Forbidden City
Officially known as the Palace Museum, this magnificent complex is a grand monument to the 24 emperors who ruled from its halls over a period of almost 500 years. The symbolic center of the Chinese universe, the palace was the exclusive domain of the imperial court from its completion in 1420 until the last of the emperors was forced to abdicate at the beginning of the 20th century. The modern world intruded in 1949, when the public were finally admitted through the palace gates.
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The Last EmperorPu Yi, ascended the throne at the age of three in 1908, but his brief reign was brought to an early end in 1912 by a new Republican government. The young ex-emperor continued to live in the Forbidden City until ejected in 1924. He was later imprisoned under the Communists, until Mao granted him amnesty in 1959. He died in 1967, after working for seven years as a gardener. |
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NOTE
For more places of interest in the vicinity of the Forbidden City see Tian’an Men Square and the Forbidden City
Meridian Gate
In Chinese it is the Wu Men. This is the traditional entrance to the palaces. From the balcony the emperor would review his armies and perform ceremonies marking the start of the new lunar year.
Golden Water
Five marble bridges, symbolizing the five cardinal virtues of Confucianism, span the Golden Water, which flows from west to east in a course designed to resemble the jade belt worn by the court officials.
Gate of Supreme Harmony
The fourth and final great gate gives access into the Outer Court, the heart of the Forbidden City. The gate is guarded by two large bronze lions, classic imperial symbols of power and dignity. The lion on the right is the male; the one on the left with a cub under its foot is the female.
Bronze guardian lion
Hall of Preserving Harmony
The most spectacular aspect of this hall is the great carved ramp on the north side, sculpted with dragons and clouds, and made from a single piece of marble weighing more than 200 tons.
Western Palaces
Much of the western flank of the complex is off limits, but some of the halls neighboring the Inner Court are visitable, including the Palace of Eternal Spring, where trompe-l’oeil paintings at the ends of passageways make them appear infinitely extended.
Eastern Palaces
East of the Inner Court are smaller halls where the emperor’s harem lived. Also here is the well down which the Empress Cixi had her nephew’s favorite concubine thrown.
Forbidden City Collections
Musical instruments
In true imperial fashion, the more lavish the musical entertainment, the more glory it reflected on the emperor. Court musicians used gongs of all sizes and guqins (zithers), wooden flutes, and heavy bronze bells adorned with dragons, as well as the unusual sheng, a Sherlock Holmes-style pipe with reeds of different lengths sprouting from the top. The collection is displayed in the Silver Vault of the Imperial Palace, on the west side of the Outer Court.
Scientific instruments
Enlightened Qing emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) appointed Europeans as court officials, and instructed his imperial workshops to copy Western scientific instruments. These included the first calculator, astronomical and drawing tools, sun dials, moon dials, and a special table with measurements and scientific notations scratched on each side leaf, made especially for the imperial studies. The instruments are part of the Imperial Treasures of the Ming and Qing Dynasties exhibit, on the west side of the Inner Court.
Stone drums
The Hall of Moral Cultivation holds the palace’s collection of stone drums. These are enormous tom-tom shaped rocks that bear China’s earliest stone inscriptions dating back to 374 BC. These ideographic carvings are arranged in four-character poems, which commemorate the glorious pastureland and successful animal husbandry made possible by the Emperor Xiangong’s benevolence.
Jewelry
Also in the Hall of Moral Cultivation are three of the six halls of jewelry (head north for rooms four through six), including the only hall to display actual jewelry rather than agate cups or jade sculpture. Hall number three has thick jade rings, lapis lazuli court beads, elaborate headdresses made of gold filigree phoenixes, and surprisingly, jadeite Christian rosary beads.
Butterfly brooch
Beijing Opera
The pleasantly named Pavilion of Cheerful Melodies sports a three-story stage large enough to accommodate one thousand actors. It was once rigged with pulleys and trapdoors to create dramatic entrances for supernatural characters. The exhibits include a behind-the-scenes model stage, as well as costumes, instruments, scripts, and cast lists. There are screens showing reconstructions of old court performances.
Nine-dragon screen
Jade
The Hall of Quintessence was once where dowager empresses went to die; it now exhibits jade artifacts spanning thousands of years. Pieces range from simple cups and ladles to enormous and intricate sculptures of Buddhas in traditional scenic settings. The Chinese considered working this “hard” stone a metaphor for character development and the pursuit of perfection.
Daily life of the concubines
Every three years, court officials would select girls between the ages of 13 and 17 to join the eight ranks of imperial concubines. The Yonghe Pavilion exhibits clothing, games, herbal medicine, and a food distribution chart relating to the young imperial consorts, as well as the all-important “wedding night bed,” which is covered in a richly embroidered red silk decorated with Chinese mythological symbols.
Imperial wedding bed
Clocks and watches
Arguably the finest of the many and varied palace collections, the clocks and watches fill the Fengxian Pavilion in the southeastern corner of the eastern Inner Court. The size and creativity involved in some of the pieces – which are primarily European – is astonishing. One particularly inventive model has an automaton clad in European dress frantically writing eight Chinese characters on a scroll, which is being unrolled by two other mechanical figures.
Ornate carriage clock
Ceramics
In a ceramic salute to the Silk Road, several linked halls around the Inner Court display tomb figurines from the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–906) dynasties. Still caked with earth, statues range from six inches to three feet (15 cm to 1m) in height, and depict overweight court ladies, Buddhas on elephants, and floppy-humped camels. A film offers some background on the pottery finds.
Empress Cixi
The Xianfu Pavilion is a memorial to the Empress Cixi’s devious rise to power, as well as to the great lady’s imperial extravagances, which so nearly crippled her country. Clothes, jewelry, embroidered socks, imported perfume, jade and ivory chopsticks, and pictures of clothes and food form the bulk of the exhibits. There are also examples of the empress’s calligraphic skills in the form of painted wall hangings.
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