In 1386, peasant rebel armies under the command of Zhu Yuanzhang toppled the rule of the Mongols over China and one more feudal dynasty, the Ming, came into being, with what is now Nanjing as capital. Zhu Yuanzhang, who named himself Emperor Tai Zu of the Ming Dynasty,
sent his more than two dozen sons to different parts of China, investing in them hereditary titles
|
Plan of the Forbidden City.
 |
1,The imperial moat, known
as the "Golden Water River", outside the Forbidden City.
2, The Gate of Heavenly
Peace
3, The Gate of Correct
Demeanor
4, The Meridian Gate
5, The section of the imperial moat inside the Forbidden
City.
6, The Gate of Supreme Harmony
7, The Hall of Supreme Harmony
8,The Hall of Perfect Harmony
|
9,The Hall of Preservation of Harmony
10. The Gate of Heavenly Purity
11, The Palace of Heavenly Purity
12, The Hall of Earthly Tranquility
13, The Imperial Garden
14, The Gate of of Divine Prowess
15, Altar of the Land and Grain
16,Temple of Imperial Ancestors | | and territories.
Zhu Di, Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth son, was the most powerful - also the most resourceful and the most ambitious - of the princes. He was named Prince Yan, and sent to Beijing, where he managed to build up a private army. After Zhu Yuanzhang died, Zhu Yunwen, the eldest male child of the eldest son born of his crown empress, was made the new emperor - Emperor Jian Wen as known to historians. Shortly after the new emperor was enthroned, Prince Yan in Beijing started an armed rebellion, pronouncedly to "rid the emperor of those evil ministers round him". In 1402, Zhu Di's troops stormed into Nanjing, and Emperor Jian Wen went missing. The same year saw Zhu Di, or Prince Yan, make himself emperor. Immediately afterwards, the new emperor, Emperor Yong Le, decided to move the capital to Beijing, his old power base, in part to strengthen the defense
against invasion of north China by people of ethnic minority groups from further north.
Construction of the Forbidden City began in 1406. The first thing that had to be done was to get the building materials. Most ancient Chinese buildings were wooden structures. To construct the Forbidden City, large quantities of timber - in fact timber of the highest quality -would be needed. Timber used in construction of the Forbidden City was mostly produced in south China, in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei provinces, and water transport was virtually the sole means to get it to the north. It often took three or four years for the process to complete, from felling of trees to letting the trunks drift eastward in the Yangtze River and then northward in the Grand Canal that connects Hangzhou in the south and Beijing in the north.
Also needed were huge quantities of bricks, and the quality standards were especially demanding for floor bricks. Floor bricks were made of a special kind of clay through firing, and an elaborate process was followed in their production. The first step was to soak the clay in water and then carefully screen it to get rid of the alien matters in it. The second step was the firing of the bats. Bricks fresh from the kilns would be polished and then soaked in tung oil. The finished products were referred to as "gold bricks" as they were hard and smooth and, when struck, were able to produce a sound as pleasant to the ear as music from a metal repercussion instrument. "Gold bricks" were produced mainly in Suzhou of Jiangsu Province, and were shipped to Beijing along the Grand Canal.
Stone materials were also needed in huge quantities, for roads and the huge platform on which the "Three Great Halls" were to be built Rocks were available in areas round Beijing, but just for
 |
| The Meridian Gate, the south Gate of the Forbidden City. | their weight, stone materials were no less difficult to transport than timber and bricks.
The "Imperial Avenne", a carved stone in front of the Hall of Preservation of Harmony, the heaviest of all stones used in construction of the Forbidden City, is 16 meters long, three meters wide and 1.7 meters thick, and weighs 250 tons. Remember that this is just the weight of a single rock after processing! How so big and heavy a thing was transported to the construction site when everything had to be done manually? The job was done in the dead of winter. As the first step, workmen dug wells along the road from the quarry to the construction site, and sprayed water from the wells on the surface of the road. When the road surface was frozen, workmen would find it easier to move
heavy things forward on it.
Bright yellow glazed tiles had to be used to build the roofs of the imperial structures. To meet the needs for glazed tiles, kilns were set up in several places in Beijing. The Liulichang Street in downtown Beijing was one of such places, "Liulichang" literally meaning "kiln
of glazed tiles". Like Liulichang, the names of many other places originated from construction of the Forbidden City: Damucang (the "large timber yard"), an alley in Xichang District, Fangzhuan ("floor bricks"), an alley near the Drum Tower, etc. According to historic records, the "large timber yard" or "Damucang" was indeed large - "3,000 times the size of an ordinary room".
It took whole ten years for workmen to get all the materials ready for the construction of the Forbidden City. In 1417, work began to build the Forbidden City. On order of Emperor Yong Le, more than 100,000 skilled laborers were press-ganged to Beijing from all over the country, along with unskilled workers who were several times as many. The Forbidden City occupies an area of 720,000 square meters, and has more than 1,000 buildings with a total of 9,000 rooms. It may
be interesting to note that its construction was completed in just three years. In 1420, Emperor Yong Le came to settle in the Forbidden City, and Beijing officially became the national capital.
|
