<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > "style Lei", which is the honor of the Lei family who presided over the design of royal buildings for more than 200 years in the Qing Dynasty. </h1>
Temple of Heaven Image source: Pixabay.com
Seven generations of the Lei family have worked in the "Style Room" of the Royal Architectural Design Agency, and have designed a large number of exquisite works.
The architectural works of "Style Lei" cover royal buildings such as the capital city, palaces, gardens, altar temples, etc., the Yuanmingyuan Garden, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", the Chengde Summer Resort and The Outer Eight Temples of the World Cultural Heritage Site, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the Qing Dynasty Tombs and The Xiling Tombs, as well as the Zhongnanhai and Gongwang Mansions, are all designed and built by the Style Lei family.
1/5 of the ancient buildings in China that are listed as "World Cultural Heritage" are the brainchild of "Style Lei", and the "Style Lei" family is called the world's three major architectural families together with the Sangallo family in Italy and the Nakai family in Japan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > style Lei family</h1>
The first generation of "style Lei" was called Lei Developed, born in the forty-seventh year of the Ming Wanli calendar, and his ancestral home was Yongxiu, Jiangxi.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was constant war and social turmoil, and Lei's father led the family to move to Nanjing.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, Lei Develop became a "North Drifter" because he could do carpentry skills, responded to the recruitment of the Qing Dynasty, participated in the construction of the royal palace garden, and became a "North Drifter".
Forbidden City Image source: Pixabay.com
In the style Lei family, the best reputation, the greatest fame, the most appreciated by the imperial court should be the second generation of style Lei, Lei Jinyu.
When Lei Jinyu was more than 60 years old, he began to take charge of the style house because of the construction of the Yuanmingyuan, and with his architectural skills, he won the appreciation of the Yongzheng Emperor, and when Lei Jinyu was 70 years old, Yongzheng gave him a plaque with the word "ancient rarity".
In the seventh year of Yongzheng (1729), Lei Jinyu died, and In addition to rewarding gold and silver, Yongzheng also ordered the royal caravanserai to take care of and transport coffins along the way back to Nanjing for burial.
As the founder of the Lei family who has been in charge of the style house and presided over the royal architectural design affairs for generations, in the later Genealogical Records of the Lei Family, Lei Jinyu is revered as the ancestor of the Lei family who moved to Beijing.
Qing Xiaoling Image source: Qing Dongling Conservation Area official website
Lei Jinyu's youngest son, Lei Shengcheng, is the third generation of "Style Lei".
After Lei Jinyu's death, his wife Zhang Shi did not move south with the family, but stayed alone in the capital with his three-month-old young son Lei Shengcheng.
As a mother, it is an unshirkable duty to raise her young son, but there is a greater mission to guide her perseverance in the difficult situation, that is, to revitalize the style house for the descendants of the Lei family.
Ignoring the shackles of etiquette, she held her young son in her arms and wept in the Ministry of Works, arguing according to reason, and won the qualification for Lei Shengcheng to regain the title of a style house after adulthood.
Xiangshan Jingyi Garden Image source: Pixabay.com
The fourth generation of "style lei" has a lot of room to display its talents, and with the advent of the Qianlong dynasty, the royal construction industry has also flourished unprecedentedly.
Following the example of his grandfather Kangxi, Qianlong not only built a large number of palaces in Jiangnan six times, but also had a special love for Jiangnan gardens, and he wanted to transplant the exquisite and unique River gardens to the inside and outside of the imperial city.
Therefore, the expansion of the Yuanmingyuan and the creation of the Qingyi Garden followed. Lei Shengcheng's three sons, Lei Jiawei, Lei Jiaxi and Lei Jiarui, the fourth generation of Lei, were able to display their talents in such an environment and carry forward their ancestral inheritance during the Years of Qianlong and Jiaqing.
