"'The family of good deeds will have a surplus of blessings', as the core group of imperial rule, the royal family style is directly related to the fortunes of the country. The family style is the national prosperity. Two masters of the family in the Forbidden City, Zhu Ming family and Aisin Gioro are power-hungry, arbitrary, and all hope that the mountain for years to come. Aisin Gioro family is more pragmatic and rational, more diligent and hard-working, and more focused on life, leading the Forbidden City in the Qing Dynasty run more smoothly and efficiently, and the Qing Dynasty is more stable and more resilient ruled than the Ming Dynasty."
- "The Forbidden City Family Style and the National Fortune of the Ming and Qing Dynasties" (Recommended by China Reading Newspaper Special Edition)

"This year marks the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City. Palace architecture is a symbol of imperial power, no matter in which country, the palace is a special building. Its construction, a collection of folk architecture of the exquisite, at the same time endowed with the rigour of the palace culture of the metrics. The Forbidden City is undoubtedly one of the most dazzling masterpieces of China's traditional architecture."
- People's Daily Online-Jintai Consulting

★ The first biography of China's first major national treasure IP Forbidden City, rated 9.0 on Douban, a comprehensive story of 600 years of the Forbidden City!

★ "Beijing Daily", "China Reading Weekly", "People's Daily", and "CCTV network" strongly recommended, full praise recommended on the whole network, best-selling for nearly 50000 copies!

★ The Forbidden City in Beijing is China's Ming and Qing dynasties of the Royal Palace, formerly known as the Forbidden City. This book to the Palace system links to the building, artefacts, people and history, showing three-dimensional Forbidden City, so that people feeling like in the scene, listening to the Forbidden City built in the layout of the grandeur and the brick and mortar murmuring between the cultural relics and utensils to feel the comprehensive style!

★ Complemented by more than 100 beautiful pictures of the Forbidden City, using four-colour bareback locking line binding, the history, culture, technology and value of the Forbidden City spread gradually, it is the best book to understand the culture of the Forbidden City, and the culture of Chinese imperial power!

-Book Features-
Once, I was a two-generation imperial city: the highest power centre of the country for nearly 500 years, with more than 8,700 rooms and countless treasures - dignified and thick
Recently, I am a super netizen: lowering myself to embrace the public, have endless cultural creativity, and great civilization inheritance - lovely, innovative and responsible!
At this moment, I am transformed into a book: planning, layout, construction, and palace life; more than a hundred beautiful pictures; four-colour bareback - 600 years old, for the first time, someone has set up a biography for me, worthy of being treasured!

The Palace Museum in Beijing was the royal palace of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, formerly known as the Forbidden City.

This book is divided into fifteen chapters, with a combination of narrative and prose, supplemented by numerous real photos, and collection of cultural relics pictures, mainly about the historical development of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the architectural layout, the functions of the main palaces, the embodiment of the imperial power in the Forbidden City's various buildings and the palace system, and the overall value of the Emperor's administration, ministers to assist and participate in the political system, the princes' education, the various people's diet in the palace, the Palace guards, the Palace of the treasures and other knowledge, is a systematic description of the culture, and a more detailed sorting of historical value to the Palace architecture and palace management system.

This book is tightly focused on the space-time of the Forbidden City, to scan the history of the Forbidden City and the field for the focus of the pen track, or to disperse, or to study the two dynasties of a city, focusing on all the layers of the Forbidden City and all sides. The bright line is to comprehensively describe the architecture, system, and culture of the Forbidden City, and to examine the city, its people, its events, and its system; the dark line is to cite the evidence of how the imperial power in the Forbidden City's various buildings and the Palace's system of support and witnesses to climb to the highest point in history.

Zhang Cheng

A professional editor and amateur writer from Linhai, Zhejiang Province. He has served as a part-time teacher in many colleges and universities, and is one of the main speakers in the "Law Lecture Hall" programme of China Central Television (CCTV).
His writing interests focus on the history of China's political system and social changes, and he has published books such as "Gate of a Yamen", "System and Humanity", "A Brief History of China in the Metropolitan Museum of Art", "The Case of Anti-Corruption in the Qing Dynasty", "The Great Diplomacy of the Three Kingdoms", "Fragile Prosperity", and the "Troubled Times Trilogy", etc.

Catalogue
The Crystallisation of a Thousand-Year Empire
003 How Was the Forbidden City Built?
014 The "Homes" of the 24 Emperors
021 The Four Gates and the Moat
028 The Palace Under the Emperor's Power

The Forbidden City’s "Household Plan"
037 Palace Layout of the Three Principles
041 Throne Room and Its Square
059 The Inner Court / Imperial Garden
068 From the Palace of Heavenly Purity to the Hall of Mental Cultivation
072 Outer East Road and Outer West Road

The Emperor and the Rule of the World
081 The Great Pilgrimage
089 Zuoshunmen, the Sacred Place of Bone
096 The Emperor Doesn't Sit in Court?

