Walking through the Summer Palace and Qingyi, enjoying the Royal Garden Part 2: Sleeping at the front and sleeping at the back (Part 2)

After watching the Hall of Renshou, follow the path on the south side of the main hall, pass the south flower bed to the west, and then pass the check-in room of the military plane, and you can come to the back bedroom area in the garden. Although there are several courtyards in the back bedroom, the southernmost one is of course the emperor's bedroom, which is Yulan hall.

Yulan Hall is located behind Renshou Hall, with the gate facing south. In the garden, the courtyards of the royal family's back bedroom are all facing south.

When the emperor came to the Summer Palace, he could not only take the dry road in the imperial chariot, but also take the long river by boat. The Changhe River has been the waterway of the capital since ancient times, flowing continuously from the lake in the west of Beijing into the capital until Xizhimen enters the moat. Then enter the city from the vicinity of Deshengmen to Jishuitan, and then walk to various places in the city. In fact, this refers to the waterway after the establishment of the capital in the Yuan Dynasty. Before that, it also entered the capital city of Jinzhong in the south. The waterway is not very clear, but it must pass through the current Lianhuachi Park. When Qianlong first built the Qingyi Garden, he also dredged this long river, which is called "dredging" academically. He asked the Manufacturing Office to hire someone to build a house called Yihong Hall on the bank of the Changhe River near the Gaoliang Bridge outside Xizhimen, which was a striking design. This Yihong Hall is the Royal Port, with a dock, a courtyard, a kitchen and a pantry, and the most important thing is a pier.

Laogan and his mother drove out from Da Nei, and drove to Yihong Hall on Gaoliang Bridge to change boats. The emperor's chariot is called "Royal Chariot", and the emperor's boat is called "Dragon Boat". The emperor and his wife went upstream along the long river by boat, and there were many service areas along the way, such as the Wuta Temple outside the north gate of the zoo. Among them, the largest service area is Wanshou Temple and its palace in the west courtyard, where the emperor and queen mother can have lunch, take a nap, and go shopping on Suzhou Street from here. This Suzhou Street is about two miles from the Wanshou Temple Palace to Haidian Town. In the 16th year of Qianlong (AD 1751), the Empress Dowager of Chongqing went to the south of the Yangtze River with her son Qianlong, and saw the scenery in the south of the Yangtze River that was different from that outside the pass. The ancients once commented that "Hangzhou wins with lakes and mountains, Suzhou wins with markets, and Yangzhou wins with gardens and pavilions. The three stand together, regardless of the grandeur", saying that the famous cities in the south of the Yangtze River have their own merits. Seeing his mother repeatedly admiring the commercial cart shops on Suzhou Street, the old man built such a market on the road to Qingyiyuan, called Suzhou Street, so that the old lady could go to the street to sit for business (remember the ancient, not fake. ) store for free.

The emperor's dragon boat can sail along the long river into Qingyi Garden, then go to the emperor's special pier, and disembark from there. The emperor's wharf is just outside the gate of Yulan Hall, called Yulan Hall Wharf, which is now a cruise ship wharf.

Before the emperor came, Yulan hall must open the door.

This is a very formal gate of the royal mansion. You will definitely say that I am suspected of exaggerating the country. Isn't this just an ordinary gate of the royal mansion with three rooms and one opening? Pay attention, have you seen the gate of the Wangfu with a platform in front of it in the alley? This is the same green brick platform as in front of Renshou Hall, surrounded by white stone guards. On both sides of the platform, there is a white marble dew table, also called dew seat, on which there are Taihu stones. Some people say that this pair of Taihu stones symbolizes Guangxu and Cixi, and they are called son and mother stones. This is the name of today's people, and has nothing to do with Guangxu and Cixi.

There is a one-foot-high base under the door, with white stones hanging inside and outside. The gate hall is three rooms wide and three rooms deep, with eaves and corridors at the front and back. Open the door in the open room, and close the sill wall and sill window in the second room. On the window are double intersecting four-bowl lattice flowers, which are one level lower than the Hall of Renshou, and the palace can also use such lattice flowers. The upper part is a beam-lifting structure, with a gray tile rolling shed and a hard mountain top, without brackets. Because the roof structure does not need to be too large, the houses in the back bedroom are directly erected with beams and squares on the columns, without brackets. On Liang Fang, there are Soviet-style Xuanzi paintings, and Hexi paintings are no longer used. The door leaf is installed on the front gold pillar. This door leaf is called a panel door because it is too smooth, and it is also called a mirror panel door. This time there is a gate, take a look.

The door pier evolved from the door pillow. The earliest door pillow was a piece of wood to support the door frame and the door leaf. The door sleeper has a round hole seat in the inner part of the door, called the sea nest, which is the lower support of the door fan shaft, that is, the bearing. The ancients said that "running water does not rot, and the door hinge does not moth." A door is a door, and this sea nest is a door hinge. Although the door ties are not beetles, they will decay and decline, and later evolve into immortal door ties. Later, various decorations were added to the outer part of the door pillow stone, and it became a door pier.

The drum-reporting stone gate in front of Yulan Gate is one of the Ming and Qing standard gate piers, which evolved from the drum-reporting. In ancient times, there was a drum in front of the official gate, which was the news drum for officials to go to and from get off work, so it was called Baogu. The Ming and Qing dynasties stipulated that if people had grievances, they were not allowed to stop cars to file a complaint, but they could go outside the gate of the government to beat drums and cry for grievances. This gate pier adopts the form of the drum in front of the old man's gate, which becomes the decoration in front of the gate. There are also people who make a stone newspaper drum and place it in front of the door, instead of combining it with the door pillow stone. I have seen a full-size stone newspaper drum in front of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall in Guangzhou, see my "Jihai Winter Solstice Tour of the Flower City Part 3: Chen Clan Ancestral Hall". According to the appearance of the stone drum on the gate pier and the stone support under the stone drum, some people say it is a drum-holding stone. This is a misunderstanding and quite crooked.

