My 2021 edition of the Forbidden City stickers, the 17th volume of the serial "Looking at the Red Walls and Gold Tiles, Appreciating the Ming and Qing Palaces", has been generously read by many readers. Among them, some readers put forward some opinions and suggestions, and pointed out some fallacies. This revised edition is republished on the second quarter, adopting the opinions and suggestions of previous readers, enriching some content, correcting clerical errors, and updating and supplementing some pictures. Although I dare not say that all the fallacies have been corrected, most of them should have been corrected. Remember in detail the architectural art of ancient Chinese top palaces seen in the Ming and Qing palaces, some royal cultural relics exhibited in the Forbidden City, and the traces of royal life in the Qing palace, and also think of some stories and legends that happened in the Ming and Qing palaces. Readers", just want to share with readers. thanks.
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The last episode said that the square of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is huge. It is the largest inner square of a building in the world, covering more than 30,000 square meters. The square is surrounded by verandas or verandas on a high platform, and the Hall of Supreme Harmony is on a higher three-story platform, which is almost as high as the eaves of the adjacent veranda buildings. Standing on the platform in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony and looking towards the square, it is a sunken square. The emperor was high above, and tens of thousands of people below kowtowed to him in the deep pit. In order to prevent people from kowtowing too much and smashing holes of various sizes on the ground of the square, seven layers of square bricks were laid on the ground. The imperial road is made of bluestone, and there is a road of bluestone on each side. The royal guard of honor stood on the bluestone slabs on both sides of the imperial road when they arrived at the ceremony. There will be a mark at a certain distance, and there will be a guard of honor standing there, holding banners, umbrellas, halberds, axe, knives and guns, etc., all of which were taken from the Duanmen building. Civil and military officials lined up in the square, "Gudong" knelt on the ground and kowtowed three times; stood up and brushed off the dirt on his body, "Gudong" knelt down and kowtowed three times; all these three encounters are called "three kneeling and nine knocking". .
There is a pavilion equivalent to the side hall on the east and west verandas of the Hall of Supreme Harmony Square, and the Tiren Pavilion is in the middle of the east veranda.
In the middle of the west veranda is Hongyi Pavilion.
You can see that the plaques on these two pavilions only have Chinese characters, which is also the imprint of Yuan Shikai's destruction. Zhu Di's Tiren Pavilion was called Wenlou, and Hongyi Pavilion was called Wulou; when Fengtian Hall was changed to Huangji Hall in the 41st year of Jiajing (1562 A.D.), these two buildings were changed into Wenzhao Pavilion and Wucheng Pavilion, still one Wen and one Wu. When Shunzhi changed Huangji Hall into Taihe Hall in the early Qing Dynasty, the two side buildings were changed into Tiren Pavilion and Hongyi Pavilion. These two pavilions were burned by the same fire as the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and they spontaneously ignited again in the forty-eighth year of Qianlong (AD 1783), and then rebuilt. What we see now is the building rebuilt by Qianlong, which has been repainted in recent years.
The civil and military buildings stand opposite each other, and the architectural form is exactly the same. The pavilion is on a high bluestone platform, with white marble handrails on the platform, and white marble handrails in front of it. This is the imperial road. They are all two-story pavilions, nine rooms wide and three rooms deep. Above the lower floor is the waist eaves, and above the waist eaves is the flat seat on the second floor, on which there is a circle of pillars supporting the eaves. There is also a circle of wooden railings on the flat seat. This wooden railing is the same as the white marble handrail below. On the second floor is the roof of the hall with yellow glazed tiles and single eaves, and there are seven ridge beasts on the vertical ridge. If you look carefully, you will find that there is a bracket structure behind the yellow-green glazed ridge under the railing of the flat seat on the second floor, indicating that there is a dark floor here, so the two pavilions should be three-story pavilions.
The two floors are nine rooms wide, with open doors in the open room and sill windows in the second room and a little room. The two ends of the first floor are closed with bricks; The double-panel door on the lower floor, and the window is called a three-arrow mullion partition. The second floor is a slanted lattice flower partition fan. The beams and beams on the upper, lower and dark floors are decorated with gold double dragons and seals, which are very beautiful.
