Six hundred years of vicissitudes: From the Forbidden City to the Forbidden City
Zhang Cheng
This year is 600 years after the completion of the Forbidden City.
Palace architecture is a symbol of imperial power, no matter which country it is in, palaces are a special kind of architecture.
Its construction brings together the exquisite folk architecture and at the same time endows the rigorous rhythm of court culture.
The Forbidden City is undoubtedly one of the most dazzling masterpieces of traditional Chinese architecture.
1
All the power of the world continues to prepare materials for ten years
In July of the fourth year of Yongle (1406), many ministers headed by Song Li, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry, left the capital city of Nanjing and went to the north and south.
They were ordered to supervise the people to pick wood, burn bricks and tiles, and levy manpower and materials to prepare for a national construction project that is about to begin.
This project is to build a magnificent palace in Beijing, which is thousands of miles away from Nanjing.
This palace embodies the dreams of Emperor Zhu Di, the emperor of Ming Cheng, Yongle, and is entrusted with his grand plan and deep worries for governing the country.
For this new emperor who had just experienced the baptism of blood and rain, the nightmare of "incorrect position" always haunted him.
Zhu Di hoped to escape the old capital of Emperor Jianwen and move his capital to Beijing, the land of his own Longxing.
In the first year of his reign, Zhu Di ordered the rename of Peking City to Beijing, revealing the signal to move the capital.
Of course, the reason he put forward was that the remnant power of the Yuan Dynasty was entrenched in the Mongolian plateau.
He wanted to follow the example of his father, Zhu Yuanzhang, and establish an unworldly meritorious deed, whose name goes down in history.
Zhu Di strongly suppressed the voices against the move of the capital, and continued to channel various resources to Beijing.
A great palace worthy of Zhu Di's political blueprint is about to emerge.
When Song Li, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry, was ordered to cut the fine woods, he would not expect that the collection of raw materials would last for 10 years.
They went deep into the primeval forest, looking for the best golden nanmu under the sun.
This kind of nanmu is tall and strong, has a lasting fragrance, is not afraid of insects, and is not easy to decay. It is an excellent material for palace beams and pillars.
The biggest problem with phoebe is that its growth cycle is as long as 300 years, and it only exists in the inaccessible places during the Yongle period.
The logging team led by Song Li had "one thousand in the mountain, 500 out of the mountain". Nearly half of the builders did not see the moment Miyagi started construction.
These huge trees collected from the deep mountains of southwestern China have gone through hardships, and with the help of the water power of the Yangtze River, they descended down the river, "from the valley to the river overnight, sound like thunder".
They whizzed all the way, and arrived at the far north of Beijing under the surprised eyes of officials and people on both sides of the strait.
At the back of the Hall of Baohe, the Shibi in the middle of the imperial road is a whole piece of Aiye Qingshi, 17 meters long, 3 meters wide, 1.7 meters thick, and weighs more than 200 tons.
This huge rock was mined from Dashiwo in Liangxiang, southwest of Beijing. Regardless of the difficulty of excavation, tens of thousands of workers were recruited for transportation alone.
This boulder, which tens of thousands of people can’t move, can only be selected in the cold winter months. First dig a well every other mile on both sides of the road, and then draw water from the well to form an ice path, then pull it forward and push it back. It took 28 days to transport the stone to the construction site and finally carved it into a stone.
The floor tiles of Miyagi come from Suzhou, the land of fish and rice.
The quality of the soil in Suzhou is good and the workmanship is fine. The Ministry of Industry finally selected Yuyao Village, Lumu Town, Suzhou to produce floor tiles.
The soil quality here is excellent, the firing is well-shaped, and the bricks produced are fine-grained. "There is a sound when knocking, but no holes are broken." Zhu Dici named this place "Imperial Kiln Village", and the bricks produced by the Imperial Kiln were named "Golden Brick".
Why is clay brick named golden brick?
One theory is that the finished product of the gold brick is hard and has a metallic texture, and it makes a metallic sound when it is struck, hence the name of the gold brick; the other theory is that the gold brick is strictly produced, exquisitely made, and complicated in the process, from borrowing soil and practicing mud to producing It takes a year and a half to polish the kiln, and hundreds of days to burn it.