There are two side rooms on both sides of the gate hall, and the doors and windows of the side rooms face outward, so they are not inverted rooms. On the door frame of the gate hall, there is a bilingual "Yulan Gate" plaque in Manchu and Chinese, written by Guangxu.

This door is the gate of the back bedroom and also the gate of the courtyard, from which it can lead to the courtyards of the back bedroom. There is no shadow wall inside the door, and it directly faces the main room. I don't know if there was a screen wall in the past.

Below the main building of Yulan Hall is a one-and-a-half-foot-high platform, three rooms wide and three rooms deep, with a verandah in front. The door is open in the Ming room, the gray brick sill wall in the second room, and the lattice window with the word "工" pattern. The above is a beam-lifting structure, and the rolling shed is suspended from the top of the mountain. Most of the doors and windows of the back bedroom are such "work"-shaped lattice flowers, horizontal and vertical. Even the leaky windows on the walls are decorated with I-shaped lattices.

In the Ming Dynasty, plaques were hung under the eaves, couplets were hung on the eaves and pillars, and Empress Dowager Cixi wrote in Qianlong's old works. The plaque "Yu Lan Tang" means jade is the beauty of stone; Qianlong himself said that Yulan Hall is "Yilan comes to turn Hui, and jade has Huan Ying". The couplets on the eaves and pillars say, "Zhuxiang is thin (Nianyi) lotus beard rains, and dawn is light and cloudy with bamboo ridge smoke". This couplet comes from a line in "Canglang" written by Shi Shu of the Song Dynasty, "the fragrance of the bamboo is fine and the lotus beard rains, and the wild color is light and the bamboo tail smoke". In the first couplet, 裛 and 浥 have the same pronunciation and have the same meaning, and the lotus whiskers are the pistils of the lotus. Qianlong used this to describe the scene of the drizzle of the lotus in Kunming Lake, which is very appropriate. The second couplet talks about the gathered bamboos swaying like smoke in the breeze. The smoke that the ancients said is not real smoke, but ethereal like smoke. Trees, flowers, and bamboo can all be like smoke, so there are chants of smoke trees, fireworks, and bamboo ridge smoke. The next sentence written by Shi Shu is a documentary of his appreciation of the scenery. In order to reproduce the artistic conception of this sentence in Yulan Hall, Qianlong planted a few rows of bamboo in the front and back yards. Bamboo Ridge smoke." You see, in order to experience the poetic and picturesque feeling of the ancients, Lao Gan directly planted lotus and bamboo in his garden, which is quite artistic. Look at the bamboo in the front yard and porch.

Look at the bamboo in front of the porch in the backyard.

In order to experience the artistic conception of "Zhuxiang, fine lotus and lotus beard rain", Lao Gan planted a piece of lotus root in the corner of Kunming Lake outside the back bedroom. This piece of lotus root is not planted once and managed for many years like bamboo. The lotus root needs to be poured every year. Now the Summer Palace Management Office still plants lotus root in the same place every year, and when the lotus blooms, tourists will stand on the shore to watch it. But no one knew that this piece of lotus corresponded to the couplet in Yulan Hall; of course, no one knew that the bamboo in Yulan Hall was also planted because of that couplet. You see, the water in the Summer Palace is quite deep, and it takes a lot of effort to swim through it. If you want to enjoy the scenery to the bone, you have to read these guide words of Lao Gan carefully.

Take a look at the current layout in the main room.

The indoor floor is covered with Tibetan-style wool carpets, and the roof is covered with peony-covered sea-wall ceilings. This should be because the white paper on the decoration paste in recent years has covered the painted Pingqi ceiling below. In the Ming Dynasty, a red sandalwood floor was set in the middle of the golden pillars. On the floor, there was a red sandalwood intarsia pear carved dragon throne. Behind the throne, there were five red sandalwood screens with ink and landscape mirrors. In front of the throne was a red sandalwood inlaid pear royal case. On both sides of the throne are Luanling palace fans, covered pots and red sandalwood incense tables. There are bronze incense pavilions at the two corners of the floor, and bronze Fushou smokers on both sides under the floor, with the inscription "prolonging life and prolonging life" engraved on it. These decorations belong to the regulations of the emperor's palace, and there are no cranes.

On the top of the post-golden pillars is the original text written by Cixi in Qianlong's "Restore the Palace and Leave the Scenery", which was copied from the sentence "Restore the Palace to leave the scenery, double eaves and wind" in "Nine Songs of Song Mingtang" by Xie Zhuang in the Liu and Song Dynasties of the Southern Dynasties. The Liu Song Mingtang in the Southern Dynasties is in Nanjing, but it no longer exists. Its image is similar to the Temple of Heaven, but the bottom and top are rounded, and it is a hall for worshiping ancestors. The "Fudian" is a double-layer structure with a circle above the Mingtang. Does Qianlong use it here to imply that the Cloud Dispelling Hall and the Buddhist Incense Pavilion on the Longevity Hill are layered upwards?

Look at the four characters "Fu Dian Liu Jing" again, is there any stroke error? As I said before, there were many typos in the imperial scripts of the Qing Dynasty starting from Qianlong. He didn't do it accidentally, but on purpose, and no one can control it. Later generations of emperors followed suit, saying that this was a royal privilege. It is uneducated for others to write typos, and they change their strokes because they are educated. Fortunately, you can recognize all these words immediately, and there are even words that can only be recognized by reading them together with the context. This is the case with the words "Hui Yin Zongshang" on the plaque in front of the pagoda of the Purification City in Beijing's Qing Dynasty. See my "Visiting the Yellow Temple in Beijing, Exploring Three Hundred Years of Secrets".