Because Tiren Pavilion was originally a Wenlou, Kangxi recruited literati here to write poems and odes like Emperor Tang did, and hung the standard portraits of the ancestors here, which is regarded as a poetry and painting society. After Qianlong rebuilt it, it became a warehouse, called satin warehouse, which stored satin embroidered wooden frames, including the wooden frame used by Lingfei Wei Yingluo. When Qianlong rebuilt the Tiren Pavilion, the concubine Ling had passed away less than ten years ago. Wei Yingluo's role as a embroidered girl is actually a joke, and there is no such theory in the records of the Qing palace. By the way, it is said that after Sun Dianying stole the excavation of Qianlong's Yuling in the Eastern Tomb of the Qing Dynasty, when someone went to clean up the mess, they found that the body of the concubine Ling had not rotted for 140 to 50 years, and she was still smiling. I don't know what Qianlong gave her. medicine.
These two pavilions were called Lou in Ming Dynasty and Pavilion in Qing Dynasty. This improvement is very important, as there is a difference between buildings and pavilions in ancient Chinese buildings. The building is a "heavy house", with several floors stacked together. The pavilion has a waist eaves and a flat seat from the outside. The flat seat and the waist eaves are a dark layer, and there is also a mezzanine indoors. With waist eaves and flat seats, this is the characteristic of the pavilion different from the building. The two buildings on the east and west verandas of the Hall of Supreme Harmony may have undergone architectural changes when they were rebuilt after the fire in the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. I wonder if anyone has verified it?
On the north side of Tiren Pavilion, there is a gate on the east corridor, called the left wing gate.
According to the rules of symmetry, on the north side of Hongyi Pavilion, there must be a right-wing door on the west veranda.
Wenhua Hall is outside the left wing gate, and Wuying Hall is outside the right wing gate. These two gates were built in the third year of Shunzhi, but not in Zhu Di's period. It is said to be called a wing door, but in fact it looks like it is in the armpit, which is very cramped.
There are verandahs in the east and west of the Hall of Supreme Harmony Square, and the Supreme Harmony Gate in the south. There are palace walls on both sides of the Gate of Supreme Harmony, and there are side doors leading to the square of the Hall of Supreme Harmony on the palace wall, which are the Zhaode Gate on the left and the Zhendu Gate on the right, also called the front left gate and the front right gate.
There are also palace walls on the east and west sides of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The places where the palace walls correspond to the left and right front doors are the middle left gate and the middle right gate. Look at the middle right door.
Look at the middle left door.
Go to the back of the house on the platform of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and there is a wall door on both sides. There is a gilded copper cylinder in front of the door, which is very famous because the gilt on it was scraped away by the Eight-Power Allied Forces with bayonets in 1900.
These two vats each weigh one ton seven in copper and one hundred taels in gilt gold, both of which were made during the Qianlong period.
The foundations of the Hall of Supreme Harmony lead directly to the Hall of Central Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony, and the foundations of the first three halls are connected together. If the platform is viewed from north to south, it is a word for "earth". If you want to say it is the word "工", that's because you haven't seen the huge platform in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Why do you say it is "earth"? Because there is something to be said. In ancient times, soil represented "she", that is, the society of "sheji". For the Chinese nation, the land is the foundation, and it has been worshiped since ancient times. When the son Chong'er was wandering, he was very hungry when he came to the Wulu countryside. There were old farmhouses for his food. Chong Er was angry, and his follower Hu Yan persuaded him, saying that this is a gift to the lord Sheji, which is auspicious. Chong'er turned happy, and after eating, he was full. Now if we want to say who "eats dirt", it means that he is expected to be a prince in the future like Chong'er. The palace hall stands on the "soil", which is the meaning of "Under the world, is it the king's land" sung in the "Book of Songs".
