Beholding the Crimson Walls and Golden Tiles, Appreciating the Ming-Qing Imperial Palace: Part Three – The Three Front Halls (Part 1) (Revised Edition)

My 2021 Forbidden City series, a serialised set of 17 posts under the title Beholding the Crimson Walls and Golden Tiles: Admiring the Ming-Qing Imperial Palace, was graciously read by many. Some of those readers offered suggestions and corrections, pointing out a few errors. This second, revised edition takes the earlier readers’ feedback on board, enriches the content, rectifies slips of the pen, and updates and supplements a number of photographs. I dare not claim to have corrected every mistake, but the majority should have been fixed. It delves into the very finest ancient Chinese palatial architecture seen in the Ming and Qing imperial palace, along with a number of imperial relics on display and traces of Qing court life in the Forbidden City, and also recalls some stories and legends of the Ming and Qing palace. I won’t say it’s ‘for the readers’ enjoyment,’ only that I hope to share it with all of you. Thank you.

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Pass through the Gate of Supreme Harmony and stand at the top of the Imperial Carriageway’s red marble ramp beneath the rear eaves, and the vast courtyard of the Hall of Supreme Harmony opens up before you.

Descend the forecourt of the Gate of Supreme Harmony and stand on the great square to gaze up at the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Common folk call this the ‘Golden Throne Hall.’ The Daming Palace of the Tang dynasty in Chang’an had a Jinluan Hall, which is where the term comes from. The Daming Palace’s three front halls were the outer court Hanyuan Hall, the middle court Xuanzheng Hall and the inner audience hall, Zichen Hall. Jinluan Hall was a garden bedchamber in the Tang emperor’s inner court, one of the so-called ‘convenience halls,’ and among those there was also a Hall of Supreme Harmony. Tang emperors often summoned foreign officials to Jinluan Hall, and Li Bai was once summoned by Emperor Xuanzong there, writing a poem on the spot – a flattering ode, called a ‘recital of praise’. The closing lines ran: ‘Your humble minister bows to offer the long life of the Southern Mountain; Your Majesty’s great name will last forever.’ Flattering, don’t you think? And it’s true that Xuanzong’s name has lasted forever. Li Bai even made Lady Yang Guifei grind ink there, offending her so much that he had to resign from office and flee Chang’an. To escape the Tang police who were after him, Li Bai ran here and there, claiming he was touring the rivers and mountains of the motherland – though the truth was that because wanted posters of him were stuck on the city gates, he had no choice but to go walking among those rivers and mountains. Because Tang emperors received cultured men like Li Bai in Jinluan Hall, Tang and Song dynasty men of letters often used ‘Jinluan Hall’ in their poetry to refer to the imperial palace. Later commoners therefore thought that the main hall of an imperial palace was always called Jinluan Hall. That’s actually a misunderstanding – a pretty skewed one at that.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony was originally called the Hall of Heavenly Worship when it served as the main audience hall of Zhu Di’s Forbidden City. Since ancient emperors claimed to have received the Mandate of Heaven, it was only natural to ‘worship heaven and act accordingly.’ The Book of Documents records the battle cry against King Zhou: ‘Heaven cares for the people; the sovereign respects Heaven.’ After King Wu, the phrase ‘worship heaven’ was dug out and brandished again by Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Di’s father. Zhu Yuanzhang named the main hall of his palace the Hall of Heavenly Worship, and his jade sceptre was carved with the words ‘Worship Heaven and follow your ancestors.’ His edicts began with the phrase ‘The Emperor, who worships Heaven and carries out His will….’ After that, all imperial edicts began with that stock opening. I mentioned earlier that in the 36th year of the Jiajing reign (1557), a great fire burned down the Hall of Heavenly Worship. Reconstruction was finished in the 40th year, and in the 41st year Yan Song was brought to justice. The Jiajing Emperor changed the name of the Gate of Heavenly Worship to the Gate of Imperial Zenith, and at the same time renamed the Hall of Heavenly Worship to the Hall of Imperial Zenith. After the Shunzhi Emperor entered Beijing, in the second year of his reign (1645), he changed the Gate of Imperial Zenith to the Gate of Supreme Harmony, and the Hall of Imperial Zenith into the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The Hongwu Emperor’s Hall of Heavenly Worship said, ‘I am the chosen of Heaven’; the Jiajing Emperor’s Hall of Imperial Zenith said, ‘I am number one under Heaven’; and the Shunzhi Emperor’s Hall of Supreme Harmony said, ‘Now go wash up and sleep – have a nice dream.’