There is a pair of couplets hanging on the back golden pillar, "Dawn gradually divides under the double que, and the sound of leakage is far away among the flowers", which is a sentence in "Early Asahi Sending Knowledge" written by Huangfu of the Tang Dynasty. Huangfu once recorded what he saw and heard in the early dynasty. The double gates refer to the Hanyuan Hall of the Daming Palace. The Hanyuan Hall has double gates like the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City. The sound of the leak was the sound of the dripping of the copper pot. The ministers stood at His Royal Highness Hanyuan, waiting for the morning time for a few seconds. Looking at the inscription, this couplet is the Minister of the Ministry of Industry, "Chen Pan Zuyin Jingshu". The ministers of the Empress Dowager Cixi all wanted to give presents, but they didn't dare to give too expensive things, for fear that the Empress Dowager would find out that she was corrupt, so giving a picture of a letter was the best choice. In the Summer Palace, there are many birthday gifts of calligraphy and paintings given to Cixi by the ministers, even in the palace, such as the Le Shoutang of Ningshou Palace.

Look at the Xici room, this is the emperor's bedroom.

On the north side of the Xici Room is a wooden couch, and on the south side is an Eight Immortals table with Taishi chairs. Hanging on the bed is the original Qianlong text written by Guangxu, "Winds and bamboos form rhyme", which is taken from Xie Zhuang's "Moon Fu", "If it is a cold night, the wind and bamboos will form a rhyme, and relatives and relatives will not follow, and lonely ones will advance". This is the most poignant and beautiful poem about the moon in history. Feng Huang Cheng Yun means that the bamboo forest makes beautiful sounds in the wind. Outside the house, Lao Gan uses "Dawn, Light Clouds of Bamboo Ridge Smoke" to describe the shape of the bamboo forest, while the plaque inside the house refers to the sound of the bamboo forest. This plaque should be hung when the Summer Palace was rebuilt in the 10th year of Guangxu (1884 A.D.), which foreshadows the sad state of Guangxu when he lived here after the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898.

There is also a picture hanging on the door lintel of the bedroom compartment. It is a congratulatory gift from another minister to Cixi's birthday. It is written in Tang Dynasty by Zhang Jiuling's "Happiness with Yao Linggong Cong Xing Wentang Xixue" and Su Weiwei's "Early Spring Palace Serving Banquet System" , are all hymns sung to the emperor, and the scientific name is "Zou Song".

The west room is the emperor's bedroom, and the east room is the emperor's living room.

Since there is a main room facing south in Yulan Hall, there should also be east and west wing rooms. The back bedroom is not a palace with glazed tiles, so I don't call it the main hall and side hall, but the main room and wing room are more appropriate. Look at the east wing.

The east wing must be facing east and west, so the sun will not be able to reach it in the early morning. You won't see it facing the sun until you come back in the afternoon after visiting the garden.

The east wing is five rooms wide and three rooms deep, with eaves and corridors at the front and back. Although its bay is smaller than the main room, it still looks larger than the main room as a whole. The door is opened in the open room, and the gray brick sill wall and window are set up in the second room and a little room. In the core of the partition door are five gilded bats with a word "Shou" in the middle. This is called "Five Blessings Hold Longevity", and it must be Guangxu's masterpiece when he rebuilt the Summer Palace. The upper part is a beam-lifting structure with a gray tile roll shed hard top, which is one level lower than the hanging top of the main house.

A plaque of "Xiafen Room" is hung under the eaves of the Ming room in the East Wing, and a pair of couplets is hung on the eaves pillars: the curtain of the barrier hall hangs flowers and rains outside, and the broom for sweeping the corridor borrows the wind from the bamboo tips. Xia, Chiyun Qi also, red clouds. Fen, the poem says carnation fragrance; Daya says Fenfen, fragrance also, "the purpose of wine is to rejoice, burnt to burn the fragrance of fragrance". Standing under this roof, Qianlong must have seen the beautiful sunset in the sky. In ancient times, "room" usually refers to a small room, which is generally used for sleeping and sleeping behind the hall. It is very rare to hang it under the eaves outside the house like this.

The first couplet of the first couplet "Rain outside the curtain of the barrier hall" is taken from the "Lang Taosha" written by Li Houzhu in the Southern Tang Dynasty, "The rain outside the curtain is gurgling, and the spring is fading." Spring is gone, heaven and earth". The word "flowers outside the rain" comes from the sentence "Willow outside the east wind and flowers outside the rain" in Zhang Hongfan's "Xinyan" in the Yuan Dynasty. Since then, literati in the Qing Dynasty often used this word for its beauty. The word "bamboo slightly wind" in the second couplet was commonly used by Song people, and it was later passed down. Wang Yun (Nianyun) of Yuan Dynasty had "a small green courtyard with embroidered curtains and a slight bamboo breeze on a sunny day". The broom on the porch is facing the curtain of the barrier hall, and the bamboo and phoenix are facing the rain outside the flowers. The front is Qianlong's original creation, and the back is forwarded by the ancients. The entire pair of couplets is taken from the artistic conception of ancient poetry.

The east wing room is the hallway, and the back of the room is what we saw in the last episode, leading to the Hall of Qinzheng, which is now the Hall of Renshou. It is said that this east wing room was intended to be a study by Emperor Qianlong, but it has not been tested and is doubtful. Lao Gan loves to read, and wherever he frequents, there will be a special collection and reading place. If I go out for a walk, I often tuck a book in my sleeve.

Opposite the east wing is the west wing with the same shape.

Under the eaves of the Ming Dynasty, there is a plaque of "Ouxiangxie" in Guangxu's handwriting. There is a waterside pavilion in the Grand View Garden of "A Dream of Red Mansions" called Ou Xiangxie. Although Cao Xueqin's novel "Red Mansion" was built after Qingyi was built in Qianlong, it cannot be concluded that he borrowed the name of the west wing of Yulan Hall, because he must have never visited Qingyi Garden. There is a reason why the west wing of Yulan Hall is titled Ou Xiangxie. Its open room is also a hall room, and after going out, it is a waterside platform.

Under the platform is the corner where Qianlong planted lotus roots in order to realize the artistic conception of "Zhuxiang fine lotus beard and rain". The west wing room now opens a photo studio facing the platform, specially for non-Beijing tourists to take pictures of Kunming Lake Longevity Hill take pictures.

