26th August 2009
BEIJING: DREAM COME TRUE! FORBIDDEN CITY
The much awaited day has arrived, our trip to the Forbidden City. We caught a taxi there for about £1.30GBP and rolled up in the midday heat with about 4 million Chinese tourists. The taxis have got to be the only cheap thing about China. The Forbidden City has a £10GBP entry fee, which is quite reasonable considering we paid £2.50GBP in Guilin to see a rock that looked ever so slightly like an elephant’s trunk!
The Forbidden City (or Gu Gong as it is known in Chinese) is in the centre of Beijing. It was the Imperial Palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties and is the world’s largest Palace complex. The Place is surrounded by a six meter deep moat, which in olden days they fully utilised to get from one end of the Forbidden City to the other. A 10m high wall surrounds the entire complex. The bricks are made from white lime and glutinous rice and the cement made from glutinous rice and egg whites. These materials apparently made the walls extraordinarily strong. Within the walls there are 9,999 rooms.
Forbidden city:
I stole the above pic from http://famouswonders.com/the-forbidden-city/ because it was so good.
Internally, the Forbidden City is divided into two parts: 1. The southern section/ Outer Court was where the emperor ruled the nation by holding court and issuing decrees etc. 2. The northern section/ Inner Court was where he lived with Mrs Emperor and the hundreds of other bitches he owned. 14 emperors of the Ming dynasty and 10 emperors of the Qing dynasty lived there, until 1924 when the last emperor of China was driven from the Inner Court.
The complex was created in 1407, when the third Ming emperor, YungLo, created “one of the most dazzling architectural masterpieces in the world”. His three architects, Hsu Tai, Yuan An and Feng Chiao, were given the brief to build an extravagant set of palaces to serve as the emperor’s metropolis. Audience halls and temples were required, as well as large domestic quarters with gardens for the Emperor, his family and his administrative staff. The Emperor followed three types of religion: Buddhism, Lamaism and Taoism, so 3 different kinds of temples were built. It was completed fourteen years later in 1420.
1 million workers, including one hundred thousand artisans, were driven into the long-term hard labour to complete it. The complex was constructed in accordance with ancient rules of spatial design. These rules were first used during the Han dynasty to build the city of Xi’an (Terracotta Warriors) between 206 BC and AD 220.
The rules specified that the principal buildings should be aligned along a straight axis from south to north, flanked by a symmetrical arrangement of minor structures. The chilling north was regarded as a harmful direction because all invasions of China had come from the north. It represented evil spirits, cold winds and wicked warriors. Hence, nearly all the buildings in the Forbidden City face south, the direction of holiness. The only pavilions facing north were for the emperor’s rejected concubines… consider yourself told!
Yellow is the dominant colour in the Forbidden City and China, it represents power Royal family and symbolises supreme status and power . Roofs are built with yellow glazed tiles; decorations in the palace are painted yellow; even the bricks on the ground are yellow. Only one building is exempt from the rule; Wenyuange, the royal library, has a black roof. This is because it was believed that black represented water and could extinguish fire – thus saving the books. Unfortunately, this failed to work and most of the buildings have been burned down and rebuilt at least 4 times.
At the south entrance of the complex, there are 5 entrances in a row. A large central entrance flanked by 2 others either side. The middle entrance has a marble road, lying precisely central and running from outside the Complex walls into the Palace. There were strict rules to follow for entering the Forbidden City, and the central tunnel was the emperors’ exclusive privilege. The Empresses were only allowed to enter through the central opening once – on their wedding day.
For me, being obsessed with China, in particular the time of the Emperors and Empresses, to experience the Forbidden City was quite emotionally overwhelming. You could literally walk right up to the windows of the various Royal accommodations which still contain beds, fabrics, mirrors and other furniture – exactly as was there originally. China did not disappoint, it was simply stunning and has been one of my highlights of the entire trip.
Well done China, you may have redeemed yourself.
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