The platform of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is a three-tiered granite Sumeru pedestal standing some two zhang five chi high (roughly 8 metres). Its form is similar to that of the Gate of Supreme Harmony, but with three tiers, symbolising the idea of ‘three levels above everyone else.’

Sprinkled all over the platform are countless gargoyle heads.

These are called ‘chi shou san shui’ – ‘dragon-muzzle water spitters’ (pronounced ‘chi shou’). A chi is the ninth son of the dragon, hornless, with a big belly that can hold water. In ancient architecture, drain spouts were often fashioned as chi heads. One also sits at the end of the roof ridge, because that, too, has a water-shedding function. The Yuan dynasty palace that came before the Ming palace had a drainage system that couldn’t cope with heavy rain. Yuan records from the Zhiyuan period note, ‘Rain damaged the capital, and 20,000 soldiers were sent to repair it.’ By the Zhizheng period there was another entry: ‘The capital suffered severe rains; the city walls collapsed.’ In the six hundred years since the Ming palace was built, although there are accounts of ‘floodwaters soaking the city streets – Chang’an Avenue was under five feet of water, and the deepest hollows were more than ten feet deep, with every government office turned into a vast lake,’ there is not a single record of water pooling inside the imperial palace or flooding the great halls. The Forbidden City has a formidable drainage network of open and covered gutters; the emperor not only had no fear of puddles inside the audience hall, but also had no worries about a soaking wet rear palace. Someone with too much time on their hands made a round and counted the gargoyles: the three great halls have a total of 1,142 chi-head water spitters. The largest ones are at the corners – go and have a look.

Every tier of the platform of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is ringed with a white marble balustrade. Take a look at those railings.

On the front face three flights of white marble steps with granite treads lead up, and in the centre is the imperial carriageway. Peer up from beneath the carriageway.

The central carriageway is also called the ‘crimson steps’ (dan bi). Dan means red; bi means the steps of a palace. It is said that during ceremonies, a red carpet was rolled out on the carriageway steps, hence the name. Why did people respectfully address the emperor as bixia (‘Your Majesty, beneath the steps’)? Because in those days you couldn’t speak directly to the emperor. If you had something to say, you first had to address it to the guards at the foot of the steps, who would then relay your words. In time, bixia became a term of reverence for the emperor. In the centre of the carriageway is the carved marble ramp, which was reserved for the emperor alone. To the sides are the ordinary steps. But in practice, those ramps were extremely slippery, even with the stone carvings meant to give a grip. If the emperor actually tried to walk up that way, I’d wager he would have slipped and fallen frequently. And since no one else was allowed on the ramp, everybody could only watch the emperor tumble head over heels, eyes popping, perhaps shouting at most, ‘Your Majesty, please turn over more slowly!’ So the truth is that the emperor always went up the carriageway by sedan chair. The imperial sedan chair was called a yu (pronounced ‘yoo’). If you put wheels on it, it was called a nian (pronounced ‘nyen’). The emperor sat in the yu, and the chair-bearers would walk on the steps to the sides of the ramp, carrying him and carrying past along the carriageway and up the crimson steps.

The marble ramp in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is made of granite. At the bottom are carved five mountains. Some say these symbolise Mount Sumeru. I really don’t know what connection the Chinese imperial palace has with the Buddhist Mount Sumeru – but if I may hazard a wild guess, it’s more plausible that they represent the Five Sacred Mountains, a symbol of ‘the whole realm under Heaven.’ Above the five mountains is carved a scene of nine dragons sporting with pearls, interspersed with cloud motifs and waves, symbolising dragons rising from the sea and moving through clouds. Nine dragons and five mountains also signify the emperor’s supreme status – symbolised by the figure nine-five. Actually, the lower section of the ramp doesn’t depict the Five Sacred Mountains; it’s called ‘seas, rivers and cliffs,’ representing the treacherous world of human affairs. Above, naturally, are nine dragons frolicking in the clouds – the nine sons of the dragon. The original meaning was probably that the Dragon King didn’t appear himself, instead sending his nine sons to aid the emperor above the clouds and sweep away all dangers from the human realm.

Look at the carving of a dragon’s head on the ramp.

On each side of the three-tiered platform there are flights of steps with balustrades as well.

Ascend to the top of the three tiers, and there you stand on a broad forecourt. Dead centre is the enormous Hall of Supreme Harmony.

