Posted: June 27th, 2015

The Forbidden City

Outline

1. Introduction
2. History

• Description

1. Walls and Gates
2. Outer court
3. Inner court

• Conclusion
• References

 

 

 

The Forbidden City

Introduction

            The Forbidden City was historically used as the official residence of all the Chinese dynasty emperors dating back from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. The Forbidden City is situated right at the middle of Beijing city in china and currently plays host to one of the biggest museums in the world known as the palace museum. It is estimated that for the five centuries, the Forbidden City has served as the official residence of the Emperor and all the members of his household including cooks, guards and family members; it is also used as the official ceremonial and political venue for the Chinese government. The expansive building was built from 1406 and was finally completed in in 1420; the enormous complex comprises of about 980 surviving buildings including 8707 compartments and occupies an estimated 720,000 square metres. The Forbidden City was pronounced as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1987 and is currently listed as the biggest collection of preserved ancient architecture built of wooden structures in the entire world. The Forbidden City has been under the control of the palace museum from 1924, which hosts an extensive collection of artefacts and artwork created from the imperial compendiums of the Qing and Ming dynasties. Some of the museums original collection is now found at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Although both museums originate from the same institution they were separated after the Chinese civil war (MobileReference, 2010).

History

            The Forbidden City as it is commonly referred to or known is a translation from the Chinese name Zijin Cheng which literally means a purple forbidden city. It is also referred to in different circles as the forbidden palace. The name Zijin Cheng is filled with a lot of significance on various levels. The term Zi or purple relates to the North Star, which was traditionally referred to in ancient china as the Ziwei star and in ancient Chinese astrology was regarded as the domicile of the celestial Emperor. The neighbouring celestial enclosure, known as the Ziwei enclosure, was the domain of the celestial emperor and his household. The Forbidden City symbolises the domain of the terrestrial emperor, which is the earthly counterpart of the celestial emperor. In recent times the site has been referred to as the Gugong which means the former palace in Chinese. The museum which is housed in these buildings is known as the palace museum (MobileReference, 2010).

The site upon which the Forbidden City is built was once a section of the imperial city during the reign of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. When the Ming dynasty was established, the Hongwu emperor shifted the capital city from the north, Beijing to the south, Nanjing, and instructed that the palaces belonging to the Mongol be demolished to pave way for the new palace. When his son Zhu Di took over as emperor, he transferred the capital city to Beijing, and began the construction of the Forbidden City in 1406. Construction of the Forbidden City took about 15 years, and is estimated to have ben built by about a million labourers. The materials used in the construction included whole logs from the prestigious Phoebe zhennan tree located in the dense jungles of south-western china, and also encompassed huge blocks of marble from the big quarries neighbouring Beijing. The floors of the main compartments were surfaced with golden bricks, which were specially baked surfacing bricks from Suzhou (Leffman, Lewis & Atiyah, 2003).

The Forbidden City served as the throne of the Ming dynasty from 1420 to 1644, after which it was finally captured by the rebel forces lead by Li Zicheng in April 1644, who later went on to pronounce himself as the emperor of the Shun dynasty. This was short lived as he soon ran away before the allied forces of the former Ming general Wu Sangui and Manchu armies, setting ablaze some sections of the Forbidden City in his escape. By late October, the Manchus had already conquered most of northern china, and a celebration was held within the Forbidden City to inaugurate the young Shunzhi as the emperor and leader of all china under the Qing dynasty. The Qing leaders changed the names of the major buildings, to accentuate harmony rather than supremacy, changed the name plates to bilingual i.e. they were written in Chinese and Manchu, and instituted shamanist rudiments to the palace (Barmé, 2008).

In 1912 the last known emperor of china Puyi renounced, and following an agreement made with the new republic of china, Puyi continued to reside in the inner court, as the outer court was handed over for public utilisation, but he was finally dispossessed after a coup in 1924. It at this point in time when the palace museum was finally established inside the Forbidden City. In 1933 during the Japanese invasion of china, it necessitated the evacuation of all the artefact collections from the Forbidden City. A section of the collection found its way back after the end of the Second World War, but other artefacts were transferred to Taiwan in 1947 under the instructions of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang forces at the verge of loosing the Chinese civil war. This comparatively small but immensely collection of remarkable quality currently forms the foundation of the national palace museum exhibition in Taipei (MobileReference, 2010).

After the formation of the people’s republic of china, considerable damage was remitted to the Forbidden City as the nation was overwhelmed by a revolutionary vehemence. Throughout the Cultural Revolution however, the premier Zhou Enlai assigned an army battalion to safeguard the Forbidden City which ensured that no further destruction would fall upon the city. The Forbidden City was finally declared by UNESCO in 1987 to be a world heritage site due to its importance status in the development of the ancient Chinese culture and architecture. It is currently under the administration of the palace museum, which is engaged in a restoration program to reinstate the buildings of the Forbidden City to their original state prior to the 1912 state. Religion was a significant part of life in the Forbidden City, during the Qing dynasty, the palace of earthly harmony was a worship venue for the Manchu shamanist ceremonies. The dominant form of religion during the Qing dynasty was Lamaism or Tibetan Buddhism. Several temples and shrines were distributed throughout the inner court (Leffman, Lewis & Atiyah, 2003).

