Location: in Beijing, capital of China
This is the Palace Museum, also known as the Purple Forbidden City. It is the largest and most well preserved imperial residence in China today. Under Ming Emperor Yongle, construction began in 1406. It took 14 years to build the Forbidden City. The first ruler who actually lived here was Ming Emperor Zhudi. For five centuries thereafter, it continued to be the residence of 23 successive emperors until 1911 when Qing Emperor Puyi was forced to abdicate the throne. In 1987, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized the Forbidden City as a world cultural legacy.
It is believed that the Palace Museum, or Zi Jin Cheng (Purple Forbidden City), got its name from astronomy and folklore. The ancient astronomers divided the constellations into groups and centered them around the Ziwei Yan (North Star). The constellation containing the North Star was called the Constellation of Hearenly God and the star itself was called the purple palace. Because the emperor was supposedly the son of the heavenly gods, his central and dominant position would be further highlighted by the use of the word purple in the name of his residence. In folkloer, the term"an eastern purple cloud is drifting" became a metaphor for auspicious events after a purple cloud was seen drifting eastward immediately before the arrival of an ancient philosopher, Lao Zi, to the Hangu Pass. Here, purple is associated with auspicious developments. The word jin (forbidden) is self-explanatory as the imperial palace was heavily guarded and off-limits to ordinary people.
The red and yellow used on the palace walls and roofs are also symbolic. Red represents happiness, good fortune and wealth. Yellow is the color of the earth on the Loess Plateau, the orginal home of the Chinese people. Yellow became an imperial color during the Tang dynasty, when only members of the royal family were allowed to wear it and use it in their architecture.
The Forbidden City is rectangular in shape. It is 960 meters long from north to south and 750 meters wide from east to west. It had 9,900 rooms under a total roof area 150,000 square meters. A52-meter-wide-moat encircles a 9.9-meter-high wall which enclosed the complex. Octagon-shaped turrets rest on the four corners of the wall. There are four entrances into the city: the Meridian Gate to the south, the Shenwu Gate (Gate of Military Prowess) to the north, and the Xihua Gate (Western Flowery Gate) to the west, the Donghua (Eastern Flowery Gate) to the east.
Manpower and materials throughout the country were used to build the Forbidden City. A total of 230,000 artisans and one million laborers were employed. Marble was quarried from Fangshan County on the outskirts of Beijing. FIve-colored rocks were cut from Mount Pan in Jixian County in Hebei Province. Granite was quarried in Quyang County in Hebei Province. Paving block were fired in kilns in Suzhou in southern China. Bricks and Scarlet pigmentation used on the palatial walls came from Linqing in Shandong Province. Timber was cut, processed and hauled from the northwestern and southern regions.
The Forbidden City is composed of two parts, the outer palace where the emperors held grand ceremonies, and discued state affairs with high-ranking officials and the inner palace where emperors conducted routine govemment affairs and empresses, concubines, princes, princesses resided, amused themselves and worshipped gods. There are 92O, OOO pieces of historical relics in the Imperal Palace. It is the largest and most complete existing ancient wooden architectural complex both in China and in the world.
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