Forbidden City of Beijing

Trip Start Nov 23, 2005
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Trip End Feb 27, 2007


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Monday, August 14, 2006

We find a lot of the attractions in China very sterile and lifeless. It was neat to see the buildings and grounds of the Forbidden city but everything just sits empty like a museum. Not even a stick of incence was burning. It is no longer occupied by royalty but remains a symbol of Chinese sovereignty. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. The name as it is commonly known in English "The Forbidden City" a translation of Zign Cheng, which literally means the "Purple Forbidden City". This is a reference to the fact that commoners were not allowed inside the imperial palaces. It is very different from sites we saw in Thailand where you can see temples that are still active and working, they have a life to them. You have to really stretch your imagination to envision what these places were like when they were functioning. We were limited to the main courtyards, a small number of buildings and a few gardens due to the ongoing renovations. They will continue up until the olympics. It can also get repetitive looking at sites like this because all the buildings are the same colours and have the same architecture. We payed extra money for talking guide devices. They worked automatically, you had no control over them other than the volume. They were supposed to be triggered by sensors as you walked around. You could walk freely in any order around the grounds and buildings. The problem was they never seemed to coordinate with what we were walking around. Or they would start to talk when we were not near anything. decorated walls
decorated walls
 We had to laugh, this is yet another place with Starbucks, it is right in a main courtyard of the Forbidden City!

The Forbidden city is located at the exact center of the ancient city of Beijing. It was the imperial palace during the mid-Ming and the Qing Dynasties. The extensive grounds cover 720,000 square meters or 178 acres. There are 800 buildings and more than 8,000 rooms. As such, it is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987. The Imperial Palace Grounds are located directly to the north of Tienanmen Square and are accessible from the square via Tienanmen Gate. It is surrounded by a six meter deep moat and ten meter high wall. The walls are thick and squat and were specifically designed to withstand attacks by cannons.

The construction of the Forbidden City started in 1406 and took 14 years and an estimated 200,000 men. The principal axis of the new palace sits to the east of the Yuan Dynasty palace, a design intended to place the Yuan palace in the western or "kill" position in fengshui. Soil excavated during construction of the moat was piled up to the north of the palace to create an artificial hill, the Jingshan hill.

From its 1420 completion to 1644, when a peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng invaded it, the Forbidden City served as the seat of the Ming Dynasty. The following Qing Dynasty also occupied the Forbidden City. In 1860, during the Second Anglo-Chinese Opium War, British forces managed to penetrate to the heart of the Forbidden City and occupied it until the end of the war, being the only foreign power to do so.

After being the home of 24 emperors-fourteen of the Ming Dynasty and ten of the Qing Dynasty-the Forbidden City ceased being the political center of China in 1912 with the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. doors to the imperial gardens
doors to the imperial gardens
 He was, however, allowed and, in fact, required to live within the walls of the Forbidden City, until a coup launched by a local general in 1924. Puyi was forced out, and the Palace Museum was established in the Forbidden City. Having been the imperial palace for some five centuries, the Forbidden City houses numerous rare treasures and curiosities. These were gradually cataloged and put on public display. However, with the Japanese invasion of China, the safety of these national treasures were cast in doubt, and they were moved out of the Forbidden City. In 1947, after they had been moved from one location to another inside mainland China for many years, Chiang Kai-shek ordered many of the artifacts from the Forbidden City and the National Museum in Nanjing to be moved to Taiwan, where they formed the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This action has been extremely controversial, with some regarding it as looting while others regarding it as safekeeping, especially after the events of the Cultural Revolution on the mainland.

There are towers on each of the four corners of the curtain wall. These afford views over both the palace and the city outside. The Forbidden City is divided into two parts. The Outer Court, which includes the southern and central sections, centers on three halls that were used for ceremonial purposes, such as coronations, investitures, and imperial weddings. Apart from ceremony, the Outer Court also houses the imperial library, archives, and lantern storage. The Inner Court includes the northern, eastern, and western parts of the Forbidden City, and centers on another three halls used for day-to-day affairs of state. The Inner Court is where the Emperor worked and lived with his family, eunuchs and maid-servants. At the northern end of the Forbidden City is the imperial garden. It is home to some relatively old trees, most between 100 and 300 years of age.

Outside the main gate to the Forbidden City, the Meridian Gate faces a square where imperial corporal punishments were sometimes carried out. To the south of that square stands Tienanmen Gate. Today, Tienanmen Gate in front of the Forbidden City is decorated with a portrait of Mao Zedong.

The individual buildings within the Forbidden City housed many important members of the Chinese aristocracy. The famous national civil service exams were given inside one of these buildings. The royal color was yellow, and that color dominates the rooftops. On each corner of the roofs, there are small statuettes, the number of which designated the power of the person living within the building. The number 9 was reserved for the emperor.
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