On either side of the central carriageway on the forecourt is the ‘crimson pavement’ (dan chi, pronounced ‘dan chi’). Chi refers to the open space on the platform. During great ceremonies, not only were red carpets spread on the imperial carriageway steps and called the ‘crimson steps,’ but on the forecourt, to either side of the carriageway, red carpets were also spread, and these were called the ‘crimson pavement.’ At such times, the emperor and empress performed their rituals on the crimson steps of the carriageway, while all other princes, lords and ministers performed theirs within the crimson pavement area.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony is the largest surviving classical timber-frame hall in the world, and also that of the highest architectural rank. It is eleven bays wide by five bays deep, with a front veranda. In the Ming dynasty it was nine bays wide by five deep, symbolising the nine-five supreme status. All around runs a colonnaded veranda; the front is an open gallery, while the other three sides were enclosed into a closed gallery when it was rebuilt in the thirty-fourth year of the Kangxi reign (1696). In Chinese building layouts, the central bay is called the mingjian (main bay). Flanking it are the cijian (secondary bays), then the shaojian (subsidiary bays), and finally the jinjian (end bays). From the main bay to the end bay, that gives seven bays. So what happens with a hall like this with nine bays? The secondary bays are then divided into ‘first secondary’ and ‘second secondary.’

The roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is of yellow glazed tiles in double-eaved hip form, the highest possible roofing specification. The length of the main ridge is roughly one third that of the eaves. The chiwen flanking the main ridge are enormous, yet they don’t seem out of proportion, because the roof itself is so huge. Right in the middle of the main ridge, inside one of the cylindrical tiles, is a treasure box – a protective talisman for the hall, invisible from the outside. When the Hall of Supreme Harmony underwent major repairs in 2007, according to what was seen during the ceremony to replace the treasure box, the box is of gold-plated copper and bears dragon patterns. It holds firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, and also coins. The replacement ceremony also placed inside a printed record of that major repair – a modern version of a memorial stele. Take a look at the chiwen on the main ridge.

You’ll see that the chiwen are bound by golden chains. The one on the sword hilt is called a ‘gargoyle hook,’ and below are the ‘gargoyle chains,’ fixed to the roof tiles with chain staples, all of gold-plated copper. Does this set of hefty golden chains actually help secure them? In truth, it’s simply decorative. All the major halls in the Forbidden City have big golden chains on the chiwen of the main ridge: the front and rear halls of the Three Front Halls, the front and rear halls of the Three Rear Palaces, the front and rear halls of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity, and the front and rear halls of the Palace of Compassion and Tranquillity – they all have them. Apart from the great halls, the four gates of the palace city also have them on their chiwen: the Meridian Gate, the Gate of Divine Prowess, the East Glorious Gate and the West Glorious Gate. So does the Gate of Heavenly Purity, the main gate of the rear palace, and the Gate of Tranquil Longevity, the entrance to Qianlong’s retirement palace. Do Tiananmen and the Upright Gate outside the palace have them? No. The main halls of imperial buildings outside the Forbidden City also have big golden chains: the main hall of the Cloud-Dispelling Hall in the Summer Palace and the flanking halls leaning against the hill all have them. Outside the palace, on non-imperial buildings, chiwen decorated with big golden chains are extremely rare; I’ve only seen them on the chiwen of the Great Hero Hall at Tanzhe Temple in Beijing. Look at the chiwen on the Cloud-Dispelling Hall in the Summer Palace: where the sword of Xu Sun is inserted, there is a groove – that’s where the big golden chain is secured.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony’s roof form follows the Ming style, but the chiwen are of the Qing type, as I mentioned before. Besides the main ridge, each tier of the roof has four hip ridges, and on each hip ridge there are ten animal figures. The ten ridge-creature set on the Hall of Supreme Harmony is unique among surviving ancient buildings. There’s no point giving the last one a special name, so just call it ‘Tenth One’ – ‘xingshi’ in Chinese. Xingshi is a divine monkey, with wings on its back and holding a vajra in its hand. Leading this procession of ridge beasts is a little man riding a chicken, known as the ‘Immortal-on-a-Chicken.’ It is said to represent King Min of Qi – the son of the famous King Xuan of Qi during the Warring States period. King Xuan loved music, and into his orchestra once slipped the fish-eye master, Mr Nanguo, who pretended to play. When King Xuan’s son ascended the throne as King Min, he ordered each musician to perform a solo, and Mr Nanguo had to cover his face with his useless instrument and flee. King Min was belligerent; egged on by Su Qin, he attacked other states on all sides, eventually provoking five states to unite against Qi. The Yan general Yue Yi entered the Qi capital, Linzi, and King Min had nowhere to turn. At that moment, a phoenix swooped down and carried King Min on its back to the State of Wei. They say the image of King Min riding a phoenix to safety placed right at the front of the ridge beasts symbolises ‘survival against all odds,’ meaning the master of the house would somehow never die. But in the end, King Min wandered homeless and was eventually killed by a Chu general, Nao Chi (whose name is a pun meaning ‘rotten teeth’). Hence the last emperors of the Yuan, Ming and Qing could not save their dynasties.