The finished product out of the kiln must be of fine physique, with good edges and corners, and discard any flaws.
Every gold brick delivered to the construction site is extremely expensive and the price is the same as gold.
Every building material is carefully crafted and refined, and ten years of time have passed without knowing it.
"The power of the world" is nothing more than this.
2
The whole is overlaid on the Yuan Dynasty imperial palace
During this period, Zhu Di's magnificent blueprint was gradually laid out, expeditioning the grasslands to the north and going to the South Seas to the west, establishing rules and regulations, and breaking the law.
In the fourteenth year of Yongle (1416), Emperor Zhu Di unified the thought of moving the capital, and selected "the north is located in the Yong, the west is the Taihang, the east is connected to the mountains and the sea, the south is down to the central plains, the fertile fields are thousands of miles, the mountains and rivers form victory, enough to control the four barbarians and the world" The capital of all ages-Beijing, is the new capital of the Ming Dynasty ("Ming Hui Yao").
Everything is ready, but work is due.
In February of the following year, the construction of the new capital with Taining Hou Chensi as the main and Liu Sheng and Wang Tong as the deputy officially started.
On the basis of the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty clarified the pattern of the "three-city system" of Beijing. The outermost part of the city was the "Guocheng" composed of the inner city and the outer city. The moat surrounded the tall city wall.
The former Sanmen Avenue divides the inner and outer cities. The south side of the street is the outer city, also known as the "South City" of Beijing; the north of the street is the inner city.
There are three gates on the south wall of the inner city, and two gates for the east and the west. There are nine gates in total. The imperial city is in the middle and south of the inner city.
Within the imperial city, the imperial government offices and institutions related to the imperial family gathered.
The imperial city starts from Chang'an Avenue in the south, to Di'anmen Avenue (then called Beihuangchenggen) in the north, to the east Huangchenggen, and to the west Huangchenggen.
The four streets form a regular north-south vertical rectangle. Because the Yuan Dynasty Dacien Temple was built in the southwest, a small rectangle is recessed in the southwest corner, which is now the area enclosed by Fuyou Street and Lingjing Hutong.
The folks called the city of Beijing as "Imperial City Root".
The imperial city opened four gates. The main gate is Chengtianmen (Tiananmen) at the south end, the north gate is called Di'anmen, and the east and west are Donganmen and Xi'an.
The imperial city has four gates, and the inner city has nine gates. The folks also refer to the city of Beijing as the "four-nine city".
Chen Si and others evacuated the buildings in the imperial city, moved the residents out, began to pave various streets, build various government offices, and build the palace city in the central and southern part of the core.
The emperor was the son of heaven, and he was transported by heaven to serve as herdsmen.
From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the prosperous Tang, the palace where the emperor lived imitated the Ziweiyuan where the emperor lived and called the palace the "Purple Palace".
The planned Miyagi is named "Forbidden City". The name of the Forbidden City has no legal text and no public plaque, but it is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people under the blessing of the imperial power and the spread of folk customs.
Most of the selected areas of the Forbidden City coincide with the Yuan Dynasty imperial palace.
After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yan King Zhu Di of Peking feudal clan built the Yan King Mansion on the foundation of the Yuan Palace.
Many Yuan Palace buildings were used in Yanwang Mansion, with some modifications.
The planned Forbidden City certainly cannot be as simple as the royal palace.
The first thing Chen Si and others need to do is to completely suppress the "wangqi" of the Yuan Dynasty.
People completely destroyed the Yan Palace, and the old buildings of the Yuan Dynasty disappeared.
The Forbidden City, which rose up later, covered the entire palace of the Yuan Dynasty.
After destroying the ground buildings, people went on to plan out the foundation of the Yuan Dynasty imperial palace, rammed the foundation again, and then manually backfilled it.
This method of rebuilding the foundation as a whole is commonly known as "full house", and the new foundation is called "a piece of jade."
The old foundation of the Yuan Dynasty was dug away as a whole, and the craftsmen backfilled them according to a layer of notoginseng lime soil and a layer of broken bricks.
The so-called "notoginseng lime soil" is prepared by mixing quicklime and clay in the proportion of 31003d17.
Why not backfill all the dust?
