The Fobidden City

The Gugong, or Imperial Palace, is much better known by its unofficial title, th Forbidden City, a reference to its exclusivity.Indeed, for the five centuries of its operation, through the reigns of 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, ordinary Chinese were forbidden from even approaching the walls of the palace. Today the complex is open to visitors daily 8.30am-6.oopm, The Gugong, or Imperial Palace, is much better known by its unofficial title, the Forbidden City, a reference to its exclusivity.

Indeed, for the five centuries of its operation, through the reigns of 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, ordinary Chinese were forbidden from even approaching the walls of the palace. Today the complex is open to visitors daily 8.30am-Spin, with last admission at 3.30pm in winter, 4pm in sunnner (RMB40, RMB60 including the special exhibitions). Note that the entrance is quite a way after Tian’anmen; just keep on past the souveir stalls till you can’t go any further.
As well as the main entrance under Tian’anmen you can also come in through the snaaller north and east gates.You have the freedom of most of the hundred-hectare site, though not all of the buildings, which are labelled in English. If you want detailed explanation of everything you see, you can tag on to one of the numerous tour groups or buy one of the many specialist books on sale. The audio tour (RMB30), available by the main gate, is also worth considering. You’re provided with a cassette player and headphones and suavely talked through the com plex by Roger Moore - though if you do this, it’s worth retracing your steps afterwards for an untutored view. Useful bus routes serving the Forbidden City are #5 from Qianmen, and #54 from Beijing Zhan, or you could use # 1, which passes the com- plex on its journey along Chang’an Jie. You can get to the back gate on buses #101, #103 or #109. The nearest subways are Tian’anmen west and east. Ifyou’re in a taxi, you can save yourself the walk across Tian’anmen Square by asking to be dropped at the east gate.

Some history

After the Manchu dynasty fell in 1911, the Forbidden City began to fall into disrepair, exacerbated by heavy looting of artefacts and jewels by the Japanese in the 1930s and again by the Nationalists, prior to their flight to Taiwan, in 1949.A programme of restoration has been under way for decades, and today the complex is in better shape than it was for most of the last century, in the interests of more than two million visitors a year. It’s big enough to fill several separate visits, and its elegance on such a massive scale is extraordinary.
The complex, with its maze of eight hundred buildings and reputed nine thousand chambers, was the symbolic and literal heart of the capital, and of the empire too. From within, the emperors, the Sons of Heaven, issued commands with absolute authority to their miUions of subjects.Very rarely did they emerge - perhaps with good reason. Their lives, right down to the fall of the Manchu in the twentieth century, were governed by an extraordinarily developed taste for luxury and excess. It is estimated that a single meal for a Qing emperor could have fed several thousand of his impoverished peasants, a scale obviously appreciated by the last influential Manchu, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who herself would commonly order preparation of one hundred or more dishes. Sex, too, provided starding statistics, with Ming-dynasty harems numbering a population of only just below five figures.
Although the earliest structures on the Forbidden City site began with Kublai Khan during the Mongol dynasty, the plan (and originals) of the Imperial Palace buildings are essentially Ming. Most date to the fifteenth century and the ambitions of the EmperorYongle, the monarch responsible for switching the capital back to Beijing in i403. The halls were laid out according to geomantic theories - in accordance to the yin and yang, the balance of negative and positive - and since they stood at the exact centre of Beijing, and Beijing
was considered the centre of the universe, the harmony was supreme.

The palace complex constantly reiterates such references, alongside personal symbols of imperial power such as the dragon and phoenix (emperor and empress)and the crane and turtle (longevity of reign).

Entering the complex

Once through Tian’anmen, you find yourself on a long walkway, with the moated palace complex and massive Wumen gate directly ahead (this is where you buy your ticket). The two parks either side, Zhongshan and the People’s Cultm-e Park (both daily 6am-9pm) are great places to chill out away from the rigorous formality outside. The Workers’ Culture Palace (RMB5), on the eastern side, which was symbolically named in defe- rence to the fact that only with the Communist takeover in 1949 were ordinary Chinese allowed within this
central sector of their city, has a number of modern exhibition halls (sometimes worth checking) and ascat- tering of original fifteenth-century structures, most of them Ming or Qing ancestral temples. The hall at the back often holds prestigious art exhibitions. The western Zhongshan Park (茂驴楼1) boasts the remains of the Altar of Land and Grain, a biennial sacrificial site with harvest functions closely related to those of the Temple of Heaven (see p.105).
The Wumen (Meridian Gate) itself is the largest and grandest of the Forbidden City gates and was reserved for the emperor’s sole use. From its vantage point, the Sons of Heaven would announce the new year’s calendar to their court and in times of war inspect the army. It was customary for victoriotis generals returning from battle to present their prisoners here for the emperor to decide their fate. He would be flanked, on all such iinperial occasions, by a guard of elephants, the gift of’Burmese subjects.