Besides the glazed roof tiles, the palace is decorated with all sorts of other glazed pieces. These beautiful architectural elements were originally made in Liulichang — hence the place-name, ‘Glaze Factory.’ Liulichang fired glazed components for the imperial palaces of three dynasties – Yuan, Ming and Qing – and every day, colourful smoke rose from the site. At the time, Liulichang was located outside the Xuanwu Gate, which is to say, outside the city. During the Jiajing era of the Ming, after the outer city wall was built, Liulichang ended up inside the Right’an Gate. Obviously, having a smoking factory inside the city wasn’t ideal, so the emperor ordered the kilns moved to a far-flung suburban county – Liuliqu in Mentougou, where glazed pieces are still fired to this day. After that, Liulichang gradually evolved into a street of bookshops and stationers. To the east of the palace, south of what is now Wangfujing, there is a place called Taijichang (‘Terraced Foundation Factory’). When Zhu Di built Beijing’s Forbidden City, there was a workshop there that produced the stone elements for the great halls’ foundations, hence the name. After the palace was completed, Taijichang fell into disuse, but the place-name has stuck. Besides tiles and stone, Zhu Di’s palace required vast quantities of timber, so a timber yard was a must. His timber yard was near what is now Beijing East Railway Station and was called Shenmuchang, the ‘Miraculous Timber Yard.’ Later that site became the Beijing Piano Factory (maker of ‘Xinghai’ pianos) and the Beijing Brewery (maker of ‘Beijing White Label’ beer).

Beneath the roof is a column-supported bracket system. Because each bay is very wide, the brackets are exceptionally numerous. The central main bay has eight intermediary brackets, and each secondary bay has five. The bracket sets visible from outside, under the lower eaves, are of the ‘single cantilever, double lever arm, seven-cai’ type, formally called ‘supplementary bracket clusters.’ Have a look at the brackets under the eaves of the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

In the Forbidden City, some inscribed plaques are bilingual (Manchu and Chinese), while others, like the one on the Hall of Supreme Harmony, bear only Chinese. During the high Qing, all the plaques were in fact bilingual. When Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor, he had all the Manchu script removed from the plaques in the outer court, and then had the Chinese text shifted to the centre. He also had the plaque from the Hall of Supreme Harmony – where he planned to ascend the throne – taken down and replaced with a horizontal board that read ‘Lecture Hall.’ After the founding of the Republic, when it was restored, the plaque was replaced with one containing only Chinese, matching the other outer-court plaques. This new Chinese-only plaque is probably a copy of the calligraphy from the Qianlong period.

On the beams and lintels of the Hall of Supreme Harmony are gilded ‘double-dragon hexi’ paintings, resplendent and stately. You can see the difference between the original Qing workmanship and the recent restorations.

The latticework of the doors and windows of the Hall of Supreme Harmony all employs the ‘three-crossings, six-bowls’ pattern – a pattern reserved for imperial use alone. Any commoner who used it would be in big trouble. Beneath the windows, the sill wall is faced with glazed tiles in a tortoise-shell pattern, and the windows above are naturally called ‘sill windows.’

Look at the panelling of the six-panel lattice doors. The door stiles are adorned with gilded sheet fittings of forged lead, featuring double-headed flying dragons. The lower panels have gilded wooden carvings: auspicious clouds at the four corners and two dragons playing with a pearl in the centre. Between the upper and lower rails there are also gilded carvings of flying dragons. (That character for ‘rail’ is not pronounced ‘mo tou’ but ‘ma tou’.) These doors are lattice doors of the very highest specification. High-grade door-panelling on non-imperial buildings may have carved decoration, but at most it would be painted. In Pingyao, Shanxi, I’ve seen money-shops with carved door trim that has gilded highlights, and gilding on carved couplet characters, but only as accents – nobody would dare apply gilding over such large areas.

These gilded lead sheet fittings on the window and door frames of the Hall of Supreme Harmony serve to strengthen the joinery, making the framework more stable and less likely to come apart. Such fittings are also called ‘locks,’ so doors and windows like those in the Hall of Supreme Harmony are known as ‘golden-locked doors and windows.’