Description

            The Forbidden City can be described as the world’s biggest existing palace multiplex and occupies an area of about 72ha. It has 980 existing buildings with 8707 halls or bays. It is rectangular in shape, the longest side running from north to south and the width running from east to west, it dimensions are 961metreres by 753metres. The Forbidden City was constructed as the pivot or core of the ancient, stone walled capital of Beijing. It is surrounded by a bigger, walled area known as the imperial city, which is in turn encircled by the inner city and towards the south is the outer city. The Forbidden City is still significant in the civic structure of Beijing. The principal north-south axis is still used as the core axis of Beijing. This axis stretches towards the south via the Tiananmen gate to Tiananmen Square, which is the official ceremonial venue of the people’s republic of china. Towards the north it stretches via the Bell and Drum towers through to Yongdingmen. Surprisingly this axis is not precisely aligned north-south, but is rather skewed slightly by two degrees. Researchers and scholars argue that the axis was structured in the Yuan dynasty to be affiliated with Xanadu, which was the other city of the empire (Holdsworth, Courtauld & Hu, 2008).

 

Holdsworth, Courtauld & Hu, (2008).Bottom of Form

 

Walls and Gates

            The Forbidden City is enclosed by a city wall standing at 7.9 metres high and a trench that is six metres deep, 52 metres breadth. The walls breadth at the base is approximated at 8.62 metres, attenuating to 6.66 metres at the tip. These massive walls were used as both defensive and retaining walls respectively. The walls are built from rammed earth core, and paved with three stratums of especially hardened bricks on either side, with the crevices filled of mortar. Situated on the four corners of the wall are towers with sophisticated roofs boasting of 72 elevations, forming a replica of prince Teng pavilion and the pavilion of Yellow Crane as they are depicted in the Song dynasty paintings. The towers were the most noticeable sections of the palace to commoners beyond the walls, and a lot mythology is attached to them. According to one myth, artisans could not restore a corner tower after it was razed to the ground during renovations during the early Qing dynasty; it was only restored after the intermediation of carpenter –immortal Lu Ban (MobileReference, 2010).

The walls of the Forbidden City are broken by gates on either side. To the south is the meridian gate; situated on the northern end is the gate of divine might which is right in front of the Jingshan Park. The east and west gates are referred to as the west glorious and the east glorious gates respectively. All the gates of the Forbidden City are embellished by a nine-by-nine display of golden door nails, apart from the eastern gate, which is decorated with only eight rows. The meridian gate has two obtruding wings creating three edges of a square before it. The gate is endowed with five gateways. The middle gateway is a section of the imperial gateway, a stone surfaced path that forms the core axis between the ancient city of Beijing and the Forbidden City, and projects from the gate of china from the southern end all the way to Jingshan Park in the northern end. Only the emperor had the privileged of riding or walking through the imperial way, an exception for the empress was made during her wedding and also for successive scholars after success in the imperial examinations (Leffman, Lewis & Atiyah, 2003).

 

Source: Barmé, (2008).

 

 

 

Outer court

            The Forbidden City is basically divided in to two traditional sections. The front court or commonly referred to as the outer court which predominantly includes the southern parts, and was mainly used for ceremonial functions. The back palace or commonly referred to as the inner court which comprises sections of the north, was primarily used as the official residence of the emperor and his household, and also carried out every day businesses of the state. Generally the Forbidden City is encompassed by three vertical axes. The principle buildings are located on the central north-south axis. As one goes through the meridian gate, it leads to a large square speared by the snaking inner golden water river, which is traversed by five bridges. Situated beyond the square is the gate of supreme harmony, and through this gate one encounters the hall of supreme harmony square. A three-tiered white marble patio emerges from this square. Three halls are situated at the top of this patio, which is the nucleus of the palace multiplex. These halls stem from the south and are named the hall of supreme harmony, the hall of preserving harmony and the hall of central harmony (Leffman, Lewis & Atiyah, 2003).

Source: Moffett, Fazio and Wodehouse (2003).

The hall of supreme harmony is the biggest and is about 30 metres higher than the level of the neighbouring square. It was used as the ceremonial core of imperial power, and is probably the largest existing wooden structure in china. It is nine alcoves wide and five alcoves deep, the figures nine and five are allegorically connected to the magnificence of the Emperor. Positioned in the ceiling at the Middle of the hall is an elaborate caisson beautified with a coiled dragon, of which emerges a chandelier like array of metal balls referred to as Xuanyuan Mirror. During the Ming dynasty, hall was used by the emperor to deliberate state business. In the Qing dynasty, the emperors did not hold court frequently, so the hall of supreme harmony was predominantly used for ceremonial functions, such as imperial weddings, investitures and coronations (Moffett, Fazio & Wodehouse, 2003).