After passing through the Suiqiang Gate on the west side of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the emperors of Ming and Qing Dynasties can see different scenery when they look up. Ming emperors could only see the palace walls and roofs, but Qing emperors could still see the White Pagoda in Beihai Park and the tall Yuhua Pavilion on Palace West Road.
That white pagoda is the White Pagoda of Yong'an Temple built by Jinba Gyatso, the living Buddha of Noamukhan, on Qionghua Island in Beihai after Shunzhi entered Beijing. This is the first Tibetan-style white pagoda in Beijing. Before the Yuan Dynasty, there was a Nepalese-style white pagoda in Miaoying Temple in Fuchengmen. Although they are all Indian pagodas, they have different styles. The most obvious difference is the phase wheel on the covered bowl. The thirteen-storey phase wheel of the Tibetan-style pagoda in the Qing Dynasty was slender, and the one in the Yuan Dynasty was thick. The Yuhua Pavilion was built in the Qianlong period after the White Pagoda, a Buddhist hall.
Turn around and you can see the Zhonghe Hall in the middle.
The Hall of Zhonghe was first called Huagai Hall when Zhu Di built it. It was rebuilt after the 41st fire in Jiajing and renamed Zhongji Hall, and it was changed to Zhonghe Hall in Shunzhi until now. "Zhong" means the foundation of the world, and "harmony" means the way of the world; follow the way of the mean to lead to harmony in the world. The Zhonghe Hall is a square hall with three rooms wide and three rooms deep, surrounded by eaves and corridors. On the front there are three vertical belts, and in the middle one is the imperial road, with Danbi stones with cloud and dragon patterns. Look at its door.
This is also a six-wipe partition door, three intersections and six bowls of lattice flowers, skirt boards with Ruyi patterns, and lead-forged leaves on the frame. The horizontal drape on the door frame is also three crosses and six bowls of lattice flowers. The lower part of the east and west sides of the Zhonghe Hall are blue brick sill walls, and the upper part is a partition window with three intersections and six bowls.
In Zhu Yuanzhang's Nanjing Imperial Palace, this hall is called Huagai Hall. Zhu Di copied the layout, shape and name of the Nanjing Imperial Palace. On the top of the Zhonghe Hall is a structure of bucket arches and beams, with yellow glazed tiles and a single eaves and four corners with pointed roofs, which seems to have the meaning of canopy. There are seven spine beasts on each of the four vertical ridges. The Hall of Central Harmony is the only building with a ridge temple in the previous dynasty, and this ridge temple is very gorgeous.
Below is a yellow glazed dew-bearing plate with floral patterns; on it is a gilt-bronze covered bowl with eight flying dragons; on top of the covered bowl are dragon pillars with a dragon head on all sides; The orbs are all gilt copper.
Standing under the vertical ridge, look at the structure under the eaves of the Hall of Central Harmony. On the beams and beams, there are gold-pasted double dragons and colorful seals. It is said that the building materials in some dark corners of the Zhonghe Hall still have the words "Zhongji Hall", indicating that this hall was a product of the 41st year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty. In other words, although King Chuang burned down the Huangji Hall in front when he set fire, it did not spread to the Zhongji Hall and Jianji Hall in the back. The rough and old painted paintings of the Zhonghe Hall we see now should be heavily oiled during the Qianlong period, and the new ones are the result of recent repairs.
In the hall of Zhonghe, there is a smallpox of Panlong and Pingqi, and there is no algae well. The emperor's throne is also placed on the floor in the middle of the hall, on which hangs a horizontal plaque written by Qianlong "Yun Zhijue Zhong".
"Yunzhijuezhong", yun: integrity; Zhi: uphold; Jue: its. Among them, Yunzhi behaves moderately and impartially. The book "Shangshu" "The human heart is only dangerous, the Taoist heart is only subtle, but the essence is only one, and the permission is in the middle." The title of Qianlong's plaque not only quoted scriptures, but also corresponded to the meaning of "neutralization" in the name of this hall by the ancestors, which can be regarded as an explanation to the ancestors.
