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Some Facts and Figures
- The construction of the Forbidden City began in 1406 and was completed in 1420.
- The Forbidden City literally means "purple forbidden city." It embodied an illusion to the Purple Palace and polar star, a celestial metaphor for the emperor's pivotal role in the universe. The Forbidden City was therefore an earthly counterpart to the Jade emperor's terrestrial palace.
- The Forbidden City occupies 720,000 square metres. (cf. Topkapi Palace in Istanbul occupies 700,000 square meters; the Vatican, 440,000 square meters; and the Kremlin 275,000 square meters).
- It was "forbidden" to all but the imperial family, their servants, and designated administrators and workers, but was a city within a city where thousands of people worked in hundreds of buildings.
- The Forbidden City was the home of 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing spanning a period of almost 600 years.
 Photo by Ellen Kaplowitz
- The life of the emperors was full of ritual performance. In addition to altar rituals, there were royal birthdays, state receptions, imperial coronations, and days to commemorate the emperor's ancestors.
- The emperors had at least three names or titles: their name at birth, their reigning title, and their posthumous title.
- Ming-Qing palaces represent the culmination of architectural extravagance: yellow-glazed tiles, vermilion, ochre walls, marble balustrades, ornate stone, wood and metal carvings, gilding, lacquering, painting and inlaying. Wooden framing is the basic feature of ancient Chinese structures.
building materials
- Transporting of stone and marble from a quarry in Fangshan, about an hour southwest of Beijing. The stone and white marble were transported during winter hauled by over a thousand horses and mules over a route frozen by water drawn from wells dug along the way.
- Large quantities of timber was needed to build the Forbidden City. The timber mostly came from southern China in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei provinces. It was transported by water drifting eastward along the Yangtze River and then northward along the Grand Canal.
- Kilns were set up in several places in the capital to make the bright yellow glazed tiles to build the roofs of the imperial structures. One of the most famous kiln sites was Liulichang.
- Two bronze lions at the southern gate of the Forbidden City overlook the Avenue of Eternal Peace and Tiananmen Square. The lion on the left is playing with a silk ball, an emblem of everlasting imperial power. On the right, a female lion plays with a young cub, indicating that the empress should give birth to a number of sons.
- Most important of the imperial motifs is the five-claw dragon, the highest and most powerful of animals. These dragons were stitched onto the emperors robes. They also graced the pillars of palace and embellished the utensils of his dinner table. Other imperial animals include phoenixes, turtles and cranes (symbols of longevity) and incense burners carved in the shape of mythical luduan, an animal who extols wisdom and compassion.
 Photo by Ellen Kaplowitz
empresses and concubines
- The six west palaces (Xiliugong) and six east palaces (Dongliugong) were where the emperor's wife's resided. There was an imperial consort, six concubines and two further ranks of lesser concubines.Genealogical records of the imperial clan listed 189 imperial wives between the Qing emperors, excluding Pu Yi, the last emperor.
eunuchs
- The custom of castrating prisoners of war and using them as servants in the imperial palace dates back to the Zhou dynasty (12th to 3rd centuries BCE). Most of the eunuchs were castrated before puberty. The number of eunuchs working in the Forbidden City varied. If statistics are reliable, Kangxi employed some 9,000 eunuchs, while Qianlong had close to 3,000. The palace’s last eunuch, Sun Yaoting, was castrated when he was eight and died in a Buddhist temple in Beijing in 1996. He was ninety-three years old.
fengshui and geomantic principles
- Since time immemorial, the choice of a new site for a dwelling or grave has always been dictated my fengshui principles, a form of divination based on the belief that there were good and baleful influences in the natural environment harnessed or contained if certain rules were followed. These rules were linked to the cardinal points of which there were five (centre, south, east west and north) in order of auspiciousness and to a set of numbers, nine the most auspiciousness of all the numbers.
religion
- The Qing court gave their support to many religions:Manchu Shamanism—the religion of the Qing ancestors, Buddhism, local deities, Christianity and Islam.
outer court
- The outer court was the ceremonial quarter of the palace. The three main Halls are the Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihedian), the Hall of Middle Harmony (Zhonghedian), and the Hall of Protecting Harmony (Baohedian).
 Photo by Ellen Kaplowitz
inner court
Photo by Ellen Kaplowitz
- The last emperor Pu Yi relinquished the throne in 1912
- The imperial family was evicted from the Palace, November 6, 1924.
- Some sections of the Forbidden City were converted into a museum in 1914. The Palace Museum was officially opened to the public in 1925, but with only limited access.
- With the pending threat of Japanese occupation in 1937, the most valuable art collections, including documents and rare books, were transported out of the capital for safekeeping. The transporting of these treasures started in the early 1930s. The collections, assembled in thousands of crates, were moved in stages from Beijing to Nanjing and from there to the nationalist capital of Chongqing.
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