It too was enclosed by a wall that has been destroyed. Surrounding the Imperial City was the Inner City that was enclosed by a wall that was 15 miles long and 20 meters 66 ft thick at the base.
By , the Outer City was added to the south. It too was enclosed by a wall. Surrounding the walled sections was the rest of the city of Beijing that was not walled. There were important temples outside the walls such as the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, and commoners lived there. All of these walled zones and fortifications and the troops and guards stationed throughout were designed to shield the emperors in the Forbidden City. In total, the Forbidden City complex covers over acres 72 hectares.
There are buildings and 8, rooms. The Forbidden City was divided roughly in half into two parts. The northern part was called the inner court where the emperor, his family, and officials lived, and the southern part was called the outer court where official functions were carried out.
There originally were more buildings, but they were destroyed. Legend says there were originally 9, rooms. From to , the Forbidden City was the seat of the Ming Dynasty. The new buildings were magnificent At the time it was built, no other palace in use in the rest of the world matched it. Only in the ancient past were palaces built as large. Only later did the Tibetans and Europeans build palaces that could compare in terms of floor space and total area.
However, about nine months after the Forbidden City was inaugurated, three of the main halls, including the throne room, were struck by lightning and burned down! The emperor feared that heaven had turned against him. However, natural disasters and corruption weakened the Ming Dynasty, and troops and peasants rebelled.
He proclaimed himself Emperor of the Shun Dynasty. Together, they attacked Beijing in The rebel army set fire to parts of the Forbidden City and fled away.
The last emperor of the Ming hanged himself after the capital was conquered, and the empire was in chaos for months. The united Jurchen Manchu , Mongol, and Qing troops swept south.
The Qing rulers changed the names on some of the principal buildings to emphasize "harmony" rather than "supremacy", because the Ming often used the word "supreme" in the names of the buildings.
They made bilingual, Chinese and Manchu, inscriptions and signs for the palace. Under Manchu leadership, the Forbidden City was rebuilt, and the Grand Canal was maintained, just as in earlier times, so that Beijing flourished once again as the imperial capital city. In , during the Second Opium War, English and French troops took control of the Forbidden City and occupied it until the end of the war.
They discussed burning it down, but decided to burn the Summer Palace instead. Foreign troops occupied it until the following year. After being the home of 24 emperors, 14 of the Ming Dynasty and 10 of the Qing Dynasty, the inauguration of the new Republic of China under Sun Yat-sen in meant that the Forbidden City was no longer the palace of the emperor.
The Qing Empire was officially abolished. In , Emperor Puyi abdicated, and under the agreement with the new Republic of China government, the outer court of the Forbidden City became open to the public. The former Emperor Puyi continued to live in the inner court of the Forbidden City as part of the agreement with the new government.
He remained there until he was evicted in a coup in The Forbidden City became the Palace Museum in The Japanese invasion of China forced the evacuation of the national treasures in the Forbidden City to Sichuan where they were safely housed.
They were not able to transport the articles in Beijing. Now, the articles are part of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. These were mainly jewels, paintings, fine ceramics, and particularly valuable items. They were were kept in storage until Then they became the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
His rule would represent the height of the Qing Dynasty, the 19th century being one of decline. In the 19th century, the Dowagers, mothers of the emperors, would gain greater influence.
Dowager Cixi, who lived , would gain great power when her 5-year-old son, the Tongzhi Emperor, ascended the throne in This period of rule was one of decline for the Qing Dynasty, something which some authors have tried to blame on the Dowagers, Cixi in particular. A major problem the Qing had to deal with was the relative decline of their own military in comparison to that of the Western powers.
Barme notes that after the failed Boxer Rebellion, a foreign army occupied Beijing, looting the Forbidden City. In , an uprising forced the 5-year-old emperor Puyi and his Dowager mother to flee the Forbidden City. He formally abdicated the following year and China would never have an emperor again. The Palace Museum was founded in the Forbidden City in Today this museum has about 1.
Even without the emperors, there was still much history left to be made in the Forbidden City. In the Chinese civil war that broke out after World War II, the retreating Nationalists moved about , treasures, originally from the Forbidden City, to Taiwan, where they are now part of a Palace Museum in Taipei. They were never put into action, however, and when Richard Nixon made his groundbreaking trip to China in , he visited the Forbidden City.
Today, there are still many more stories waiting to be told about the Forbidden City. The Palace Museum in Beijing has more than 1. Chen Shen told LiveScience in an interview that when his team was putting together the Toronto exhibition they made a week-long trip to the vaults where many treasures of the emperors and their families are being stored, including their textiles, bronzes, paintings, silver and gold utensils, documents, thrones and personalized cups among many other objects.
Of the artifacts his team selected for the Toronto exhibition, about 50 had never been published and 80 had never left the Forbidden City at all. So the huge project was put on the agenda. In the process of construction, about , skilled craftsmen were hired and 1 million common people were recruited from all over the country to build the palace. Reason 1: The building materials came from all over the country, the process of transporting wood and stone was difficult at that time, consuming much manpower.
Reason 2: Without any automatic machines, all work was done by the laborers. According to historical records, in order to carry the biggest stone weighed over 12 tons in the Forbidden City to Beijing in cold winter, the laborers dug wells on the road and water was taken from the wells and poured on the road to make an ice track, thus the big stones can slide forward.
The stones were carried to Beijing by over 20, laborers and 1, mules after 28 days of transportation. Reason 3: The big palace consists so many rooms and yards and a large amount of laborers were needed to build it. It is said that the designer of the Forbidden City is a craftsman named Kuai Xiang. He is extremely skillful.
0コメント