It was said earlier that the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the hall of ceremonies, and the emperor would inevitably feel a little excited when he encountered such a grand ceremony. Even if you are sitting in a sedan chair, you will feel dizzy and dizzy if you bump all the way from the inside to the foundations of the three main halls. The emperor is about to hit it in the hall of neutralization, and change his clothes to relieve his hands. A Gong bucket can be placed behind the throne. If you pay attention, you will find that there are small sedan chairs under the walls on both sides of the throne, called "Jianyu", one master and one backup, to prevent the emperor from being unable to go to the palace if one of them is dislocated. The emperor put on the long johns that the eunuch had carried all the way behind the throne, and then turned out from behind the throne to board the throne, which is the "shangyu throne". At this time, a person named "Whip Master" beat his whip three times outside the hall, indicating that the emperor had sat down safely. The deacons of the various ministries of the Grand Ceremony entered the Hall of Zhonghe and knelt down in a row. Some reported that "the battle has been erected", some reported that "the palace gate has been opened and the guards are on duty", some reported that "cigarettes have been entangled", and some It was reported that "officials from all ministries and representatives of the masses from all walks of life have arrived." When they reported this time, the emperor had almost rested, so he said "Get up", got off the throne and moved forward, and another old man beat his whip three times in front of the gate of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. When entering the Hall of Supreme Harmony from the Hall of Central Harmony, the emperor would not go out through the wall doors on both sides of the wall like me and turn to the gate of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The emperor walked directly to the imperial road in front of the Hall of Central Harmony, stepped into the back door of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and slowly turned around the big screen behind the throne of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Why slow down? Because there will be two court ladies holding long-handled peacock-feather palm fans behind them. They hold the fans at an angle and make a cross on the back of the emperor's head. There are also a few eunuchs lining up behind them holding teapots and tea bowls, imperial pens and hand stamps. If the emperor walks too fast, these court ladies and eunuchs will get confused, and it will be difficult to lead the team. During the emperor's march, the Royal Orchestra of the Hall of Supreme Harmony will play music, called "Zhonghe Shaoyue", with a soothing rhythm and melodious tunes.
In addition to the preludes to the above-mentioned grand ceremonies, which must be completed in the Hall of Zhonghe, the emperor will also deliver a speech at the revision ceremony of the Hall of Zhonghe, which is "Follow the heavens and carry the emperor's edict...". Some of these speeches were read in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and some were sent to the Meridian Gate for reading, so there must be no mistakes. Also, if the royal sacrificial ceremony is personally sacrificed by the emperor, the sacrificial text must also be corrected by the emperor. These are called Yulan, which was drafted by Hanlin scholars and "Gongjin Zhonghe Palace Yulan".
So you see, the Hall of Central Harmony is the place where the emperor handles private affairs such as resting, changing clothes, paying respects, etc., and occasionally edits documents here. In fact, the real meaning of the Hall of Central Harmony is that the emperor sits here to meditate and introspect before major events. You can summarize the achievements and demerits of the previous monarchs, ministers, fathers and sons, and yourself, and you can also look back at the ups and downs of your mental journey, or be complacent, or weep secretly. Sigh that the water of the Yellow River rushes to the sea and never return, and mourn that the white hair in the mirror looks like blue silk in the morning and turns into snow in the evening. Finally, he gritted his teeth and stomped his feet, and shouted, "Cooking sheep and slaughtering cattle is a joy, and you will drink, don't stop drinking. The ancient sages are lonely, and the bells, drums, and jade are not expensive. You must be happy in life, don't let the gold bottle empty to the moon ".
The hall behind the Zhonghe Hall is called the Baohe Hall, and it was called the Jinshen Hall during Zhu Di's period, which is also the Ming Palace in Nanjing. After the Jinshen Hall was burned several times, it was rebuilt in the 41st year of Jiajing and changed into the Jianji Hall. What you see now is the original work of the rebuilt hall. After Shunzhi entered Beijing, it was renamed Baohe Palace. At first, Shunzhi lived in Baohe Palace, and it was also called Weiyu Palace. After Kangxi came to the throne, he lived here for eight years and called it Qingning Palace. In the Shenyang Forbidden City, the middle palace of Huang Taiji and Empress Zhezhe is called Qingning Palace. Its left hand is the Guanju Palace of Concubine Chen Hai Lanzhu, and its right hand is Yongfu Palace of Concubine Zhuang. Concubine Zhuang is the biological mother of Emperor Shunzhi, and later Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang.