Passing through the Wumen you find yourself in a vast paved court, cut east-west by the Jinshui He, the Golden Water Stream, with its five marble bridges, decorated with carved torches, a symbol of masculinity. Beyond is a further ceremonial gate, the Taihemen, Gate of Supreme Harmony, its entrance guarded by a magisterial row of lions, and beyond this a still greater courtyard where the principal imperial audiences were held. Within this space the entire court, up to one hundred thousand people, could be accommodated. They would have made their way in through the lesser side gates military men from the west, civilian officials from the east - and waited in total silence as the emperor ascended his throne. Then, with only the Imperial Guard
remaining standing, they prostrated themselves nine times.

Inside the palace

The main ceremonial halls stand directly ahead, dominating the court. Raised on a three-tiered marble terrace is the first and most spectacular of the three, the Taihedian, Hall of Supreme Harmony. This was used for the most important state occasions, such as the emperor’s coronation or birthdays and the nomination of generals at the outset of a campaign, and last saw action in an armistice ceremony in 1918. It was proposed, though not carried through, that parliament with dragons and flanked by bronze incense burners, marks the path along withthe emperor’s chair was carried. His golden dragon throne stands within.

Eunuchs and concubines

For much of the imperial period, the Inner Court of the palace was the home of more than six thousand members of the royal household, around half of this number eunuchs. The castrated male was introduced into the imperial court as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the emperor’s offspring and as a radical solution to the problem of nepotism. In daily contact with the royals, they often rose to considerable power, but this was bought at the expense of their dreadfully Iow standing outside the confines of the court. Confucianism held that disfiguration of the body impaired the soul, and eunuchs were buried apart from their ancestors in special
graveyards outside the city. In the hope that they would still be buried “whole”, they kept and carried around their testicles in bags hung on their belts. They were usually recruited from the poorest families - attracted by the rare chance of amassing wealth other than by birth.
Scarcely less numerous were the concubines, whose status varied from wives and consorts to basic whores. They would be delivered to the emperor’s bed chamber, wrapped in yellow cloth, and carried by one of the eunuchs, since with feet bound they could hardly walk.

Moving on, you enter the Zhonghedian, Hall of Middle Harmony, another throne room, where the emperor performed ceremonies of greeting to foreigners and addressed the imperial offspring (products of several wives antnumerous concubines).The hall was used, too, as a dressing room, for the maim Taihedian events, and it was here that the emperor examined the seed for eachyear’s crop.

The third of the great halls, the Baohedian, Preserving Harmony Hall, was used for state banquets and imperial exanfinations, graduates fi-om which were appointed to positions of power in what was the first recognizably bureaucratic civil service. Its galleries, originally treasure houses, display various finds from
the site, though the rnost spectacular, a vast block carved with dragons and clouds, stands at the rear of the hall. This is a Ming creation, reworked in the eighteenth century, and it’s among thc finest carvings in the palace. It’s certainly the largest - a 250 tolme chunk of marble transported here from well outside the city by flooding the roads in winter to form sheets office.

To the north, paralleling the structure of the ceremonial halls, are the three principal palaces of the imperial living quarters. Again, the first chamber, the Qianqinggong, Palace of Heavenly Purity, is the most un-avagant. It was originally the imperial bedroom - its terrace is surmounted by incense burners in the form of cranes and tortoises (symbols of innnortality) - though it later became a conventional state room. Beyond, echoing the Zhonghedian in the ceremonial complex, is the Jiaotaidian, Hall of Union, the empress’s throne room, and finally the Kunninggong, Palace of Earthly Tranquillity, where the emperor and empress traditionally spent their wedding night. By law the emperor had to spend the first three nights of his marriage, and the first day of Chinese NewYear, with his wife. This palace is a bizarre building, partitioned in two. On the left is a large sacrificial room with its vats ready to receive offerings (1300 pigs a year under the Ming). The wedding chamber is a small room, off to one side, painted entirely in red, and covered with decorative emblems symbolizing fertility and joy. It was last pressed into operation in 1922 for the child wedding of PuYi, the final Manchu emperor, who, finding it “like a melted red wax candle”, decided that he preferred the MindNurture Palace and went back there.

The Mind Nurture Palace, or Yangxindiang, is one ora group of palaces to the west where emperors spent most of their time. Several of the palaces retain their furniture from the Manchu times, most of it ighteenth-century, and in one, the Changchundong, is a series of paintings illustrating the Ming novel, The Story of the Sto,e. To the east is a similarly arranged group of palaces, adapted as museum galleries for displays of bronzes, ceramics, paintings,jewellery and Ming and Qing arts and crafts. The atmosphere here is much more intimate, and you can peer into well-appointed chambers full of elegant furniture and ornaments, including English clocks decorated with images of English gentlefolk, which look very odd anrong the jade trees and ornate fiywhisks.
Head over to the other side of the complex to the eastern palace quarters where an extraordinary Clock Museum RMB楼5) is housed, displaying the result of one Qing emperor’s collecting passion. Most are English and French explosions of Baroque ornament, though perhaps the most arresting is a rhino-sized
Chinese water clock. Moving away from the palace chambers - and by this stage something of a respite - the Kunninglnen leads out from the Inner Court to the Imperial Garden. There are a couple ofcaf6s here (and toilets) amid a pleasing network of ponds, walkways and pavilions, the classic elements of a Chinese garden. At the centre is the Qinandian, Hall of [mperial Peace, dedicated to the Taoist god of fire, Xuan Wu.You can exit here into Jingshan Park.

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