Source: Beijing Daily
The First Historical Archive of China recently completed the renovation and exhibition layout of the Imperial Palace. Since September, Huang ShiGong has been open to institutions, archives systems, universities and other groups for appointment visits. What does this Ming and Qing Dynasty royal "golden stone room" look like?
Origin of the "Golden Stone Room"
"Golden Stone Room" is an important way for the ancients in China to treasure archives, which means that important archives are placed in the golden pot, and then the gold is placed in the stone room. Among them, "gold house" refers to a gold box, and "stone chamber" refers to a house built of masonry. The Book of Han, written by the Eastern Han dynasty historian Ban Gu, contains the words "And swore an oath with the meritorious man, the Danshu Tieqi, the Golden Stone Room, and the Tibetan Temple", indicating that china at least had a Golden Stone Chamber in the Han Dynasty.
Located about 500 meters south of the Donghua Gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Imperial Palace, now No. 136 Nanchizi Avenue, is the largest and most complete ancient royal "stone chamber" in China, with more than 150 gold treasures in memory, and the Imperial Archives of the Ming and Qing Dynasties were once treasured in the Golden Temple. The total length of the Imperial Palace is about 49.4 meters, the width is about 23.6 meters, the total height is about 19.2 meters, from the foundation to the roof is all made of brick and stone, without a single wood or nail. In addition to moisture-proof, anti-theft, and insect-proof, the most important function of the Imperial Palace is fire prevention.
1 The fire in the palace gave birth to the stone chamber
The reason for the construction of the Imperial Palace is closely related to fire prevention. According to the Records of Emperor Xiaozong of Daming, in May of the fifth year of Hongzhi (1492), the university scholar Qiu Mao presented to emperor Hongzhi: "Since the ancient emperors hid the history of the country in the golden stone chamber, the cover was made of gold and stone as a thing that was strong and durable, not earth and wood; it could also carry water and fire, so that it would not be troubled." Those who have broken stones under the heavens think that they are rooms, and those who think that gold are poor, and where the country has secret records and subtle words, and who canonical deeds can be passed on far away, they must not store them in case of accidents. Among them, "扞挌" is the meaning of resistance.
Qiu Mao believes that since ancient times, important national archives have been placed in the gold stone chamber, compared with civil materials, gold stone is more solid, moisture-proof and fireproof, and long-term preservation of archives. He suggested to emperor Hongzhi that in order to properly preserve the important documents and archives of the country, a building of masonry materials should be built in the Forbidden City, and the archives should be placed in a gold cabinet, and then the cabinet should be placed in the building. At the same time, he also suggested that the location of the building be near Wenyuan Pavilion. This proposal was approved by Emperor Hongzhi, but it could not be implemented for various reasons.
During the Ming Dynasty, the construction of the Imperial Palace was again on the agenda, mainly because the royal palace suffered multiple fires. According to the History of Ming, fires occurred repeatedly during the period from Hongzhi to Jiajing: on the night of October 26, 1498, a fire broke out in Qingning Palace; a fire broke out in The Qianqing Palace in the ninth year of Zhengde (February 10, 1514); a fire broke out in the Qianqing Palace in the first month of the 12th year of Zhengde (February 18, 1517); a fire broke out in the small room of The Qingning Palace in the first month of the first month of the First Year of Jiajing (February 7, 1522), and a fire broke out in the three small palaces after the Qingning Palace; and a fire broke out in the third small palace of the fourth month of The fourth year of Jiajing ( On the night of April 15, 1525, a fire broke out in Renshou Palace, destroying the palaces of Yudeok, Anxi, and Gyeongbok; a fire broke out in the house of Ouchi in October 1529 (November 21, 1529) in Jiajing; a fire broke out in the east of Ouchi in the first month of the Jiajing Decade (February 12, 1531); and in April 1531 in Gengchen (May 12, 1531), a fire broke out in the second public office of the Military Industry, and a large number of literary books were burned.
Frequent fires broke out in the Forbidden City, which attracted the attention of the Jiajing Emperor. The Ming Dynasty official Yu Jideng wrote the "Allusions Chronicle" volume 17 recorded that 14 buildings were destroyed by the Jiajing Ten-Year Inner Eastward Fire, and the Jiajing Emperor then told the university scholar Zhang Xuan: The palace buildings are dense, and fire prevention plans should be made; the palace gates of the Nanjing Palace are brick and do not use wood, which can be used as a reference method for building fire prevention.