In the Qian hexagram of the Book of Changes, there is "Baohe Taihe, Nai Lizhen". Taihe means peace in the world, so Shunzhi took the Hall of Supreme Harmony and the Hall of Baohe as its names.
In front of the Hall of Preserving Harmony is also a large platform that runs through the three halls. The hall is nine rooms wide and five rooms deep. Small. On the top is the top of the mountain with yellow glazed tiles and double eaves, and there are nine ridge beasts on the ridge, which is also slightly lower than the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In terms of architectural specifications, the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the highest, followed by the Hall of Preserving Harmony, and the Hall of Zhonghe. The Palace of Preserving Harmony is also a structure of brackets and beams, and the painted paintings on the beams are also gold-plated double dragons and seals, which seem to be left over from the Qing Dynasty.
In the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the middle six gold pillars were removed, so the front of the throne is very spacious. This is the method of reducing pillars that began to be standardized in the Song Dynasty. The inside of the hall is also made of gold bricks. Under the central pillars, a platform with red lacquer and gold is placed facing south, and a throne is placed on the platform. The east and west are like the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and they have also been made into warm pavilions. The ceiling is the same as that of the Hall of Central Harmony, it is the ceiling of Panlong Pingqi, and there is no caisson. All these beam structures were rebuilt after the 41st Jiajing fire.
When there are grand ceremonies or banquets in the Hall of Preserving Harmony and the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the ground will be covered with bright yellow plush carpets. In front of the throne is the largest one with a blue dragon pattern. During the ceremony, the ministers can kneel on the ground with a "plop" at will without damaging their knees; kowtow "bang dang bang dang" will not cause a big bump on their foreheads. During the big banquet, tables are placed on both sides of the carpet in front of the throne, one for each person, all of which are low tables. The people sitting cross-legged behind the low table ate big bowls of meat and drank alcohol. This scene is exactly the same as Liu Bang went to eat Xiang Yu's Hongmen Banquet. These carpets are still hidden in the warehouse of the Forbidden City. They will be taken out to bask in the sun on sunny days, and rolled up and taken back after sunset. They will not forget to put mothballs. In the early years of the Republic of China, some thieves forged a number of bright yellow carpets, marked them "for the imperial use of the Palace of Preservation", and sold them at high prices on the black market. Now there are still some that are collected in the hands of overseas idiots without authorization. A few years ago, some people showed them off and were scoffed at by experts from the Forbidden City.
When is the Grand Ceremony in the Hall of Preserving Harmony? In the Ming Dynasty, whenever there was a phoenix in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the emperor would first come to the Hall of Preserving Harmony to get dressed, put on a hat, and smear his face. When the emperor canonize the queen or prince, he is still here to receive congratulations in addition to the ceremony of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In other words, the Hall of Preserving Harmony was used in conjunction with the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Ming Dynasty.