The couplet on the front eaves of the West Wing is "Yuse Yaoqin relies on the sky for a long time, Jin Zhong Dayong and Yunmen". This is taken from the sentence "Jin Zhong Dayong floats on the water, Wang Seyao's Qin leans on the sky" in the Southern Song Dynasty poet Yang Wanli's "Ti Wang Shao Ting". Wangshao Pavilion is located on Shaoshi Mountain near Danxia Mountain in Shaoguan, Guangdong. It is said that Emperor Shun once climbed here to see the strange rocks at the foot of the mountain and played great music. This music is called "Shao Yue" later, with a soothing rhythm and melodious tunes, listening to it is like enlightenment. "Yuse Yaoqin relies on the sky and half", that is to say, playing Shao music on the top of the mountain. Jin Zhong Dayong is an ancient instrument for playing Shao music, you can understand it as chime bells. The Cloud Gate mentioned by Qianlong is a kind of elegant music and dance in the Zhou Dynasty. He changed Fushuiya to Heyun Gate, that is to say, music and dance together, auspicious and auspicious. Lao Gan wrote this couplet not to describe the scenery here, but to imagine the emperor's honor full of music and dance.

After seeing all the houses in the courtyard, you must look back at the gate of the courtyard again, which is the gate of the Yulan Gate.

You will find that there are corridors through the mountains connected to both sides under the eaves and corridors behind the courtyard gate. Both sides of this veranda connect the front eaves corridor of the east and west wing rooms, and then connect to the front eaves corridor of the main house, making a complete circle, which is called Chaoshou veranda. Such verandahs are often found in one hall, one coupon hanging flower gate, and it is very rare to have a verandah connected to a house-style gate like Yulan Gate. In the Qingyi Garden, Qianlong connected the corridors in many places inside the house-style gates, and we will talk about those places later when we see them.

A green colonnade means this is not a palace. Between the pillars of the porch, there are upside-down lintels on the top and stool lintels on the bottom, all of which are in the shape of "工". There are Soviet-style spinner paintings on the square beams, take a look.

This corridor not only connects the houses of the Yulan Hall where the emperor lives, but also connects the houses of the queens and queen mothers in the courtyards, and finally connects to the long corridor, leading to the Shifang Pier. The places where the Qianlong couple and the old lady frequented are connected by this corridor, so this is the royal road in Qingyi Garden. All important places connected by this veranda were built during the Qianlong period; otherwise, they were expanded or added after Guangxu.

Yulan Hall has two entrance yards, the front and back yards are divided by verandas, and there are doors on the verandas on both sides of the main house, connecting the verandahs in the back yard.

There must be an east wing in the backyard.

The east wing in the backyard is much smaller than the front yard, with only three rooms in width. The front porch has lintels up and down, and the hut is very informal, and its open room has no hallway.

In the middle of the backyard is a rockery with stacked stones, and the west wing is very large in scale, and it is possible that all the bad things in the east wing have been made up to the west wing. The West Wing is a building called Xijia Building.

Xijia building is on the second floor, with each floor being three rooms wide and three rooms deep, with eaves corridors at the front and back. The top is also a beam-lifting structure, with a gray tile roll shed and a hard mountain top. There are open doors on each floor, sills, walls, sills and windows on the second floor, and windows with lattices and flowers in the word "工". The eaves corridor on the second floor has a Zen stick railing and an upside-down lintel on it.

Under the eaves of the second floor hangs the plaque of "Xijia Building", which was originally written by Qianlong and rewritten by Guangxu. Qianlong enjoyed the scenery and tea in the private room with lake view on the second floor of this building, and found that this place is really the best place to watch the sunset in the garden. He thought of Tao Yuanming's "Mountain air is beautiful at sunset, and the birds return with each other", and named this building "Xijia Building" on the spot. What? Don't you remember this poem by Tao Yuanming? This sentence is preceded by "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, and seeing Nanshan leisurely", remember? Therefore, at sunset, no matter where you look at the scenery in the Summer Palace, you must come here to watch the sunset.

Now, the authorities of the Summer Palace have locked the gate of the Xijia Building to prevent the common people like us from viewing the emperor’s view. It doesn't matter, I'll go to the porch on the back eaves of Xijia Building to watch the sunset. Because Chinese people don't know where Qianlong enjoyed the sunset, so here I am the only one who counts and looks forward to the sunset. The sunset is coming, this is definitely not the festival that Qianlong saw back then, he sat higher than me.

However, when it comes to rewarding the festival, the old cadres of the year will definitely lose to me. I put on the binoculars, and I can see farther than him sitting taller, and I can see all the way to the foot of Yuquan Mountain. This is not "Yuquan Baotu", but "Yuquan sucks the sun".

Let's take a look at the couplets in front of Xijia Building.

On the first floor, there is a couplet on the pillars and pillars in the open room: Jinxiu Chunming flowers are rich and noble, Langhua painting is quiet and bamboo is safe in the daytime. This couplet comes from Guo Yu (Huan Nianyu) of the Yuan Dynasty's Qilu "Fenghe Longxiyu Zihong Jianji". The first four sentences are about Xiaojing, what is the dance in front of the brothel, the moon and the bottle, the splendid spring and the bright bamboo are safe and so on. . On the second floor, there are couplets on the pillars and columns in the open room: the night warbler hides at the mouth of the valley, and the ducklings gather in the pond. This couplet also comes from a Qilu poem by the ancients, Lu You's "Ti Zhaibi". "唼" read Sha, the bird eats. Lu You said here that ducklings eat flowers, but what kind of flowers are they eating? Or is it because Lu You is dazzled? Standing upstairs in Xijia, Lao Gan saw ducks among the lotus bushes in the corner of Kunming Lake downstairs. It wouldn't be surprising if he suddenly remembered Lu You's phrase, "Ducklings with flowers gather in the pond". Wherever Lu You went, if there was a block in his heart, he would write that block on the inner wall of the house. These blocks are all unknown, and later generations called these words "Tizhaibi". It is said that there are six "Tizhaibi" in "Fang Weng Quanshu".

