Find answers in six hundred years: what is the Forbidden City
What is the Forbidden City?
This question is difficult to answer, but Zhu Yong still wants to try to answer it.
Zhu Yong has many identities, documentary director, writer, scholar, and artist, but because of "The Secret Corner of the Forbidden City", "The Beauty of the Antiquities in the Forbidden City", "Looking for Su Dongpo in the Forbidden City"... These books he wrote about the Forbidden City made him not want The forbidden city was silent for the 600th anniversary of its establishment.
In the "Six Hundred Years of the Forbidden City", the five characters of the title have been in the heart of Zhu Yong for many years. It took more than three years to start writing in 2016, and it took more than three years to complete "on time" in 2020. After finishing the writing, Zhu Yong was surprised to find that the writing time was almost the same as the time when the Forbidden City was concentrated.
"I tried to build a city with words." Zhu Yong said. But the Forbidden City is too big, he can only take a scoop. In the face of each building space, he can only select a piece of time, enter from the Wumen Gate, and exit from the Shenwu Gate, allowing time fragments to attach to different spaces and join together into a piece A more complete historical puzzle.
In the 600 years of the Forbidden City, important events cannot be missed. The Forbidden City is like a huge set, with too many historical plays in every corner.
"Taihemen Square (then called Fengtianmen Square) had a'change of seizing the door' during the Ming Dynasty. In the early dynasty, Zhu Qizhen sat on the throne of Taihemen (then called Fengtianmen) before Zhu Qiyu Whoever sits on this throne will win the throne. The victory or defeat of the palace coup is determined by a chair, which is too dramatic and magical." Zhu Yong said.
However, the 600 years of the Forbidden City are not only political history, but also include the history of architecture, thought, women, and even daily life, which is extremely broad and complicated. Zhu Yong feels that major events do not happen all the time, so daily life is more important-it is the norm of history, and the norm constitutes our common sense.
The protagonist of the Forbidden City is not only the emperor and general, but also many ordinary people, including eunuchs, court ladies, and guards... they may have no names, but they have also lived in this palace, leaving traces in the history of the Forbidden City , And some even affected the direction of history.
Zhu Yong talked about a maiden named Ji, who didn’t leave her name in Shishu, but she gave birth to a son, Emperor Hongzhi Zhu Youxi: Ji’s pregnant with Emperor Chenghua’s child, and Wan Guifei sent a court lady to Ji Shi's medicine abortion, the result was that the maid had only half of the medicine, and came back and lied that Ji only had a tumor in her stomach, not pregnancy. After Zhu Youxi was born, Wan Guifei sent eunuch Zhang Min to drown the baby, but Zhang Min risked hiding Zhu Youxi in a secret corner of the palace, feeding him with rice noodles every day, actually feeding him...
"Zhu Youqin survived, and later became an emperor, without the help of these maidens and eunuchs. They didn't want to get anything from the little prince, and they might even cause death, but they didn't retreat because they With a heart of mourning and compassion, I am willing to spare my life for a new life." Zhu Yong said, "These eunuchs and court ladies are not big figures, but they are full of human warmth and it is worth writing them down."
After writing so many people in the palace, Zhu Yong can hardly say which one he likes best. "Zhengde Dynasty officials Li Dongyang and Wang Yangming rescued Zhu Youqin's eunuch Huan, and Chen Menglei who compiled "The Integration of Ancient and Modern Books..." After counting a few, he found that these people all have one thing in common-all Quite "stubborn", they do everything they know they can't do.
Li Dongyang, when eunuch Liu Jin fully controlled the dynasty, Liu Jian and Xie Qian all resigned and left, but he chose to stay in the cabinet as the last glimmer of the court. Without him, dynasty politics fell into total darkness. Wang Yangming is even more lovely. When everyone impeached Liu Jin, he was silent. When everyone was silent, he fell into a sparse manner. As a result, he was forty and he was sent to Jinyiwei’s black prison, but there was no such thing. During the second disaster, there was no later "Dragon Field Enlightenment", and no Yangming mind study was born.
Chen Menglei is also a magical person. He kept compiling books and writing books in the place of exile, and almost made up the world-famous classic of "The Integration of Ancient and Modern Books" (then called "Literature Compilation") with one person. When this book was officially published in the Yongzheng years, it didn't have his name on it at all-he was exiled for the second time, and was lingering in the decayed grass and poplar in the north of the empire. It was not until 1934 that Zhonghua Book Company published "The Integration of Ancient and Modern Books" that Chen Menglei's name was printed on the cover by Zheng Zhongzheng. At this time, it was two hundred years since Chen Menglei's death.