In the Qing Dynasty, at the beginning, Emperor Shunzhi temporarily lived in the Hall of Preserving Harmony. After Kangxi later lived in the Qianqing Palace, it was restored to the ritual function here. After Qianlong got older, he felt that the Hall of Supreme Harmony and the Hall of Wenhua were too far away, so when he was seventy-eight years old, he moved all the palace examinations to the Hall of Preserving Harmony. Since then, the imperial examinations held every three years in the Qing Dynasty have been held in the Palace of Preserving Harmony. Every time it comes to the palace examination, those candidates are called Gongshi, and in the early morning, someone from Honglu Temple will lead them to line up outside the Hall of Preserving Harmony. At sunrise, the whip master of Honglu Temple blew three whips, and the emperor slowly ascended to the throne of Baohe Hall amidst the sound of Shao music. These tributes kowtowed nine times to the emperor and trembled a hundred times outside the hall. After receiving the gift, the emperor said "meha, meha" and then accompanied Zhonghe Shaole back to the palace with three whips. During the exam, the emperor sent someone to deliver meals to everyone. For breakfast, each person had four steamed buns, and if they couldn’t eat it, they would save it for lunch; for dinner, they had four cakes, no meat or vegetables, but they were given cold water. At sunset, the gongshi must hand in their papers. The test papers are first judged by the expert committee, and the top ten are selected and sent to the emperor for final review, and the emperor decides the top three. Four days later, the list will be published in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, which is Chuanlu. The No. 1 scholar, the second place in the list and Tanhua were banned on the spot, and the others got Jinshi background and went to the Ministry of Officials to be candidates. The first palace examination in ancient China was in the fourth year of Tang Xianqing (659 A.D.), Emperor Gaozong of Tang Dynasty Li Zhi personally opened the subject to select a scholar. The last imperial examination was held in Jiachenke in the 30th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1904 A.D.), and the number one scholar was Liu Chunlin. This year is an additional test, called Enke. In the 31st year of Guangxu, the Qing government canceled the imperial examination and changed it to a new school. The imperial examination system in China for more than a thousand years ended.
There is a usual screen behind the throne in the Palace of Preserving Harmony, a horizontal plaque hangs on the top, and a pair of couplets on both sides, all of which were inscribed by Qianlong.
The first couplet: "The precepts of the ancestors are clear, my descendants and grandchildren, Shang Keqin will inherit forever"; the second couplet: "Heaven's heart is a lesson, but the ministers and concubines of all parties should think about their appearance and protect them without boundaries." Shang: Still; Ke: Can; Qin Cheng: Respectfully inherit. The Shanglian is to encourage myself to inherit the teachings of my ancestors seriously and be a good emperor. The most important ancestral motto in the Qing Dynasty was "respect the heaven and the ancestors, be diligent in government and be close to the virtuous". Lesson from the heart of heaven: the heart of heaven is watching your behavior; border: the end. The second line is to remind yourself that God has eyes to monitor whether you are working hard to calm the world and benefit the subjects. On the horizontal plaque is "Huangjian has its poles", and "Huangjian has its poles" in the "Shangshu". Pole: The main beam of the house, that is, the pillar. This means that the emperor wants to establish the governance of the country.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Central Harmony, and the Hall of Preserving Harmony are on a single platform. There are white marble handrails on the east and west sides of the platforms of Zhonghe Hall and Baohe Hall.
There are no courtyard walls on both sides of the Hall of Central Harmony, and where you pass the courtyard walls of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, you can see the location of each of the three halls.
There are courtyard walls on both sides of the Hall of Preservation and Harmony. After passing through the wall-mounted gate, standing on the platform, you can see the roofs of the harem and the Jingshan Mountain outside the palace. Most tourists are here to look around.
There are also staff ready to help tourists who have fallen, or to knock down undisciplined troublemakers.
The three-story white marble platform at the back of the Baohe Hall has three handrails to step down the stairs, and the middle one is the Yulu Danbi.
There are three sections of Yulu Danbi, and the Danbi stone in the middle of the bottom section is the famous "Great Stone Carving of the Forbidden City".
Because there is no place to verify it, it is inferred that this Danbi stone was built by Zhu Di in the Forbidden City. Everyone knows that this stone was produced in Dashiwo, Fangshan, in the suburbs of Beijing. They also know that this stone weighed 300 tons when it was mined from the mountain. This stone is not white marble, but bluestone like Yulu Stone. When it was shipped back then, the three main halls must have not been built, and the spring began after the stones were transported to the Hall of Preservation and Harmony. When the ice was gone, of course there was no way to drag it to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, so it was used behind the Hall of Preserving Harmony. The Danbi stone on the lower floor of the Royal Road in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is as big as this one, but it is made of three stones. Therefore, this large stone carving is the largest single stone carving in the Forbidden City. Zhu Di is very happy and likes to play with big stones. After he ascended the throne, he wanted to erect a large stone monument in front of his father's Ming Xiao Mausoleum. He found a large stone in the mountains outside Nanjing and chiseled it into a stele. The stele was too big, much larger than the big stone carving behind the Palace of Preservation, and it was as big as the main hall of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. You think, such a big rock must be pulled by thousands of horses and horses, so it has to be thrown into the mountains and discarded.