Lao Gan first built Yulan Hall to live in it himself, but according to Kao Laogan himself, he never lived in Yulan Hall. After that, Emperor Jiaqing slightly repaired Qingyi Garden, probably lived in Yulan Hall, but there is no record. Emperor Daoguang must have lived in Yulan Hall, and he once held a banquet here to invite people to eat. It was the third year of Daoguang (1823 AD), when Emperor Daoguang was in his early forties. Emperor Daoguang's name was Aixinjueluo Minning, and he was the eldest son of the emperor who led the musketeers to resist the Tianli Sect militia at the Longzong Gate in the palace in the eighteenth year of Jiaqing (1813 A.D.). After Qianlong, the Qing Dynasty began to decline during the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods, which is called the decline of Jiadao. Daoguang wanted to imitate Grandpa Qianlong and hold a banquet for thousands of seniors, but there was a problem. Money was not the problem, the problem was lack of money. In the end, he just held a mini "elderly banquet" in this Yulan hall, and only invited fifteen old people, all of whom were senior members of the Qing Council, and there were no old people. The dishes served during the banquet were all clay sculpture specimens. Daoguang led everyone to have a good time, no one served chopsticks, and the dishes remained intact. Later, Emperor Daoguang gradually removed the fragmentary furnishings of each room in Qingyi Garden, and the garden was almost abandoned.

Twenty years after Guangxu, Cixi often came to the Summer Palace to escape the summer heat, and Guangxu often lived in Yulan Hall. In the twenty-fourth year, Cixi sneaked back to the palace from the Summer Palace and launched the Reform Movement of 1898 to suppress the reformists. After the coup, Cixi imprisoned the leader Guangxu in Xiyuan Yingtai, and then wiped out his six accomplices. Since then, whenever Cixi appeared in front of the public in the name of political training, she always brought Emperor Guangxu with her, but the emperor was speechless. In the summer season, Cixi still came to the Summer Palace to avoid it. She also lived in the garden with the emperor and empress, and Emperor Guangxu still lived in Yulan Hall. In order to prevent the emperor's access to the outside world, the Empress Dowager ordered the building office to build walls to close all the openings of Yulan Hall, leaving only the Yulan Gate to enter and exit. Yulan Hall has changed from Li Palace to Li Prison. The walls of the east and west wing rooms can still be seen now, and the entrance door behind the main room is also sealed. Think about the scene where Emperor Guangxu could only squat and falter in the three north rooms of Yulan Hall.

During the period of the Republic of China, several sections of the wall that enclosed the Chaoshou corridor were demolished, and the Yulan Hall basically restored its previous layout.

The backyard of Yulan Hall leads directly to the next courtyard. Generally, folk courtyards enter the courtyard once, large households enter the courtyard second, and super large households enter the courtyard third. There must be at least three entrances to the emperor's house easily. Look at the next entrance door.

There is a gate hall inside the gate, and there is a screen door behind it. This is a very typical one hall, one coupon hanging flower gate. The vertical flower door is usually the inner door of the house, and the second entrance door and the like belong to the inner house door. A screen door can be made by connecting a gate hall inside the vertical flower gate, instead of standing alone a screen wall.

On the top is the top of the mountain with beams and gray tiles and single eaves. The square beams, sparrows, and hanging flowers under the eaves are quite gorgeous, and they are all official articles. Outside the door there is a regular stone door pier for reporting drums, and below it is a bluestone hanging belt. On both sides of the door are the two rows of bamboo in the backyard of Yulan Hall seen in front. This is an unconventional back door, indicating that there are female relatives inside.

Under the eaves hangs a plaque of "Yiyun Gate", which was originally written by Qianlong and rewritten by Guangxu. Go in and have a look. The main room faces south, which is the Dabei room.

The main house is five rooms wide and three rooms deep, with a verandah in front. The upper part is a beam-lifting structure with a gray tile rolling shed and a hard mountain top, which is one level lower than the Yulan Hall in front. There are four glass partition doors in the open room, and Wumotou (thinking about mother's head, not thinking about touching the head), which is one level lower than Liumotou in the palace, with wood-carved Ruyi lattice cores. The second room and the first room also have gray brick sill walls and windows, the upper windows are still "工" grilles, and the lower windows are glass grilles. Yongzheng, the god of glass, began to use it in his bedroom, which is the Hall of Mental Cultivation in the palace. Therefore, when Qianlong built Qingyi Garden, it was possible to use it here. Yong is installing glass windows in the Hall of Mental Cultivation to improve lighting, because he is short-sighted and needs to wear glasses. Qianlong did not install glass windows in the Yulan Hall where he lived, but installed them in this backyard, which may indirectly indicate that he has better eyes than his father, and his eyes are like torches.

Under the eaves of the Ming Dynasty, there is a horizontal plaque beside the cloud of "Yiyun Hall", which is also the inscription of Qianlong rewritten by Guangxu.

Yun is a herb of rue. Its floral fragrance attracts demons and fears it, but if it is applied to books and newspapers, a hundred insects will not invade it. Ancient literati used it to protect books from moths, which is called warding off beetles. Put rue grass leaves or dried rue flowers in the book to prevent beetles. Therefore, people who are good at reading have rue in their books, and "scholarly fragrance" refers to rue. The ancients often called the study "Yunzhai" or "Yunguan". In other words, this Yiyun Hall was built by Qianlong as a study in the backyard of his bedroom, so the glass windows have a source, which is good for lighting.

There is a pair of couplets hanging on the porch column: the moss marks around the building are just dyed green, and the flowers are quietly smelling the fragrance through the curtain. In this couplet, Qianlong probably borrowed the phrase "the moss marks are green on the upper level, and the grass color is green on the curtain" in Liu Yuxi's "humble room inscription" to make the upper couplet. Liu Yuxi has another song "Injury to the Foolish Stream", in which there is a line "Only the grass in the courtyard can be seen across the curtain, and a tree of pomegranates is still in bloom". Qianlong's second couplet should have the meaning of quoting the artistic conception of this sentence. Tang poetry is more freehand, Laogan is more straightforward, and "flower" and "fragrance" are all on. The ancients chanted that there are many flowers, plants and greenery in the curtain, which is the scenery outside the curtain, but considering the place of Yiyun Pavilion, Lao Gan implied the meaning of chanting the fragrance of books inside the curtain, which is also a wonderful pen.