The hall of central harmony is generally smaller in size, and is square in shape, and was mainly used by the emperor to rest and prepare before or during official ceremonies. The hall behind it known as the hall of preserving harmony, was mainly used as a place for rehearsing official ceremonies, and was also the venue of the final phase of the imperial examinations. All the three halls are characterised by imperial thrones, but the largest and most sumptuous is found in the hall of supreme harmony. At the middle of the ramps heading up to the patios from the northern and southern edges are ceremonial ramps, which form a section of the imperial way, exhibiting elaborate and allegoric bas-relief carvings. The northern ramp at the back of the hall of preserving harmony is sculptured from a single block of stone which is 16.57 metres long, 1.7 metres thick and 3.07 metres wide and weighs approximately 200 tonnes and is probably the largest carving of its kind in china (Holdsworth, Courtauld & Hu, 2008).

The southern ramp found at the frontage of the hall of supreme harmony, is even more extensive, but is carved from two blocks of stone; the joint is creatively concealed by use of overlapping bas-relief carvings, and only became visible after weathering exposed the gap in the 20^th century. Towards the south west and south east of the front court are located the halls of military eminence as well as literary glory. The former was mostly used on various occasions by the emperor to receive guests and ministers, and it subsequently housed the printing house of the palace. The latter mostly used as a venue for holding ceremonial lectures by highly decorated Confucian intellectuals, and subsequently the office of the grand secretariat. Located to the north-east are three palaces that served as the official residence to the crowned prince (Barmé, 2008).

Inner court

            The inner court is estranged from the outer court by quadrilateral courtyard slouching orthogonal to the city’s principle axis. It was used as the residence of the emperor and his family. During the Qing dynasty the emperor nearly exclusively lived and discharged his duties from the inner court as the outer court was predominantly used for ceremonial functions. In the middle of the inner court, there are three halls, namely the palace of earthly tranquillity, the hall of union, and the palace of heavenly purity. These halls are generally smaller when compared to the outer court halls. The emperor who symbolised Yang and the heavens resided in the palace of heavenly purity, where as the empress who symbolised Yin resided in the palace of earthly tranquillity. Between the two halls was the hall of union where the emperor and the empress merged to produce harmony (Moffett, Fazio & Wodehouse, 2003).

The palace of heavenly purity which was the emperor’s residence is a double attired building, and structured on a single-layer white marble podium. It is linked to the gate of heavenly purity towards the south via an elevated walkway. During the Ming dynasty it was the emperors residence, however, starting from the Yongzheng emperor from the Qing dynasty, the emperors residence changed to the smaller hall of mental cultivation situated to the west, as a tribute to the Kangxi Emperor. Subsequently the palace of heavenly purity was used as an audience hall by the emperor. A caisson is cast on the roof, showcasing a coiled dragon. Over the imperial throne, dangles a tablet written on it, justice and honour (Barmé, 2008).

The palace of earthly tranquillity has a double attired roof, is 9 alcoves wide and 3 alcoves deep. During the Ming dynasty it was used as the official residence of the empress. During the reign of the Qing dynasty, large sections of the palace were transformed into shamanist worship venues by the new Manchu leaders. Since the rule of Yongzheng Emperor, the residence of the empress was removed for the palace. However two halls in the palace of earthly harmony were reserved for the emperor during his wedding night. Between the two palaces there exists the hall of union, which has a square structure with a pyramidal roof. Preserved in this hall are the 25 imperial seals used by the Qing dynasty, and other related ceremonial artefacts. The imperial garden is located behind the three halls, it is considerably small, and dense in design, however the garden includes various elaborate landscaping structures. The gate of divine is located to the north of the garden (MobileReference, 2010).

Conclusion

The Forbidden City which is a consummation of the progression of Chinese and east Asian architecture for the last 2000 years, has been instrumental in the subsequent progression of Chinese architecture, as well as providing motivation for numerous modern constructions. It wide array of interior decoration paves the way for more innovation in the decoration of buildings in this modern era.

 

References

Barmé, G. (2008). The Forbidden City. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Holdsworth, M., Courtauld, C., & Hu, C. (2008). Forbidden City: The great within. London: Frances Lincoln.

Leffman, D., Lewis, S., & Atiyah, J. (2003). China. London: Rough Guides.

MobileReference, . (2010). Travel Beijing, China: Illustrated Guide, Phrasebook and Maps. Boston: MobileReference.com.

Moffett, M., Fazio, M., & Wodehouse, L. (2003). A world history of architecture. London: King.

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