Jean Luc D.

                   

Forbidden City History

The Forbidden City is the world’s largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures covering an area of 180 acres.  The complex consists of 980 buildings.  It is located in the old centre of Beijing, China.   The Forbidden City was built to protect and house the Emperors of China for nearly 500 years, doing the two imperial dynasties, the Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty. It was home to 24 Emperors.  The Emperor’s residence was built as a replica of the Purple Palace, where god was thought to live.

 

Now, you might be wondering, If it is so huge, and was built so long ago, then how did they build it?   Well, it was built between 1406 and 1420. Jiang Li,an engineer, translated a document telling how it was made.    They built it by workers sliding stones over slabs of wet ice. The blocks came from a quarry about 4.3 miles away from the worksite.  People in China had been using the spoked wheel since 1500 B.C, so it was commonly thought that colossal stones like that would be transported by a wheeled cart or wagon, not something like a sled. The heaviest of the giant stones, named the large stone carving, weighs more than 220 tons, but once weighed more than 330 tons.  It also said that they would dig a well every 1,600 feet to wet the ice to make it more slippery.

The Forbidden City has a unique history.  After the Second Opium War, Empress Dowager Cixi had to flee from the Forbidden City during the Boxer Rebellion, leaving it to forces of treaty powers until the following year.  It was home to 24 Emperors, 10 of the Qing dynasty and 14 of the Ming dynasty.  Puyi, the last Emperor of China, remained the inner court while the outer court was given to the public, until he got killed and the public took over the inner court.  There were no more Emperors after that.

If you go to the Forbidden City now, it is mostly the Palace Museum.  The Palace Museum was established in the Forbidden City after Puyi was evicted.  In 1933, the Japanese invaded China, forcing the evacuation of national treasures. Part of the treasure collection was returned at the end of World War II, but the other part was evacuated to Taiwan in 1948, from orders of Chiang Kai-Shek, whose Kuomintang army was losing the Chinese civil war. The collection of artifacts was built upon Imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties.   Part of the museum’s former collection is in the national palace museum in Taipei.  Both museums were descended from the same institution, but were split up after the Chinese Civil War.

The palace itself consist of:  Meridian Gate, Gate of Divine Might, West Glorious

Gate, Corner Towers, Gate of Supreme Harmony, Hall of Supreme Harmony, Hall of Military Eminence, Hall of Literary Glory, Southern Three Palaces, Palace of Heavenly Purity, Imperial Garden, Hall of Mental Cultivation, and Palace of Tranquil Longevity. These names are very important to Chinese culture.  In my opinion, as a researcher, the names are intriguing.

The walls are 7.9 meters high.  The palace has a moat that is 6 meters deep, by 52 meters wide. The walls of the palace are 8.62 meters wide at the bottom and 6.66 meters high at the top  with beautiful trim-work to top it off. It really is a magnificent palace.