Inside the hall, the floor is paved with ‘golden bricks.’ During the epidemic, you couldn’t get close to the door, so I have no photographs of the 2,381-square-metre floor with its length-to-width ratio of nine to five. These famous Ming imperial kiln bricks from Suzhou are well known; the craftsmanship is complex and the quality superb – there’s no need for me to elaborate. The Ming Hall of Heavenly Worship caught fire several times, and after each rebuilding, those golden bricks were used. The bricks now underfoot in the Hall of Supreme Harmony were laid when the hall was rebuilt in the Kangxi period of the Qing, still from the same Ming brick-making factory and using the same Ming techniques, so you could say they are still Ming golden bricks. The factory and its craft still exist today, although wealthy people nowadays usually use ceramic floor tiles. Apart from the floor, the beams and lintels of the hall are covered with golden dragons, all covered with gold leaf. Those gold-covered dragons on the beams are the face of the emperor, which is why the old saying goes ‘putting gold leaf on one’s face.’ The golden dragon and hexi paintings you now see have both old and new sections, but regardless of age, the gold leaf was made in that same Ming dynasty factory using the same Ming techniques, so you could still call them ‘Ming golden dragons.’ Recent major restorations in the Forbidden City have used Ming and Qing building materials and techniques. No matter how advanced nanomaterials are nowadays, they weren’t used. Even the scaffolding for roof repairs still uses fir poles – only the outermost protective fencing uses steel scaffolding. Fir poles are called ‘sha gao’ (literally ‘silly tall’), an old Beijing term used affectionately for lanky boys. And in the decorative timberwork, the putty and ground layers use the same Ming recipe, the same Ming technique, with the identical Ming taste – although, of course, the pig’s blood in it didn’t come from a Ming-era pig.

In the centre of the hall stands a seven-tier zitan (purple sandalwood) dais, the highest dais among all the great halls of the palace. On this dais sits the imperial throne, called the ‘carved dragon gilded throne,’ which features thirteen dragons carved on it. In furniture terms, it’s a ‘carved-dragon gold-lacquered great chair’ (pronounced ‘xiu jin’). This is the one and only chair in the Hall of Supreme Harmony and its courtyard. The throne now in place is an original piece from the Jiajing period, made of nanmu wood with gilded surfaces, and goodness knows how it escaped the fire set by the rebel leader Li Zicheng. When Yuan Shikai schemed to become emperor, he had this throne removed; it wasn’t retrieved from storage until 1959, and was restored in 1964. Behind the throne stands a seven-panel screen carved of zitan wood. The screen was a piece of furniture specially designed for the imperial throne, as laid out in ‘Zhou Rituals.’ Placed behind the throne, it is called a ‘fu yi’ (pronounced ‘fu yi’). In the Han dynasty, this fu yi began to be called a ‘screen.’ Sima Qian wrote that ‘the Son of Heaven stands before a screen,’ symbolising the emperor’s majesty. Inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony there are six rows of twelve columns, seventy-two pillars in total. Among them, to the front of the throne are six large pillars decorated with cloud-and-dragon patterns in gilded relief. Six gold pillars with six golden dragons – the Book of Changes, when speaking of the Qian trigram, says: ‘The six positions are completed in proper time; in due season he rides the six dragons to control the heavens.’ Throughout the Hall of Supreme Harmony the decoration centres on ‘dragons.’ There are experts who have counted all the walking dragons, coiling dragons, and curling dragons no fewer than three times and then declared that inside and out, from top to bottom, the hall contains precisely 13,844 dragons. In front of the throne lies a huge, hand-woven pure new wool carpet, an original piece from the Kangxi reign. Before the throne stand several pairs of precious objects: elephants, luduan (mythical unicorn-lions), cranes, and incense pavilions. In the ‘Six Centuries of the Forbidden City’ exhibition at the Meridian Gate, there is a throne from the Hall of Mental Cultivation, with the same pairs of treasures in front of it – though lacking the cranes. The enamel cranes in the Hall of Supreme Harmony are fascinating contraptions: inside each is a clockwork mechanism that can make the crane open its beak and call, and also beat a drum. If set going in the middle of the night, it truly seemed as if an immortal had descended in person – hair-raising enough that no thief would dare come near. According to research, these enamel cranes were an honorary product of the Imperial Workshops in the middle of the Qianlong period.