From the Cabinet to the Military Confidential Administration
105 Cabinet small courtyard and the Treasury
111 "Temporary" Military Confidential Administration
117 Day and Night of the Small Military Confidential Administration
126 The Minister Came to Court at Cold Early Dawn

The Eunuch's Double Life
133 The Twenty-four Offices / The Superintendent of Ceremonies
140 Imperial Household Department / House of Respectful Affairs
147 The Eunuch's Three “Sons”
154 The Daily Life of the Eunuchs

The Education of the Princes
161 The Hall of Literary Glory/ The Qingning Palace/ The Duanbeng Palace
168 Yuqing Palace/North Five Sections/South Three Sections
173 Reading in the Study Room
179 The Prince of Light and Darkness

Women in the Palace
187 The Emperor's Selection and Wedding
194 The Six Eastern Palaces / The Six Western Palaces
204 The Tragedies and Comedies of the Concubines
213 Female Officers and Courtesans

Retirement in the Forbidden City
221 The Empress Dowager's Settlement Dilemma
227 High Time of the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility
235 The Dream of Care and Rest of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity
245 Govern by Filial Piety

Eat in the Forbidden City
251 Gather the world's delicacies
258 The Imperial Kitchen
263 The Emperor's Recipes
268 The taste of the Imperial Cuisine

Doctors of the Forbidden City
275 The Imperial Hospital and the Imperial Dispensary
281 "Pass on the Imperial Doctor!"
286 Famous Doctors of the Forbidden City
290 The Moon Room and the Three Grandmothers

Forbidden City’s Guards
297 The Guards' Office / The Grand Minister in Attendance
305 Defence of the Forbidden City

Gods of the Forbidden City
317 The Hall of Imperial Peace / the Hall of the Treasures of the Sky
320 Hall of the Great Buddha/ Hall of Rectitude/ The Pavilion of Rain Flower/ Hall of Flower
326 City God Temple/ The Hall of Ancestral Worship/ The Hall of Intellectual Honors
332 Imperial Power and Spirits

The Forbidden City in Wind, Rain, Thunder and Lightning
337 A Brief History of Fire Protection in the Forbidden City
346 Fire and Lightning Protection
349 Drainage and Heating

The City of Treasures
357 The Treasure Catalogue and the Office of the Surveyor General
366 Royal Publishing: The Hall of Martial Valor/ The Pavilion of the Imperial Library
373 Old and Famous Trees in the Forbidden City

Two Dynasties, One City

Afterword

How was the Forbidden City built?

In the leap month of the fourth year of the Yongle era (1406), a number of ministers, led by Song Li, the Minister of Industry, left the capital city of Nanjing and travelled to provinces of Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Shanxi. They were ordered to go to the localities to supervise the people to collect wood, burn bricks and tiles, and conscript manpower and materials to prepare for a national project that was about to begin.

The project was to build a magnificent palace city in Beijing, a thousand miles away from Nanjing!

This palace is the cohesion of the Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Di's dream of Yongle, showing Zhu Di's grand planning and foresight in governance. As a vassal king who won the throne from his nephew, a new emperor just experienced a bloody civil war baptism, "the position is not right" nightmare has always haunted in the heart of Zhu Di. This nightmare was not only spiritual and moral, but also manifested itself in the real situation of instability. Zhu Di wished to escape from his nephew Jianwen Emperor's capital and move the capital to Beiping, the place of his own Dragon Rising. As early as the first year of his seizure of the throne, Zhu Di ordered the renaming of the city of Beiping to Beijing, revealing a clear signal to move the capital. Of course, his reason was that the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty were entrenched on the Mongolian Plateau, and that "the son of heaven guards the gates of the country", so moving the capital to Beijing would be good for the fight against the Northern Yuan Dynasty. He wanted to follow the example of his father, Zhu Yuanzhang, to establish a world of achievements and make his name in history. Under these grandiose reasoning, Zhu Di strongly suppressed the opposition to the relocation of the capital, and continuously channelled all kinds of resources to Beijing.

A great palace city worthy of Zhu Di's political blueprint called for!

When Song Li, the Minister of Industry, was ordered to cut down the good wood of the Jia Mu, he would not have predicted that the collection of raw materials would last for 10 years. They went deep into the virgin forest to find the best gold phoebe under the sun. This kind of phoebe is tall and strong, with a timeless fragrance, and is not afraid of insects, not easy to rot, is the perfect material for the palace beams and columns. The biggest problem was that the growth cycle was 300 years, and by the Yongle period, it was only found in the mountainous sea cliffs, where it was rare to find. Song Li led a logging team that "entered the mountain with a thousand people and left with 500", and nearly half of the builders did not see the opening of the palace. These harvested from the southwest of the mountains layer of giant trees, with the Yangtze River water power, downstream after lots of hardships, as the saying goes that a night from the valley to the river, sounds like thunder. They would shout all the way, in both sides of the government and the people's astonished eyes, arrived in the far north of Beijing city.

In the back of today's Hall of Preserving Harmony, the mugwort stone in the middle of the Royal Road has length of 17 meters, more than 3 meters wide, 1.7 meters thick, weighing more than 200 tons. This huge stone came from the southwest of Beijing Liangxiang stone nest. And not to mention the difficulty of excavation, alone on the transport that year, tens of thousands of labourers were recruited. Even tens of thousands of people can not move such a huge stone, can only be selected in the winter months. The first to dig a well on both sides of the road every mile or so, and then to draw water from the wells and splash the ground for building ice road, and then pull back and push, with 28 days before the stone transported to the site, the final carving into the stone.