Old Summer Palace Image source: Internet
Among the three brothers, Lei Jiaxi was the best, he not only designed the royal projects such as Wanshou Mountain, Yuquan Mountain, Xiangshan Mountain, Rehe Summer Resort, Changling and Yuanmingyuan East Road, but also undertook the lanterns and fireworks on the 80th birthday of Qianlong, and designed and built the Tongyuan Grand Theater in the Yuanmingyuan.
In the twenty-fourth year of Jiaqing (1819), Lei Jingxiu, the third son of Lei Jiaxi, had reached the age of sixteen and began to study "hereditary errands" in the Yuanmingyuan style room with the mantle, intending to cultivate the fifth generation of "style Lei" successors.
In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), Lei Jiaxi, who was seriously ill, felt that his son was still difficult to shoulder the heavy responsibility, so he made a will and gave the position of head of the style house to a foreign surname to take over, and the history of Lei's management of the style house was about to end.
However, Lei Jingxiu did not give up the continuation of the family glory, and after more than 20 years of hard work, he finally regained the position of the head of the style house in the twenty-ninth year of Daoguang (1849) and became a key figure in the history of the style Lei family.
Jingmingyuan Image source: Pixabay.com
However, at this time, Lei Jingxiu was already facing a Qing government with internal and external troubles and devastation. Not only could he not recover the doom of the style house errands to stop, but also experienced the tragedy of the Haidian old mansion and the burning of the Yuanmingyuan by the British and French coalition forces, and watched as the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens, which the Style Lei family had painstakingly created for generations, was burned to the ground.
Since then, Lei Jingxiu has painstakingly managed the family business, purchased a new house, continued to repair the genealogy, and planned the ancestral family. When he was glad that the style Leitu file was not affected by the fire in the Yuanmingyuan, he secretly sent the paintings and hot samples originally stored in the style rooms near the Yuanmingyuan to the city, and specially built three rooms for treasure. As a result, the top-secret architectural archives that originally belonged to the royal family flowed outside the palace in the chaotic world.
Prince Gong's Mansion Image source: Internet
The representative figure of the sixth generation of "style Lei", Lei Jingxiu's eldest son Lei Siqi was born in the sixth year of Daoguang (1826). The rigorous training he received from his father from an early age made him familiar with every aspect of the royal construction project, from architectural design, construction technology to organizational management, from accounting business to engineering geology, ecology and even feng shui. He accompanied his father in the projects of ChangxiLing and Mudongling, and later presided over the architectural design of Dingling, Dingdongling, Huiling and Xiyuan, as well as the residences, gardens and mausoleums of many princes and nobles.
In order to celebrate Cixi's 40th birthday, in the twelfth year of Tongzhi (1873), the Tongzhi Emperor decided to rebuild the Yuanmingyuan for Cixi. Lei Siqi and the representative figure of the seventh generation of "style Lei", his eldest son Lei Tingchang was ordered to undertake the design, and worked day and night to produce thousands of paintings and hot samples. However, due to the weakness of the country at that time, this costly project finally died in the face of opposition, and only a few thousand style Leitu files were left.
At the end of the second year of Guangxu (1876), the overworked Lei Siqi returned to Beijing from the Dingdongling and Huiling construction sites, and died shortly after. The seventh generation of Lei Tingchang has undergone experience in many royal projects, and has successfully taken over the responsibility of being in charge of the style house, presiding over the reconstruction of the Temple of Heaven Prayer Hall, the Forbidden City Taihe Gate, and the point view platform of Empress Dowager Cixi's longevity celebration.
In the twenty-third year of Guangxu (1897), when Empress Dowager Cixi started the reconstruction project of the Yuanmingyuan again, the eighth generation of "style Lei" was passed down, and Lei Tingchang's eldest son, Lei Xiancai, who was not yet twenty years old, served as the head of the Yuanmingyuan style house.
After that, together with his father, he undertook the reconstruction of the Dongling Tomb in Putuoding and the reconstruction and repair of the royal buildings such as the palace garden, altar temple, and mansion destroyed by the Eight-Nation Alliance, as well as the design of various new bungalows during the "New Deal".