Above the throne hangs a coiling-dragon caisson ceiling – the largest surviving coiling-dragon caisson in the world. The caisson ceiling is said to date from the Han dynasty, though no surviving Han timber caisson ceilings remain. The earliest stone-carved caisson ceilings can be seen in Northern Wei grottoes – at Mogao, Yungang and Longmen. Lotus designs are common in cave caissons. Locals in Luoyang claim that the lotus-shaped lamp cluster on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the People was designed after the lotus caisson in the Lotus Cave at Longmen. Among extant ancient timber buildings, the earliest wooden caisson is likely that in the Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Temple in Jizhou, Tianjin – a two-tier ‘fighting-eight’ (douba) caisson. Research suggests that the Guanyin Pavilion was built in the first year of the Shangyuan era of the Tang dynasty (760 AD), the year of the An Lushan Rebellion, though it underwent extensive repairs in the second year of the Tonghe era of the Liao (984 AD). The caisson in the Hall of Supreme Harmony is also a douba (octagonal) caisson. Because it features a coiling dragon at the centre, it is called a coiling-dragon caisson. Now we’re not allowed up to the door; you can only stand on the steps below and peer in, unable to get a very clear view.

The douba caisson is formed by two four-sided ‘boxes’ rotated 45 degrees and nested together to create an octagon. The caisson here has three tiers: the bottom square, the middle octagonal, and the top circular, representing Heaven as round and the Earth as square. The whole timber structure is packed with carvings: dragons, phoenixes, clouds, lotus flowers, and brackets – all covered in gold leaf. In the centre of the circular top is a high-relief carving of a coiling dragon, also gilded. In its mouth it holds golden pearls – one large and six smaller – resembling a chandelier. These pearls are called ‘Xuanyuan Mirrors.’ In ancient China, a ‘mirror’ was something that could repel evil spirits and ward off demons. Should a treacherous minister appear, this Xuanyuan Mirror would force him to show his true colours on the spot. The palace ladies would shriek and rush forward to tear him to bits, the eunuchs behind them cheering, the beloved ministers cowering behind pillars trembling, while the emperor sat unmoved on his throne. However, such an event has never occurred in the six-hundred-year history of the Forbidden City.

Above this caisson ceiling there are also sacred objects. During the major repairs a few years back, experts discovered these inside the ceiling void above the caisson. There are five inscribed tablets, called ‘fu ban’ – talismanic plaques – one for each of the five directions: east, south, west, north and centre. In front of each tablet stand the five ritual vessels: incense burner, flower vase, candlesticks and so on. The tablets are carved with the names of deities of each direction, along with Buddhist sutras and Taoist spells – all fine words for protecting the household. This means the protective talisman system is a double insurance policy of both Buddhist and Taoist provenance; no matter what sort of demon showed up, there was a deity to subdue it. According to Qing court records, these talismans date from the eighth year of the Yongzheng reign (1730). At that time, Yinzhen (the Yongzheng Emperor) had been seriously ill, and after that an edict was issued ordering that these fu ban be placed above the caisson ceilings of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

Behind the throne stands a large nanmu screen carved with dragons and fully gilded. The screen originally bore a pair of hanging scroll couplets and a horizontal plaque in the Qianlong Emperor’s own calligraphy, both of which were also lost thanks to Yuan Shikai. This time, search as they might, they couldn’t find the originals. During the 2002 restoration, new couplets and plaque were made based on a 1900 photograph of the Hall of Supreme Harmony – and that is what hangs there now.

The upper line reads: ‘The imperial mandate was enacted across the Nine Regions; difficult indeed is the task – how can one not treat it with reverence?’ The phrase ‘the imperial mandate was enacted across the Nine Regions’ comes from the ‘Hymns of Shang’ in the Book of Songs – ‘Di’ is the supreme deity, ‘shi’ means to establish governance, and ‘jiuwei’ means the Nine Regions. This relates to King Tang of Shang saying he received the mandate to govern all the land. ‘Difficult indeed is the task’ comes from the ‘Books of Shang’: after Tang’s death, the prime minister Yi Yin instructed the new king Tai Jia, saying ‘The enterprise of Shang Tang was terribly difficult.’ And ‘how can one not treat it with reverence?’ comes from the ‘Books of Xia’: it means how could one not be reverent? The line says: building the empire and governing the realm were truly hard – they must be honoured.