Considering that the buildings inside the palace were too dense, the Jiajing Emperor intended to build a building of masonry materials outside the palace to store the royal archives. According to the "Sermon of Emperor Su of the Ming Dynasty", in July of the thirteenth year of Jiajing (August 21, 1534), the Jiajing Emperor ordered the construction of the Divine Imperial Pavilion in the "Nannei" (that is, the southeast corner outside the imperial palace) to preserve important archival materials such as the imperial statues of the ancestral gods, the sermons, and the records.
He asked that the Shrine be built of brick and stone like the Southern Suburbs' Sai Palace (today's Tan Zhai Palace); in terms of layout, the Shrine Pavilion was proposed to be divided into two layers, with portraits of the emperor on the upper level and records on the lower level. According to the Records of Emperor Su of the Ming Dynasty, the construction of the Divine Imperial Pavilion began on July 17, 1534 (August 26, 1534) of the thirteenth year of Jiajing, and was completed in July of the fifteenth year of Jiajing (August 11, 1536). After the completion of the Shrine Pavilion, it was actually a single-storey masonry building used to store archives such as records, while the portrait of the emperor was arranged to be stored in the Jingshen Temple. The Divine Imperial Pavilion was also renamed "Imperial Palace" by the Jiajing Emperor. The Records of Emperor Ming Dynasty Emperor Su contains "宬, that is, the Divine Imperial Pavilion".
The "Records of the Dreams of Chunming" written by Sun Chengze in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties records that "Gong" was written by the Jiajing Emperor himself. Regarding the meaning of "宬", Xu Shen's "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Texts" mentions: "宬, the house is also tolerated. "Imperial Palace" means a place where royal archives are stored. In the following 485 years, except for an overhaul in the twelfth year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1807), the imperial palace architecture was basically the same.
2 Stone painting "Beamless Hall"
The Imperial Palace has been well preserved for 485 years since its construction, and is closely related to its scientific construction methods: tall pedestals, ventilated windows, and airtight gold beds are conducive to moisture protection, heavy walls are conducive to earthquake protection, and nan wood cores are conducive to insect repellent. Reasonable and effective fire prevention measures are the most important embodiment of its scientific construction.
The entire building of the Imperial Palace is made of fireproof materials. Among them, the bottom of the building is a stone Sumire form base, and above the base is a brick wall. There are five coupon holes on the south wall of the building, and the doors of each coupon hole, including the door nails and animal faces, are made of stone; a window is opened in the middle of the east and west walls of the building, and the window frames and diamond patterns of the windows are also carved from stone. The exposed pillar roof above the wall, as well as the purlin, bucket arch, lookout board, rafters, plaques and other components above the pillar top, are also stone carvings, and the appearance is decorated with painted paintings, and the appearance is no different from the wooden material palace architecture.
The roof of the Imperial Palace is covered with glazed tiles and kissing beasts. There is a stone platform above the ground inside the hall, and above the stone platform is a gold platform. The bricks, stones and tiles used throughout the building are non-combustible materials, which became the primary line of defense for the protection of the royal archives.
For the material of the gold pot, the Qianlong Dynasty's "King Ding Great Qing HuiDian I" records that "Nan wood, wrapped in copper coated with gold QiuYun Long Wen (pattern)", the gold pot is copper gilded outer skin, the inner core is Nan wood. The melting point of the copper-gold mixture material is close to thousands of degrees, which is the second line of defense to protect the royal archives from fire.
In addition, the site selection site, structural form, internal space, and component practices of the Imperial Palace are also very scientific. The Imperial Palace is located outside the Imperial Palace, and there are fewer buildings around the site, so it is not easy to be affected by fire in other buildings. The exterior of the building is a column network with a width of nine rooms and a depth of five rooms, and the columns are carved from stone, making the interior of the building a practical chase room, which is conducive to accommodating a large number of gold slots.
The structural form of the Imperial Palace belongs to the masonry load-bearing system, that is, the roof is supported by masonry walls. Ming and Qing palaces usually use beams and columns to bear loads, that is, to play the role of core force through wooden beams and wooden columns. The structural form of the Imperial Palace avoids the use of wooden components, and thus avoids fire hazards. The interior of the Imperial Palace building is arched, and the roof is squeezed by many bricks laterally, forming a solid whole, which not only produces an elegant decorative effect, but also increases the internal space. Because the Imperial Palace did not use a beam and a pillar inside, it was also called the "Hall without Beams". This form of interior space design is conducive to the fire insulation of masonry materials, and is also conducive to the preservation of gold.