Look at the layout of the main room.

Boy, this set of decorations is really good! The floor of the house is made of gold bricks, the open room is covered with carpets, and there is a floor on it. On the floor is a set of furniture decorated with red sandalwood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In the middle is the dragon chair throne, with three screens behind it, palm fans and incense tables on both sides of the throne, and footrests in front of the throne. The inlaid mother-of-pearl are all strange rocks, pines and peonies. This throne belongs to the emperor, even if the queen lives here, she cannot sit on it. When the emperor came to the queen's or concubine's room, he had to sit on the throne first, and the concubine in the courtyard would come out to pick him up no matter where he was. The queen can only sit on the throne when she becomes the empress dowager.

A paper plaque hangs on the back screen, Guangxu's handwriting "Golden mirror presents auspiciousness". The golden mirror is a bronze mirror, which often refers to the moon in ancient times. In the Tang Dynasty, Yuan Zhen had a saying that "a golden mirror hangs from a tree in the distance, and a jade building falls from a deep pool". The ancients believed that the sun, moon, and stars in the sky were auspicious. In the "Book of Jin" written by Fang Xuanling of the Tang Dynasty, it was said that when Sima Rui, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, was born, there was a sentence that "stars bring auspiciousness, and Jinling celebrates".

Look inside the West Room.

Inside the partition door to the north is a wooden couch by the window, which is considered a living room. A paper plaque of "Jingdao Weide" is hung on the door, and the inscription is still "Chen Pan Zuyin respects the book", and the appreciation seal is "Guangxu Yulan's treasure". "Jing": "Jing Shu", Confucian classics; "Wei": "Wei Shu", a collection of divinatory theology books other than Jing Shu. "Jingdao Weide" comes from Liu Xie (Nian Xie)'s "Wen Xin Diao Long", saying that the emperor enshrined Zen to Jingdao Wei Dele's imperial site, which is to engrave the emperor's great achievements on the big stone. Therefore, you can understand Jingdao Weide as a flattery behavior like singing praises.

The Ming room goes west past the Xici room, and the Xishao room is the Queen's bedroom.

Under the north wall is the wooden couch where the queen sleeps, and under the west wall is a set of living room standard equipment, including a rosewood carved table, a marble inlaid Eight Immortals table, and a pair of Taishi chairs. Hanging above the bed cover is a paper plaque of "every day has ten thousand kindness", which is engraved with the three seals of Empress Dowager Cixi. Buddhism advises people to do good deeds, and to do one good deed every day to accumulate the virtues of ten thousand good deeds. Taoism says, "There are three good things in one day, and the blessings will come down in three years." You see, Buddhism says to do good, Taoism says there is good, and the words are different. And Wan Shan can also refer to Mencius's "everything is prepared". In "Mencius", there is a saying "everything is prepared for me. There is no great joy in turning back and being honest." Is the "everything good" mentioned here by Cixi the goodness of Buddhism or the goodness of Confucius and Mencius? Only she knows.

The main landlord's second room is a living room for receiving guests. To the east is the Buddhist hall. If you pay a little attention, you can find something good under the window between the east and west of the main room.

When the Manchus were outside the pass, they burned kangs to keep warm in winter, and it was still the same when they entered the pass. These two wooden boards cover the kang cave of Yiyun Pavilion, and the interior is a floor heating system. Although there is a Kang cave here, no chimney was found. There are chimneys in many places in the Forbidden City, and there are also chimneys behind Qingning Palace in Shenyang Forbidden City. Now in the Taimiao Xiangdian, you can still see the floor heating flue on the ground.

Take a look at the East Wing of Yiyun Pavilion.

As usual, the East Wing is to be visited in the afternoon.

The east wing is five rooms wide and three rooms deep, with eaves and corridors at the front and back, and a hard hilltop with a gray tile rolling shed with a beam-lifting structure. In the Ming Dynasty, five partition doors were opened, and the word "gong" was decorated with lattice flowers. The lattice board is also woodcut with five blessings and longevity, without gold. Like the main house, the secondary room and a little room are all gray brick sill walls, partition windows on the second floor, the word "工" on the upper floor, and glass on the lower floor.

Under the eaves of the Ming Dynasty is a three-ring horizontal plaque of "Enfeng Long Fan", with the seal of "The Treasure of the Empress Dowager Cixi's Royal Brush". During the reign of Emperor Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty, there was a minister named Niu Hong, a great talent. Niu Hong was once proclaimed into the palace to have a family banquet with the emperor and his wife, and being able to eat with the empress, who was not easy to show others, showed that Lao Niu was highly valued by Emperor Yangdi. Once during the Chinese New Year, Yang Guang had a banquet for all the officials, and during the banquet, Niu Hong was asked to write poems to accompany the meal. Niu Hong and others have obtained ten rhymes in the poem "Banquet of Officials and Dengge", the last line of which is "Drinking and full virtue, kindness and wind grow fans". Niu Hong and the others sang praises to the emperor openly. If Cixi didn't throw a banquet, there would be no one to applaud, so he had to write this plaque and hang it up, pretending that the trees outside the house bowed to her. This east wing room was called "Dao Cun Zhai" at the beginning of Qingyi Garden. Lao Gan specially wrote a song "Dao Cun Zhai" for this Zhai: "The spring is not divided into two parts, and the sound of spring is known to all things. It explodes like thunder, and the snow and A period of one month. The clues of the quiet deed show, and the movement is the first to borrow. I have witnessed it in the leisurely fasting, and I really feel that the Tao exists.” It turns out that the old way of doing this is the way of nature. Sitting indoors, seeing the prostitution of the spring rain outside the house, and the spring thunder and stungs, I feel so, so I named it this way.

