Forbidden City

Forbidden City Aerial View

Forbidden City

From its completion in 1421, the Forbidden City was a 78-acre pied-a-terre for emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. One of the most alluring and magnificent treasures in China, it was nevertheless a place of little happiness for the 24 emperors who lived here until 1924, when the famed Last Emperor, Puyi was forced to vacate. “If ever there was a palace that deserved the name prison,” said Reginald Johnson, Puyi’s English tutor, “it is the palace in the Forbidden City of Peking”.

When emperor Yongle of Ming Dynasty moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in the 15^th century, he built the walled Forbidden City on what was the site of the palace used by the Yuan dynasty emperors. One million laborers and 100,000 artisans worked together to build this new city. The palace has been described as a “box within a box within a box” because it was placed in the center of the imperial wall, which was in turn confined within the city walls. Much of what remains today is Qing-era reconstruction – there are few traces left of the Ming Dynasty.

The lackluster name of Gugong Bowuyuan, or Palace Museum, refers to an area closed to the general population. The Chinese name, which translate literally as Purple Forbidden City, is not an allusion to the color of the walls – said by some of resemble dried blood – but to two imperial symbols: the Polar Star, located at the center of the celestial world, and purple, a color associated with royalty.

Considerably restored and embellished since the Ming dynasty (most of the buildings you see today were built during and after the 18^th century), the Forbidden City signified the distant and unapproachable emperor. It is also the finest existing example of imperial architecture in China.

The Forbidden City reflects the Ming practice of dividing Beijing into walled sections. This is the heart of China, the nucleus of the Middle Kingdom – a receptacle for the Mandate of Heaven and the source from which imperial dictates were issued to even the most far-flung of the country’s provinces. The complex is not one stately building as was the Western practice (for example, at Versailles or Buckingham Palace), but rather a series of halls and buildings separated by passages, like a small city. Legend has it that 9,999.5 rooms are in the complex.

Because the palace was constructed primarily of wood, fire was a constant hazard and it regularly burned down. The Manchus (who swept down from Manchuria to install the Qing Dynasty) put the palace to the torch in the 17^th century. The Japanese ransacked it, as did the Kuomintang (the Chinese nationalists who fled to Taiwan in 1949). The whole labyrinthine complex was almost torn apart during the intoxication of the Cultural Revolution, but it was saved from destruction by the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai, who interceded more than once to save the national treasure from destruction.

Since traditional Chinese architecture extends horizontally rather than vertically, the buildings in the Forbidden City are not tall, but the space around them is breathtaking. Therefore, Forbidden City is a must visit destination in Beijing. Basically, all Beijing Holiday Packages as well as Beijing Day Tours will include Forbidden City as one of the sites within the itinerary.

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