Layers of broken bricks and lime-soil are stacked and compacted, which can reduce the hidden danger of building settlement in the future.
In addition, the new foundation does not count the cost. Sprinkle cooked glutinous rice juice and alum on the well-matched panax notoginseng dust.
The sticky glutinous rice is mixed into the lime soil to enhance the integrity and flexibility of the foundation, making the new foundation a hard whole, completely avoiding uneven settlement of future buildings.
The Forbidden City was built on a huge, complete artificial foundation.
After measurement, the shallowest part of the new foundation is about 3 meters, and the deepest part is about 8 meters.
The foundation underneath the core building is thicker, and the other sections are relatively thin.
This kind of layered and compacted foundation is difficult to level off with picks and shovels.
Around the foundation, the craftsmen also dug a square moat, named "Tongzi River".
The old foundations of the Yuan imperial palace and the newly dug mud from the moat. The amount of earthwork was quite large. Together with construction waste, people built a hill with an east-west ridge in the middle section of the northern moat, named "Longsui Mountain" (now Jingshan). ).
Wansui Mountain is narrow from north to south, like a screen, shielding the Forbidden City to the south.
The peak of Long Live Mountain, facing the central line of the palace, is not only the geometric center of Beijing's inner city, but also the commanding height of the city.
There is Wanchun Pavilion, standing on the platform of Wanchun Pavilion, you can overlook the imperial palace and look at the nine cities.
Wansui Mountain is not only a rockery, but also has a special function: under this artificial mountain is the Yanchun Pavilion, the emperor’s palace of the Yuan Dynasty. The emperor of the Ming Dynasty used a waste hill to press on the bed of the former emperor to "suppress" .
And in this way, the Forbidden City is in a good place with mountains and waters, negative yin and yang.
It is hard to describe the hard work of the builders in words, and it is hard for posterity to imagine the amount of work.
The direct construction of the Forbidden City is the two or three hundred thousand recruited migrant workers and guards and soldiers. If you count the surrounding participants, the total number of construction teams should exceed one million.
The history contains "millions of people, serving in officials all the year round".
After the original building materials arrived in the capital, five secondary processing factories were built inside and outside the imperial city, and off-site processing was used to reduce the pressure on the Forbidden City.
These five factories are Shenmu Factory, Damu Factory, Taiji Factory, Heiyao Factory and Liuli Factory, and continue to deliver semi-finished products to the Forbidden City under construction.
3
Many unknown craftsmen contribute their ingenuity
Who is the designer of the Forbidden City?
This is one of many unsolved mysteries about the Forbidden City.
Song Li, Chen Si, and others were imperial officials who were ordered to build the Forbidden City, not designers, nor were they first-line builders.
Someone mentioned that the Forbidden City was designed by the eunuch Ruan An.
Nguyen An came from Jiao Chi (now in Vietnam). He was smart and capable. He had research and ingenuity in traditional Chinese construction methods. When building Beijing, he was ordered to design the city, palace and Baisi Mansion.
According to the historical records, Ruan An “measures the mind with the aim, understands the Chinese regulations, and the Ministry of Industry only follows them.” He was inspired by the cricket cage to design the corner tower of the Forbidden City.
Ruan An has made a lot of contributions to the design of the Forbidden City, but the overall layout of the palace city cannot be designed by a single eunuch.
Ruan An’s contribution is focused on the micro level.
Others say that the Suzhou Kuai family is the designer of the Forbidden City.
Kuai Siming is the queen architect admired by Zhu Di, and has participated in the construction of Nanjing Imperial Palace and Forbidden City.
His son Kuaifu served as the "Head of Woodworker" in the Forbidden City, similar to the chief craftsman.
Their hometown—Xiangshan, Wu County, on the shore of Taihu Lake, has the production capacity of craftsmen, and there is a saying that "the Jiangnan woodworkers are all from Xiangshan".
Kuaifu organized the "Xiangshan Gang", an architectural army mainly composed of fellow villagers, and became the main force for the restoration of the Forbidden City in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
After Kuaifu returned to his hometown in old age, Kuai Xiangzi took over his father's business and became the head of woodworking.
Soon after the construction of the Forbidden City, there were many serious fires, and the three main halls and the harem were almost destroyed.