The lower line reads: ‘Heaven’s heart assists the one who is pure in virtue; may it ever protect him, and follow the path to peace for all.’ ‘Heaven’s heart assists the one who is pure in virtue’ comes from the ‘Books of Shang,’ again from Yi Yin’s instruction to Tai Jia, meaning Heaven only aids those of flawless character. ‘May it ever protect him’ is from the ‘Hymns of Zhou’ in the Book of Songs, meaning to protect forever. ‘And follow the path to peace for all’ is from the ‘Major Elegantiae’ (Da Ya) – ‘yu’ means to follow or abide by, and the phrase means bringing peace and tranquillity to the people. This says Heaven forever protects the virtuous and allows the people to live in peace.

The horizontal plaque reads: ‘Establish the highest standard, and bring the realm into compliance.’ ‘Establish the highest standard’ comes from the ‘Books of Zhou’: ‘The sovereign establishes his ultimate standard,’ meaning the emperor must provide a model of governance. ‘Bring the realm into compliance’ (the ‘you’ in suiyou) is also from the ‘Books of Zhou’: ‘If one possesses constancy of nature, only the king can ensure compliance with it,’ meaning to abide by the law. The plaque says the emperor should establish laws and ensure the people abide by them at all times.

All these classical references that Qianlong wrote out show that even as a child he was thoroughly schooled in the classics. Yet for all his reading, it was still much less than the maths, sciences, literature and history we read today. On the other hand, don’t forget that although Qianlong was a Manchu, his Chinese characters were far better than those of most Han Chinese today. Qianlong delighted in altering the brushstrokes of characters: look at the characters ‘jian’ and ‘you’ – both contain what appear to be strokes that are ‘wrong.’ He did it on purpose, and no one could do a thing about it.

Inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the eastern and western subsidiary bays and end bays are built up as ‘warm chambers.’ Because the main body of the hall is vast and has both front and rear doors, air can circulate freely. Inside those two warm chambers, however, it’s a different story: the space is cramped and – on top of that – poorly ventilated. A sour, musty smell inevitably builds up. To deal with this, a number of perforated bricks were installed in the side gable walls for ventilation. But there’s an old saying: ‘Pure qi rises, impure qi sinks.’ With those vent bricks situated so high up, what escapes is the pure qi, while the impure qi stays behind in the warm chambers.

Look at the column bases of the eaves pillars. They’re very plain. Yet the curve is exquisitely beautiful – the same involute curve that appears on the capitals of Egyptian temples. This is called a zhi-shaped column base. Most of the great halls in the Forbidden City use this type. I’ve seen similar zhi-shaped bases on the main pillars of the Hualin Temple Hall in Fuzhou – those are original Tang pieces, even more archaic in feel.

The forecourt of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is, as expected, not without its furnishings. Among these, the most numerous are the cast-bronze tripod censers, each resting on a white marble open-work pedestal.

These censers were made on Qianlong’s orders – eighteen in total, representing the eighteen provinces of the time. When a major ceremony was due, the Board of Rites would arrange for them to be filled with pine branches gathered from the ‘Black Pine Forest’ and sandalwood shipped back from Honolulu, and then lit. The knob on top would then give off smoke all around – ‘incense smoke coiling in the air,’ you might call it. For this reason, people still prefer to call these tripod censers ‘incense burners.’

At the east and west ends of the forecourt there are also a pair of divine tortoises and a pair of immortal cranes, all made of bronze, placed on the same type of pedestals. The tortoise represents boundless longevity; the crane surely stands for attaining the Way and becoming an immortal. In truth, these are just symbols, though legend has it that the Ming Jiajing Emperor did indeed brew immortality pills himself. The bronze tortoise has a dragon’s head, making it one of the dragon’s nine sons, known as bixi (pronounced ‘bi xie’), the very fellow who usually bears stone steles. The bronze crane gazes upward as if crying out. The Book of Songs says, ‘The crane cries in the nine marshes; its voice is heard in heaven.’ So this bronze crane is a medium of communication between the emperor and the Heavenly Sovereign – or else it says the emperor has received the Mandate of Heaven.

Besides the tortoises and cranes, the forecourt also holds two other precious objects. One is the famous sundial – a timekeeping device, essentially a Chinese standing clock – situated to the left of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The sundial in the palace is merely a symbol of timekeeping and has never had a practical function, because even in the early Ming, water clocks were at least used to measure time.

The other is less well known: it’s called the jialiang, a standard measure. In the photograph of the incense burners earlier, you can see in the far distance to the right of the hall a little white marble pavilion, and inside it is this jialiang.