The method of the doors, windows, walls and other components of the Imperial Palace is also very clever and scientific. The doors are only open on the south façade, and there are five in total, all of which are solid door practices. This kind of door is not only the widest and thickest in all kinds of doors in ancient buildings, but also has a good closure after closing, which can effectively block the spread of external fire sources into the interior. The windows are located in an east-west direction and have two doors in total. Beijing is the region with the most pronounced subtropical monsoon climate in the northern hemisphere, with more southerly winds in the summer and more northerly winds in the winter. The east-west design of the windows is not only conducive to the proper ventilation and lighting inside the building, but also once the surrounding building is on fire, it is difficult for the fire to spread to the interior of the building along the wind direction.
The bottom of the window is up to 3 meters above the ground, and under the window is a brick wall. This high window design creates the same effect as a "firewall", which is conducive to avoiding the intrusion of external flames. The walls are thick, with the east-west walls 3.7 meters thick and the north-south walls about 6 meters thick. Such a thick wall not only effectively isolates the source of fire, but even if the temperature outside the temple changes drastically, the temperature inside the temple will not be significantly affected.
In addition, the walls are coated with stucco, which is also conducive to fire prevention. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period in China, there were measures to apply mud to the walls to improve the fire resistance of buildings. "Spring and Autumn Left Transmission justice" mentions that "before the fire arrives, remove the hut, paint the big house", that is, before the fire comes, remove the flammable hut and apply mud to the walls of the big house, which can reduce the loss caused by the fire.
3 The Royal Archives are open to the public
The Imperial Palace was the place where the Ming and Qing emperors stored their royal archives. According to the Records of Emperor Su of the Ming Dynasty, in August of the fifteenth year of Jiajing (September 3, 1536), "the hadiths were recorded in the Imperial Shi Palace with honor, and the sacrifices were made to the Ancestral Hall and the Chongxian Temple", and the Jiajing Emperor ordered the collection of hadiths and records inside after the completion of the Imperial History Palace.
In the Qing Dynasty, Yu Minzhong and others wrote the "Examination of the Old Wen of the Emperor's Reign", which mentions that "the Yongle Canon was completed in the fifth year of Yongle, and the cloud copy was stored in the Imperial Shi Gong", indicating that the Emperor Shi Gong once treasured a copy of the Yongle Dadian (永樂大典). The book also records: "The Imperial Shi Gong is still under the old system, and in the south of Nancheng, zunzang the records of the Dynasty and the Jade Mu ... The old records of the Ming Dynasty were transferred to the Cabinet Book Library. "During the Qing Dynasty, the records of the Ming Dynasty were moved to the Cabinet Library, and the Imperial History Palace was changed to store the records of the Qing Dynasty, jade and other royal archives.
The "General Examination of Qing Dynasty Documents" written by Zhang Tingyu and others in the Qing Dynasty records that "the six branches were transferred, the banknotes were issued to the ministries and institutes for implementation, and the purpose was recorded in a copy, and sent to the Emperor Shi Gong for storage", indicating that the Emperor Shi Gong also stored a copy of the inscription (a kind of sonata). According to the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" and the Guangxu Dynasty's "Qing Dynasty Huidian", the Emperor Shigong also stored the seals of benji, strategy, and important officials in the Qing Dynasty.
In July of the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), the Eight-Power Alliance captured the city of Beijing, and the Japanese army occupied the Imperial Palace, seriously destroying the archives in it. According to the Compilation of Archives of the Qing Palace of the Gengzi Incident, the Japanese army caused the Imperial Palace to lose fifty-one letters of the Manchu And Mongolian "Records of the Hadith", totaling 235 volumes; and more than 1,300 volumes of archives were defaced.
After the founding of New China, the party and the government protected and repaired the Imperial Palace, and opened the Imperial Palace to the public as a cultural relics department for studying the imperial history and archives of the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1982, Huang Shigong was announced by the State Council as a national key cultural relics protection unit. In November 2020, the renovation project of the Imperial Palace was launched and completed a few days ago, and from September 1, 2021, the Imperial Palace was reopened to the public.