Kuai Xiang was in Beijing for more than 40 years, and he presided over the restoration of these buildings during the Zhengtong and Chenghua years, and also built the emperor's tombs in the early Ming Dynasty.
He is proficient in scale calculation, and the actual scene after the completion of the project is exactly the same as the design before the construction. The tenon-and-mortise frame is closely intertwined, and is known as the "Kui Luban".
Kuaixiang rendered Jiangnan architectural art into Beijing's royal mansions, and the magnificent palaces and pavilions added a lot of gentleness and refinement.
But the three generations of Kuaixiang's ancestors and grandchildren are still not the designers of the Forbidden City.
Those nameless craftsmen who inherited Chinese skills and paid silently are the real designers of the Forbidden City.
Traditional Chinese architecture has a long history and a deep accumulation.
The Forbidden City Project provides a stage for craftsmen, migrant workers, and soldiers to display their ingenuity.
For example, the craftsmen scientifically calculated “the pillars are one foot high and the eaves are three feet tall” based on the angle of the sun’s shadows in winter and summer in Beijing. The ideal effect of full sunlight around the winter solstice.
In addition, the thick and wide herringbone roof, the closely-fitted masonry walls, and the 30 cm thick mud back layer layered by the craftsmen on the base of the roof planks make Miyagi houses warm in winter and cool in summer. Both are the embodiment of the architectural wisdom of the working people on the Forbidden City.
In November of the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), the Forbidden City wall, Zuo Zu You She, and the main building were completed, marking that the Forbidden City officially entered the historical stage.
"Da Ming Huidian" records that the Forbidden City is a vertical rectangle from north to south, with two hundred and thirty-six meters from east to west and three hundred and two.95 from north to south.
In a broad sense, the Forbidden City includes the Wansui Mountain in the north, Taimiao in the southeast, and Sheji altar in the southwest, in addition to the city surrounded by the Tongzi River. It also includes the Xiyuan and Dongyuan that are closely related to the functions and history of the Forbidden City.
4
Today's Museum of the Imperial City
From the time when Ming Chengzu Zhu Di entered the Forbidden City in 1421, to the time when Xuantong Emperor Puyi was "invited out" by the National Army in 1924, the Forbidden City had 24 masters in the Forbidden City for 500 years.
Among them, 14 emperors of the Ming Dynasty and 10 emperors of the Qing Dynasty.
In February 1912, the Aixinjueluo family abandoned Jiangshan Sheji.
The accompanying "Regulations on Preferential Treatment for the Qing Dynasty" allowed the abdicated Pu Yi to stay in the Harem of the Forbidden City and continue to own the Imperial Palace on the outskirts of Beijing until the National Army expelled Pu Yi from the palace in 1924.
After Puyi withdrew from the Forbidden City, the government of the Republic of China established the "Cleaning House Rehabilitation Committee" to formally take over.
The royal prohibition began to open to ordinary people.
On October 10, 1925, more than 20,000 ordinary people on the move to make a living poured into the 500-year-old Forbidden City, which became a museum for the common people from the emperor’s "home".
On this day, the Forbidden City has a new name-the Forbidden City.
"The Palace Museum" was formally established and became a full-time department responsible for managing the Forbidden City.
On the eve of the full-scale outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Palace Museum initiated the southward movement of cultural relics in 1933.
The staff selected more than 10,000 boxes of cultural relics, books, and archives in five batches to avoid the enemy.
After more than ten years, the treasures of the Forbidden City began to drift away legendary in Shanghai, Nanjing, Luoyang and Southwest.
When Peking was peacefully liberated in 1949, the Forbidden City was dilapidated, many palaces collapsed, and garbage and waste piled up.
Fortunately, with the improvement of my country's comprehensive national strength and the development of cultural undertakings, the Forbidden City has ushered in all-round development. Not only has it reproduced the former palace pattern, it has become a Chinese cultural business card for tourists.
In 1961, the Forbidden City became the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
Today, the cultural relics preserved in the Forbidden City account for about one-sixth of the national cultural relics, making it the largest museum in my country.
In 1987, the Forbidden City was listed as a "World Cultural Heritage" by UNESCO.
The Forbidden City is the largest surviving palace in China and the world as well as the largest wooden building complex.