The floor tiles of the Palace came from Suzhou, the land of fish and rice. The soil quality in Suzhou is good, firing technology is fine, craftsmen in early Ming dynasty responsible for the construction of the palace have recommended the hometown of the product. The Ministry of Industry finally selected the village of Yuyao, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, Lumu Town for production. Yuyao village’s soil quality is good, burned well, and the production of brick particles is fine, as "knocking the sound, broken without holes". Zhu Di gave this place as "imperial kiln village". Imperial kiln produced bricks named "gold brick". Why did clay bricks get the name of gold bricks? One theory is that the finished bricks are hard with metal texture, giving metal sound when knocking it; another theory is that the production of gold bricks is strict, and elaborate, and contains complicated procedures, from the soil practice mud to the kiln need a year and a half to be polished, the firing will take hundreds of days. The finished product out of the kiln must be delicate, and the corners are intact, which will be discarded if there is a hint of flaws.

Each piece of gold bricks which was transported to the site were extremely expensive, just like the price of gold, so it was named gold bricks. In addition, Linqing, Shandong produced building bricks. Each building materials was slow work and full of excellence, so ten years of time unknowingly passed.

There is nothing like "pouring out the world".

During this period, Zhu Di's grand blueprint gradually spreaded out, including the north war of the prairie, the west trip to the South Seas, the establishment of rules and regulations, and the way to break. In the 14th year of Yongle (1416), Zhu Di unified the idea of moving the capital, and formally selected Beijing as the new capital of the Ming dynasty (Ming Hui Yao), which was the capital of the world (the new capital of the Ming dynasty), as the saying goes that "pillowed in the north by Juyong, confronted by Taihang in the west, connected to the mountains and the sea in the east, and overlooking the Central Plains in the south, it has a fertile land of thousands of miles, and the mountains and rivers are beautiful enough to control the four barbarians and the whole world". Everything was ready, just need to start the construction. In February of the next year, the construction of the new capital, with Chen Gui, the Marquis of Taining, as the chief, and Liu Sheng and Wang Tong as the deputies, officially began.

Thousands of years of spiritual and material civilization of the ancient Chinese empire were to coalesce in the city of Beijing, where Zhu Di's life's ambition and all the participants' knowledge were poured into the palace to be built.
If the capital was the essence of the empire, then the palace was the most dazzling crystallization of it.
A great palace, is a civilization's most important material carrier; a great palace, is the most obvious pearl of a developed civilization.

The Ming Empire, under the command of Zhu Di, had been working at full speed to rebuild the city of Beijing after ten years of preparations. China's capital city system was a "single-city system" during the period of the five emperors, developed into a "double-city system" (palace and guo cheng) during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, and then into a "triple-city system" (Palace, Imperial City and Guo Cheng) during the period of the Northern Wei Dynasty, which continued into Zhu Di's capital city design. With the continuous development of society and the increasing prosperity of the city, Beijing developed into the political, economic, cultural and transportation centre of the country, with a flourishing imperial court, a gathering of the four peoples, and a flourishing industry, which was the centre of civilization at that time. The Ming Dynasty, on the basis of Yuan Dadu, made clear the three cities of Beijing, the outermost of which was the "Guo Cheng" consisting of the inner city and the outer city, with a moat surrounding the tall city wall. The scope of the area is now within the second ring road of Beijing. The former Sanmen Street divided the inner and outer cities, the south side of the street was the outer city, also known as the "South City" of Beijing; north of the street was the inner city. The south wall of the inner city opens three gates, and east and west, north and south open two gates, with a total of nine gates. The Imperial City is in the middle and south of the inner city. Within the Imperial City, the court offices and all the institutions related to the royal family gathered together. South to the Imperial City from Chang'an Street, north to Di'anmen Street (then known as the north of the Imperial City root), east to the east of the Imperial City root, and west to the west of the Imperial City root. Four streets originally surrounded by a regular north-south vertical rectangle, due to the south-west of the Daci'en Temple in the Yuan Dynasty, so the Imperial City in the south-west corner concaved into a small rectangle, that is, now the right side of the House Street and Ling Jing Hutong southwest of the area. Folk say "the root of the Imperial City" to refer to the city of Beijing.

Chen Gui and others vacated the buildings within the imperial city, moved the inhabitants out, began to pave all kinds of streets, built various government offices, and built the Palace in the south-central part of the core. The emperor was the son of heaven, and was responsible for the heaven's administration and the governing of the people. From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, the earthly emperors lived in the palace city are imitated God who lived in the Ziwei wall, and called the Palace into "Purple Palace"; the emperor's residence for the forbidden area, officials and citizens shall not be prohibited from entering, so it is also known as the "Forbidden City". The plan of the Palace will be named "the Forbidden City". The name of the Forbidden City has no legal text or public plaque, but under the imperial power and folklore, it deeply rooted in the hearts of the Chinese people.
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