There is a pair of couplets hanging on the pillars of the porch: the green bamboo forms a winding path, and the reflection of Zhu Lan enters the clear pool. This couplet comes from Lu You's "Late Rising of the Lvjing Pavilion", "The green bamboo forms a shade and hides a fine stack, and the reflection of Zhu Lan enters a clear pond". The thin stacks mentioned by Lu You should be plank roads in the bamboo forest, while the winding path changed in the couplets is a circle of copying corridors in Yiyun Pavilion.

The open room of the east wing is also a hall room, and there is a small passage behind the house.

You see, there is a door on the wall opposite the back door of Dao Cun Zhai, which is the Xiaoxi Gate of Dehe Garden. There is a new grand theater building built by Guangxu in Dehe Garden, which will be discussed later.

Look at the West Wing of Yiyun Pavilion.

The architectural form of the west wing is the same as that of the east wing, which is lackluster.

Under the eaves of the Ming Dynasty is a three-ring horizontal plaque of "Zao Hui Chengrui", with the seal of "The Treasure of the Empress Dowager Cixi's Royal Brush". The term Zao Hui Chengrui also comes from "Wen Xin Diao Long", which begins with "dragons and phoenixes use algae paintings to show auspiciousness, tigers and leopards show auspicious posture", Zao Hui means gorgeous paintings or words. In the main room, there is "golden mirror presents auspiciousness", here is "Zaohui Chengrui"; one is made by heaven, the other is artificial, and heaven and man present auspiciousness.

Couplets on the pillars of the porch: Thousands of tender willows are green, and hundreds of singing warblers enter Jianzhang. This couplet comes from the line "Thousands of weak willows hang on the green, and a hundred twitters are full of Jianzhang" in "The Daming Palace in the Early Dynasty Presents Liaoyou from Two Provinces" written by Jia Zhi in the Tang Dynasty. Tender willows and weak willows are palace willows in spring; Qingsuo comes from "Han Shu" "Chichi Qingsuo", that is, "painting with green paintings on the side of the house, and the emperor's system", and then using Qingsuo to refer to the imperial palace. The founder of the chapter was the Jianzhang Palace in the Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty built the Li Palace in the Shanglin Garden, which also refers to the Imperial Palace. In fact, there are no palace willows in Yiyun Pavilion, but there are wandering orioles.

This west wing room was called Jinxixuan at the beginning of Qingyi Garden. Lao Gan also wrote a poem for Jinxixuan: "Tao's poems are called Xijia, which is covered with the ear of the mountain. Li Shiyun enjoys the moon and reinvests in water. I am near Xixuan, and the mountains and rivers are Xuli Xu. The reflection of Xifeng comes, The bright lake is bathed in light. It is hard to imagine the rippling rippling among the Qiang Qian. It is better to rely on the mirage window and forget all the words.” From the side, it is confirmed that the Xijia building in front is Tao Yuanming's poem quoted by Laogan. What Laogan said here, "Li Shiyun enjoys the moon, and reinvests in water" refers to Li Bai's "Farewell to the Mountain Monk". "One sentence. That is to say, Jinxixuan is good at watching mountains and water, sighing at night and enjoying the moon. Unlike the East Wing, the West Wing only has an open hall, and there are doors and windows behind it, and the setting sun of Yuquan Mountain can be seen from the courtyard.

Looking at Yiyun Gate from the inside, it is the standard one hall, one coupon hanging flower gate.

The standard vertical flower gate with one hall and one voucher has a circle of hand-painted verandahs in it, which is the case in Yiyun Hall. Look at the five calligraphic stone carvings on the corridor walls on both sides of the door, go up and take a closer look. It turns out that Emperor Qianlong copied the calligraphy of the ancients on ten tablets. The authentic works of Lao Gan are rare and must be seen.

The piece above is Li Bai's "Song of Xiangyang" written by Zhao Mengfu in the Yuan Dynasty copied by Lao Gan. Look at Lao Gan's signature.

Signed with three seals. The first one is not "three", but the hexagram of Qian, and the three lines (Nian Yao) are in power; the second is "Long"; the third is "Yubi". Three seals form the "Qianlong Imperial Brush". Laogan also wrote "Qianlong Bingyin Zhongqiu Chonghua Yubi", which said two things: first, it was written in the eleventh year of Qianlong (AD 1746), and it was written earlier than "Sanxitang Fatie"; second, In Chonghua Palace. Qianlong collected a lot of postcards from famous ancient masters, some of which are stored in the Hall of Mental Cultivation, and some are hidden in the Chonghua Palace. This "Song of Xiangyang" by Zhao Mengfu should be collected in Chonghua Palace. Qianlong also had a stone stele inlaid with calligraphy in the hand-painted verandah inside the hanging flower gate. It was in the Kuaixue Hall on the west edge of Beihai Park. There is also such a stone carving of Laogan calligraphy on the corridor of the Leshou Hall of the Ningshou Palace in the Imperial Palace.

The ten inscriptions in Yiyun Hall were not here when Qingyi Garden was located, but in Huishan Garden at that time and now the Harmony Garden. Now the main hall of Harmony Garden is called Hanyuan Hall, which is a palace. At first it was an open pavilion called Mo Miao Xuan, and these Qianlong inscriptions in Yiyun Pavilion were first built in Mo Miao Xuan. Guangxu was moved here when he rebuilt the Summer Palace.

There is this stuff in the corner of the courtyard of Yiyun Pavilion.

This is the drainage system, the sewer. Below is the well and above is the cover. Open the cover and have a look.

Yiyun Pavilion was used as a study when Qingyi Garden was built in the early Qianlong period, so glass windows were installed. The Hall of Mental Cultivation where Qianlong lived in the imperial palace had glass windows, and the Hall of Mental Cultivation in Ningshou Palace, where he built his study after retirement, also had glass windows for better lighting and easier reading. Although the Yiyun Hall has glass windows, it still lacks one thing, that is, a wooden screen on the porch outside the study, which is used to block the sight of outsiders, and there are outside the west room of the Hall of Mental Cultivation and Hall of Mental Cultivation.