Summer Palace Image source: pixabay.xom
In the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded, and the city of Beijing and various royal buildings inside and outside the city were once again destroyed. Lei Tingchang and his eldest son Lei Xiancai presided over large-scale restoration and reconstruction projects, such as the city towers such as the Zhengyang Gate and the Arrow Tower in Beijing, the Dagao Xuandian Hall, Zhongnanhai and the reconstruction of the Summer Palace.
After Lei Tingchang's death, major engineering designs such as the Chongling Tomb and the Regency Palace at the end of the Qing Dynasty were completed by Lei Xiancai.
After the Xinhai Revolution, the Qing Dynasty withdrew from the stage of history, and the royal architectural design and style room errands disappeared. At the same time, the eighth generation of "style lei" Lei Xiancai has married two wives, but has not left any offspring, and the inheritance of "style thunder" that has continued for eight generations has ended.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" > valuable asset</h1>
The most valuable property left by style ray for the world is not only their architecture, but also rare treasures——— patterns and hot samples.
In ancient times, the construction of houses was divided into four steps, one measurement, two drawings, three making drawings and hot samples, and four according to the pattern and hot sample construction.
Drawings of building houses have existed since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, but none of the drawings of that time have been handed down.
China's ancient architectural patterns can only be preserved in the "style thunder" of the Qing Dynasty.
"Style Ray" Whenever designing engineering drawings, first draw a sketch, and then carve it into seven to eight kinds of "fine drawings", with accurate graphics and clear primary and secondary orders.
The "Style Ray" pattern involves all aspects of construction engineering technology, mainly including surveying and mapping drawings, design drawings, construction drawings, as-built drawings, and even feng shui topography maps, mountain point and cave maps. The style Lei chart files preserved by the Style Lei family can clearly show the full set of procedures in the ancient Chinese architectural design process.
When the design drawing is determined, an accurate sample of the site size is drawn. Chinese-style architecture is a courtyard structure, the space combination must have a high and low ratio, "style lei" through a thing called "hot sample" to express.
Spring and summer scenery of Chengde Mountain Resort Image source: Chengde Mountain Resort and the official website of surrounding temples
Autumn and winter scenery of Chengde Mountain Resort
"Hot sample" is actually a model, which is processed from the simplest materials such as wooden strips and cardboard. It includes almost all the architectural components such as pavilions, courtyard stones, tree beds, pool docks, and interior furnishings. These different architectural details are arranged in proportion and built into a physical form according to the assumption.
The "hot sample" can be freely disassembled or flexibly assembled. "Hot sample" makes the architectural layout and spatial image clear at a glance, full of Chinese wisdom, and is a unique innovation of this architectural family.
On the one hand, the "hot sample" guides the specific construction, and on the other hand, it is for the emperor to review and approve. After the emperor approves the "hot sample", the specific construction can be carried out.
Some of the "hot samples" and various construction design drawings left by the Lei family are stored in the Palace Museum and part of them are treasured in the National Library of China. Today, we can only imagine the architectural grandeur of the royal garden from these drawings from more than two centuries ago. The huge Yuanmingyuan gathers the painstaking efforts of the Lei family and is also the highest peak of the architectural art of the Qing Empire.
What exactly does scalding do?
Let's take an example, the label on the hot roof of the Di'an Gate reads:
There is one di'an gate, seven wide, eleven feet 4 feet 2 inches wide, and 3 inches 7 feet 6 inches deep from north to south. The Ming side is two inches wide, the second side is 7 feet 4 inches wide, and the slightly wide side is 1 and 5 feet wide. The cornice is 1 foot tall and 1 foot 8 inches in diameter, and the middle column is 2 feet 4 feet 2 inches high. Nine Puring Mountain-style roof, Douke Shan Ang. If we want to restore the original appearance of Di'anmen now, we can immediately show the original appearance according to the construction of Di'anmen hot sample.
A style ray, half of the ancient history. Lei-style inheritance for eight generations, from the beginning of the Qing Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, which is rare in the world, and the picture files they have preserved have also made significant contributions to the inheritance and development of ancient buildings in China.