like a bird, people decorated it on the roof at that time, and its role has the meaning of "avoiding fire" to calm disasters.
In addition, there are ten lifelike immortals on each of the 8 vertical ridges of the eaves, the first of which is the "Riding Chicken Immortal", followed by dragons, phoenixes, lions, pegasus, seahorses, foxes, fish, badger dogs, and bullfighting.
Some of them are gods and symbols of supreme power; some are auspicious beasts that symbolize beauty, symbols of auspiciousness and majesty;
Some are mythical and storied beasts in the sea, which can make clouds and rain, so they are placed on the eaves and become "experts" in fire fighting and disaster prevention.
These small beasts on Tiananmen Square are not only a decoration, but also represent the consciousness symbols and feng shui that Chinese integrated into the architecture, which is enough to see the profundity of Chinese architecture!
4. When did the Tiananmen Tower open?
The Tiananmen Tower was only opened to the public on January 1, 1988, and it should be known that the Tiananmen Tower has always been a forbidden area for "tourists to stop".
Old photos of Tiananmen Square
In 1988, on the first day of the New Year, the Tiananmen Tower was opened to the public with a ticket price of 10 yuan, and Gao Xiwu, a retired mall worker, was fortunate to become the first domestic tourist to climb the Tiananmen Tower.
The Carters, American tourists, became the first pair of foreign tourists to board the city tower that day. As a memorial, the staff of the Tiananmen Tower also gave them a big red certificate and a cloisonné vase.
V. Who wrote the Tiananmen banner?
The two most original slogans are "Long live the People's Republic of China" and "Long live the Central People's Government", written by the calligrapher Zhong Ling.
Zhong Yuxiu, one of the designers of the emblem of the Chinese Civil Affairs Association and the national emblem of the mainland, is the writer of the six characters of the renminbi "Chinese Bank", and the courtyard gate, the second gate and the weeping flower gate in front of the Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai are also written and arranged by him.
Zhong Ling Rmb "Chinese Bank" six-character calligraphy
In August 1921, Zhong Ling was born in Jinan, Shandong, also known as Zhong Yuxiu.
He joined the Communist Party of China as early as July 1938. When he quietly defected to Yan'an, the holy land of revolution, Zhong Ling was only a 17-year-old telephone operator.
Later, he entered the Fine Arts Department of Lu Xun Art And Literature College, and after graduation, he stayed in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region to do cultural education work.
In 1956, he studied Chinese painting and calligraphy under Qi Baishi, during which time he designed or participated in the design of as many as 28 stamps of New China.
In Yan'an, Zhong Ling's beautiful writing was almost a household name, and the slogans on the walls of Yan'an at that time were almost all written by him.
After receiving the arduous and glorious task of writing slogans in the Tiananmen Tower, Zhong Ling was full of energy and determined to use all his housekeeping skills.
Tiananmen Square at night
Before writing, Zhong Ling first used scissors, cut out the Song characters with cloth, and then asked the carpenter to saw the wooden board according to the ratio of one centimeter equal to one meter, nail it into a word box, install a layer of ground glass on the outside, and install an electric light bulb inside.
This way the slogan is hung up, and when the electricity is turned on, it can be seen clearly even at night.
Because at that time, although the trend of writing simplified characters was already popular in the Liberated Areas, most people in Beiping were still accustomed to writing in traditional Chinese.
In order to take care of the majority, Zhong Ling decided to write these two slogans in traditional Chinese.
Old photos of Tiananmen Square
However, while writing, Zhong Ling made another mistake.
The red wall of the Tiananmen Tower is so long, and every word on the slogan must be the size of a house, which is a great challenge for Zhong Ling.
Because he did not have a large enough ruler at hand, he measured the front width of the Tiananmen Tower with his footsteps, and after measuring and calculating, he came up with the size of each word.
Soon a second question followed:
The number of words in the two slogans is not the same, one is 9 characters, one is 8, how can it appear symmetrical?
Carefully, he found in the actual step measurement results that the nine gatehouses of Tiananmen Square are actually unequal in width and narrowness, the middle door is the largest, four or six are slightly wider, and the three seven, two eight, and one nine are decreasing in turn, but in people's vision, they feel that the left and right four are symmetrical.
"Long live the People's Republic of China! Long live the Central People's Government! "
The wisdom of the ancients also gave Zhong Ling inspiration.
Therefore, he decided to use the principle of optical illusion to arrange the word spacing of the slogan, but because the time was too urgent, Zhong Ling was not allowed to think about it again, and the result was that the word spacing of the two slogans was not uniform enough, and did not meet Zhong Ling's ideal expectations.
On National Day in 1950, in order to highlight the bosom of a big country, the two traditional character slogans were changed to "Long live the People's Republic of China!" Long live the great unity of the people of the world! Later, in order to promote the simplified words, the slogan was rewritten again.
However, no matter how many times it was changed, the words did not change, or the Song script originally written by Zhong Ling.
6. Whose name is written on the back of the national emblem?
The national emblem of Tiananmen City Tower
The national emblem of tiananmen City Tower was made by Jiao Baishun, the casting class leader of the No. 19 foundry workshop of Shenyang First Machine Tool Factory, and his colleagues, according to the sample draft.
In 1951, at the grand "May Day" International Labor Day celebration held in Tiananmen Square, the first metal national emblem with a diameter of 100 centimeters cast by Shenyang First Machine Tool Factory was officially hung on the upper floor of Tiananmen City, and there is also an unknown story on the back of this national emblem.
Tiananmen Tower symbolizes the highest power of the country and is attracted by the world,So the national emblem on Tiananmen Must be hung correctly, which attracted the attention of Premier Zhou, and under his supervision, the relevant departments sent 8 reliable and serious masters to hang the national emblem.
Later, in order to show responsibility, the names of the masters who hung the national emblem were all written on the back of the national emblem, and this practice was also continued.
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