In the eighteenth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1420), the Danbi Stone behind the Palace of Baohe was completed, and the next three hundred and forty years was the 25th year of Qing Qianlong (AD 1760). In this year, Qianlong had a problem with this Danbi stone, so he decreed to transform this Danbi stone. What exactly happened? There is no record in the Qing palace archives. Qianlong was thirty-nine years old this year, and he was in his prime. I guess he must have wanted to walk over the Danbi Stone to show off his good legs and feet, but because the 340-year-old stone carving patterns were weathered, he slipped and fell down. The archives of the Qing palace recorded the transformation of "slaves obeying the order". The servants called this Danbi stone "the imperial road stone under the eaves behind the palace of Baohe". Qianlong asked them to remove the old pattern on the upper layer and re-carve it. These servants were very vicious, and they knocked off the upper layer by a foot or two inches thick. According to the current metric system, one chi two inches of this Qingchi is 38cm. It is recorded in the archives that "the Yang patterns of Lilong, Fancao, and Seawater River Cliffs were redone". You see, this is the same pattern as the Danbi Stone in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. This grass is now called Tangzhilian. In this renovation, the two above Danbi stones were also re-engraved. The three Danbi stones we see at the back of the Baohe Palace are all the result of re-engraving in the 25th year of Qianlong. Fortunately, these minions didn't waste the layer of stones that were knocked down, and they were used to "make twenty-eight stones on both sides". Look at the stomping stones on both sides, the patterns and patterns are different, some are new and some are old, right? The new one was replaced this time, and the old one still belonged to Zhu Di.
Look at the Palace of Preserving Harmony in the sunset.
There is a side door on the courtyard wall on both sides of the Hall of Preserving Harmony. The side gates of Zhendu Gate and Zhaode Gate on both sides of the Gate of Supreme Harmony are called the front right gate and the front left gate; the gates on both sides of the Hall of Supreme Harmony are called the middle right gate and the middle left gate; the ones on both sides of the Hall of Preserving Harmony should be called the rear right gate and the rear gate left door. Look at the rear right door.
These six gates have the same architectural form, and their courtyard walls and verandas on the high steps on the east and west sides separate the front part of the palace into three courtyards. Between the Meridian Gate and the Taihe Gate is the first entrance, which is the Taihe Gate Square. Between the Gate of Supreme Harmony and the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the second courtyard, which is the square of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. From the Hall of Supreme Harmony to the Hall of Preserving Harmony is the third entrance, which is the three main halls.
After passing the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the back is called Qianqingmen Square. Qianqingmen Square is the transition area between the front court and the inner bedroom. The front is the emperor's office and the back is the dormitory. The east and west ends of the Qianqingmen Square extend along the front east and west corridors, with a distance of 200 meters between them. The north and south are Baohe Hall and Qianqing Gate, which are relatively close to each other, only 50 meters away. This square is much smaller than the previous ones, because it is too narrow, so it is also called Hengjie.
There are only a pair of buildings attached to the first three halls on this side street, which are the well pavilions at the northeast and northwest corners of the Hall of Preserving Harmony.
It was said earlier that the three main halls will be carpeted when there are ceremonies. Before laying the carpets, the ground must be cleaned, right? This is to fetch water from the well pavilion to wash the emperor's land. The emperor does not drink the water drawn from this well, but the emperor wants to drink the spring water drawn from Yuquan Mountain. The spring water of Yuquan Mountain is not concave in the horizontal plane like other water in the tea bowl, it is convex in the horizontal plane, this is because the spring water contains too many minerals.
There are other buildings on the side street, which will be discussed in the next episode.
(to be continued)