So if Mrs. Huang travels together in Qingyi Garden, where will she live? By the way, who was Lao Gan's wife when he built Qingyi Garden? In the thirteenth year of Qianlong's reign, the original concubine, Empress Fucha, passed away. In the fifteenth year, Nala was canonized as the successor empress, who was the original side Fujin and concubine Xian. During the 60th birthday celebration of the Empress Dowager in Chongqing, Empress Nala was on duty, and she was dismissed only in the 30th year of Qianlong. Ordinarily, Lao Gan should take the Queen to visit Qingyi Garden, and Queen Nala should be able to live in the west corner of Yiyun Hall. If Jiaqing and Daoguang came to Qingyi Garden with their queen, they should be able to settle in the west side of Yiyun Pavilion. However, I haven't seen any of these. If you really want to know, you have to check the living notes of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. The Huangshicheng, which was originally at the intersection of Nanchizi, is now the First Historical Archives of China. In the later period of Daoguang, Qingyi Garden was idle.

I have seen records that after Guangxu rebuilt the Summer Palace, he arranged for his Queen Yehenara to live in Yiyun Pavilion, which is recorded on the sign in front of Yiyun Gate. At this time, she is just a queen. "Longyu" is the emblem given to her by Emperor Xuantong after the death of Emperor Guangxu. Formally, it should be called Empress Dowager Longyu, and Empress Longyu does not exist. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Longyu passed away quickly, and Emperor Xun Puyi was given the posthumous title of Empress Xiaodingjing, and was buried with Emperor Guangxu in Chongling. During Emperor Guangxu’s stay in the Yulan Hall of the Summer Palace, the queen lived in the Yiyun Hall in the backyard. This distance is much closer than the Hall of Mental Cultivation and Zhongcui Palace in the palace. Moreover, Emperor Guangxu did not bring his concubines with him when he stayed in the Summer Palace. I wonder if the Empress often went to the front yard during this period? After the Reform Movement of 1898, although the emperor still stayed with the empress dowager in the Summer Palace, and the empress still accompanied him, the emperor was under confinement, so it must be inconvenient for the empress to come to court.

As mentioned earlier, the Chaoshou verandah of Yiyun Pavilion is connected with the Yulan Hall in front. There are also doors on both sides of the main room leading to the backyard, go to the backyard to have a look.

It turns out that there is no eaves behind the main building of Yiyun Hall, but there are three huts surrounded by rolling sheds hanging from the top of the mountain, which are more advanced than the main building itself. The main room of Yiyun Pavilion is the legendary "five north rooms, with corridors in front and mansions in back".

The back of the main house faces a courtyard gate.

The second entrance courtyard of Yulan hall and the second entrance courtyard of Yiyun hall are the last of the emperor's backyard. Yulan Gate is the main entrance of the Emperor's Backyard, and this gate is the back door of the Emperor's Backyard, which is the North Gate. Yiyun Gate is the inner gate of the emperor's backyard, which is a vertical flower gate, and this north gate has a formal gate hall. There are no eaves and corridors in the front and back of this gate hall, which is not as high as Yulan Gate, but the corridors on both sides of it are closed. There are windows facing south in the gate hall and veranda, all of which are lattice flowers with the word "工", the gate hall is a support window, and the veranda is a partition window.

The most special point is that if you observe carefully, you will find that the base under the back door is very high, much higher than the bases of the main rooms of Yulan Hall and Yiyun Hall in front, which is five feet high. Chinese-style courtyards pay attention to step-by-step upgrades, and temples and Taoist temples are built along the mountain to rise step by step. Sometimes, in order to advance step by step, it is better for the temple gate to face west, such as Jinshan Temple in Zhenjiang. Ascending step by step means backing against the mountains, and then there must be a river or pool in front, surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing water on the other. This is what the ancient feng shui theory of yin and yang values ​​very much. What about building a house on flat ground? Then the back hall should be higher than the base of the front hall, or a back building should be built at the end, such as the back building of Prince Gong's Mansion. The backyard door of the Emperor's Backyard behind Yiyun Pavilion serves as the back cover building, so its base is very high.

Go up to the gate hall to have a look.

The corridor in the gate hall leads eastward to a gate, which is the west gate of Dehe Garden. Along this corridor, you can go all the way to the Yile Hall, the royal box on the big stage in the Virtue Garden.

There are two axes in the front and back bedrooms of the Summer Palace. One is the east-west axis from the Hall of Renshou to the East Palace Gate, which can go all the way to the intersection of Xiyuan Road outside the garden, which is the east end of the Royal Yihuali Road. The other is the north-south axis from Yulanmen to the north gate of the emperor's backyard mentioned above. The angle between these two axes is 90 degrees, which is different from the palace where the three axes are all north-south.

There are no wing rooms in the backyard of Yiyun Pavilion, and there is no veranda under the east wall. The veranda goes down the west wall to the west gate, and then connects to the verandah of the backyard door. Look at the west gate of the backyard of Yiyun Pavilion, which is also the northwest gate of the emperor's backyard. This is a side gate.

The side with the veranda must be the inside of the door, go outside the door and look at the front.

This is a regular hanging flower gate. The emperor’s backyard where the back sleeps in the Summer Palace is within the range of these gates. The main entrance is the Yulan Gate of the south gate, the back gate is the backyard gate of the north gate that we saw just now, and then this northwest gate. There is also a convenient door on the east wall of the backyard of Yiyun Hall, and there is a narrow passage outside the door, which is the same passage behind the west wing of Yiyun Pavilion.

Outside the northwest gate of the Emperor's Backyard is a small square, or courtyard, and on the south side of the courtyard is a universal veranda. Opposite the northwest gate is another gate, which is another yard, the next episode will continue.

View of the emperor's backyard building from the water of Kunming Lake.

The five rooms on the south side are the west wing of Yulan Hall, the second small house to the north is the west end gate of the main eaves corridor of Yulan Hall, the second floor in the middle is Xijia Building, and the north side is the west wing of Yiyun Hall. There is a high roof behind Yiyun Hall, which is the big stage of Dehe Garden. The tall one is the theater building, and the lower one is the theater building.

In the next episode, I will go to see the backyard.

(to be continued)