From the perspective of the subject of function, the history of the Forbidden City can be divided into two parts: the Forbidden City where the emperor lives, and the museum visited by the people. Therefore, the six hundred years of the Forbidden City should of course include its modern history and contemporary history. The owner of the Forbidden City has changed, but there are still some things that have not changed.
On October 10, 1925, the Palace Museum was established. In the first half of the 20th century, the world was in trouble. During the Japanese invasion of China, some seniors of the Forbidden City were responsible for the southward relocation of cultural relics and continued the civilization of the nation. Everyone is a legend.
Majestic graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Peking University in 1924. He entered the Qingshi Aftercare Committee to do the work of counting cultural relics, and later worked in the Palace Museum. He once joked that "Xuantong came out of the palace and I entered the palace." However, he did not expect that he would leave the palace too-with the artifacts of the Forbidden City. At that time, the solemn person in charge of packing ancient objects felt that the most difficult to install were those 10 pre-Qin stone drums. Each stone drum is a granite weighing about 1 ton, and the surface text is very fragile after thousands of years of wind and rain erosion. But solemn promise, "People are in, cultural relics are in."
Departing from Beijing in 1933, crossing the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, from the North China Plain to the Chengdu Plain, Shigu all the way to Guiyang, the solemn fourth son Zhuang Ling was born there. "I've seen the photos they took in a foreign country, they were in troubled times, and they were fluttering, but they couldn't see the slightest tiredness and sadness. They were poorly dressed and their expressions contained infinite pride. They knew, Such a nation that has created a splendid culture cannot be defeated." Zhu Yong said.
More than half of China's stone drums have been tossed and turned for more than 10 years, and are now hidden in the Stone Drum Hall of the Imperial Palace of Ningshou Palace in the Forbidden City. In the autumn of 2018, Zhuang Ling went to the Stone Drum Hall. Ten rough stone drums seemed to have been waiting there. He stood in front of Shigu for a long time, and Zhu Yong, who was with him, thought: "He may think of his father, his own childhood, or, even a long time ago."
In a sense, the Forbidden City has been "building". In recent years, the Forbidden City has become more and more "hot" and more and more "tide". Cultural and creative arts, variety shows, mobile games, interactive exhibitions, game books, and even the new book "The Forbidden City's Six Hundred Years" are all released on the fast hand live broadcast . People who visit occasionally may pay more attention to the "hot" and "noise" of the Forbidden City, and few people pay attention to the "cold" and "quiet" of the Forbidden City.
Every time a friend comes to the Forbidden City, Zhu Yong will take him to Wenyuan Pavilion, which is an open area, but there are not many tourists, "very quiet and in line with its temperament", because this is the collection place of the Qianlong Emperor’s book collection It is not a general book, but the "Sikuquanshu", the largest series in ancient China.
Due to its huge size, it is impossible to publish it. "Si Ku Quan Shu" has written a total of 7 books in the Qianlong era. After more than two hundred years of wind and rain, there are three and a half books in the world. This part of Wenyuan Pavilion went to Taiwan, but the pavilion of the collection is still there. The shelves in the pavilion are still from the Qianlong era, and those golden silk and Nanmu bookcases are still placed as they are.
"Chinese literature, history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, almost all disciplines can find its source and bloodline, and almost all the emerging disciplines about China can find the soil and nutrition of its survival and development from here. How many readers' lives have melted into the compilation of this book." Zhu Yong said, "I like Wen Yuange's breath very much. Here, I will feel that the so-called context is not an abstract existence, it is concrete. , You can see it, you can smell it."
In Zhu Yong’s impression, “museum fever” has only happened in recent years. For a long time before, museums were unpopular. Many people have seen the professionalism of the people of the Forbidden City from documentaries like "I am repairing cultural relics in the Forbidden City", but Zhu Yong said that in fact the people of the Forbidden City have always been like this.
"They have no sensationalism, no bluff expression, and the red wall separates the outside hustle and bustle. They are immersed in their work, and each sink is a lifetime. This professionalism has been from the predecessors of the Forbidden City to today. No With such perseverance and determination, they will not achieve their own success, and the Forbidden City will not be the Forbidden City today."
Finally, back to that question, what is the Forbidden City?
"The Forbidden City is a city that condenses the beauty of the Chinese civilization. Thousands of laborers have achieved its beauty... The Forbidden City is also a mirror. The despicable people see the despicableness from them. They will always be unique in official skills and harem fighting. Zhong; noble people found noble from it, which nourishes our past and will also nourish our future." Zhu Yong wrote in the postscript of "The Six Hundred Years of the Forbidden City."
China Youth Daily reporter Jiang Xiaobin Source: China Youth Daily