Imperial volume measures included the hu (pronounced ‘hoo’), dou, sheng, ge, and yue (pronounced ‘yweh’). One hu equalled ten dou (today it’s five dou); one dou equalled ten sheng (drinking ten sheng of beer would be drinking a dou – I doubt anyone could drink a dou of maotai, nor of erguotou); one sheng equalled ten ge; and one ge equalled two yue. But then you hear of ‘three dou of sorghum’ and ‘one dan of rice’ – how do you convert? You can’t! ‘Dan’ is a unit of weight: one dan is one hundred jin.

In ancient times, to standardise weights and measures, a set of standard volumetric measures was made – a set of hu, dou, sheng, ge, yue. Such a set was called a ‘jialiang,’ first mentioned in the Zhou Rituals. Legend has it that Emperor Wu of the Han found a Zhou dynasty tripod on the southern bank of the River Fen, and his minister Wuqiu Shouwang congratulated him: ‘Heaven bestows a tripod on the virtuous, and the precious tripod emerges of itself.’ During the Qianlong reign, someone got hold of a ‘New-Dynasty Jialiang’ from a grave-robber; it had been made by Wang Mang and was circular in shape. Seeking advancement, that person presented the jialiang to Qianlong. His name did not enter the history books – probably Qianlong silenced him. Receiving it, Qianlong was overjoyed, believing Heaven had given him a great vessel. So he had several jialiang made according to this Han object and a Tang diagram he possessed, placing them at various locations. The jialiang on the forecourt of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is a Qianlong copy, square in shape, in imitation of the Tang form. The original New-Dynasty Jialiang is now in the Taipei Palace Museum. The actual capacity of Qianlong’s copies differs from both the New-Dynasty vessel and the Tang diagram; it serves primarily as a symbol of weights and measures – I don’t know whether it was ever the practical Qing standard. The outermost container of the jialiang is the hu, and nested inside are the dou, sheng, ge, and yue.

The sundial and jialiang placed before the Hall of Supreme Harmony both symbolise the emperor’s power: all under heaven must work and rest according to his time, and trade according to his standards of measurement. The sundial and jialiang are placed as a pair. The first such pair in the palace is not the one on this forecourt, but a pair in front of the Meridian Gate: the jialiang stands to the east, at the Left Gate, and the sundial to the west, at the Right Gate – the exact opposite of the positions inside the palace.

The first function of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the emperor’s enthronement ceremony. In old France, kings also had a special place for their coronation – the Reims Cathedral. Their enthronement had far too strong a religious flavour; it was a coronation, with an archbishop placing a tall crown on the king’s head. Napoleon was an exception: he held his coronation at Notre-Dame de Paris, and he even compelled the Pope to travel from Rome to crown him in Paris. In the event, he didn’t wait for the Pope to place the crown on his head – he snatched it and plonked it on his own noggin.

All sixteen Ming emperors were enthroned in the Hall of Heavenly Worship. The first three – the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunwen, and the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di – were enthroned in the Hall of Heavenly Worship in the Ming palace at Nanjing. Starting with the Hongxi Emperor Zhu Gaochi, eight were enthroned in the Hall of Heavenly Worship in the Beijing palace (the Zhengtong Emperor Zhu Qizhen being enthroned twice). From the Longqing Emperor Zhu Zaiji onward, five emperors were enthroned in the Hall of Imperial Zenith. The Qing dynasty, beginning with Nurhaci’s Later Jin, had twelve emperors. The first ten, starting with the Shunzhi Emperor Fulin, were all enthroned in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Shunzhi had first undergone a smaller enthronement at the Grand Political Hall in the Shenyang palace before entering the pass and having a grand enthronement at the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Beijing palace. Adding it all up, a total of twenty-three Ming and Qing emperors held their enthronement ceremonies in this hall. Including the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, twenty-four Ming and Qing emperors lived in the palace. In truth, when Shunzhi entered Beijing, in the tenth month of the first year, a throne was set up at the Gate of Imperial Zenith rather than in the hall itself, and a ceremony was performed entirely following the Ming enthronement rites. Because he had already been enthroned once in Shengjing (Shenyang), this ceremony at the Gate of Imperial Zenith was officially termed ‘receiving the congratulations of all civil and military officials.’ The New Year’s Day congratulatory ceremony the following year was held on the empty platform of the Hall of Imperial Zenith in a tented space called the imperial canopy, where he received the officials’ homage. Rebuilding the Hall of Imperial Zenith began in the second year of Shunzhi and was finished in the third year, when it was renamed the Hall of Supreme Harmony. So the first Qing emperor to be truly enthroned in the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the Kangxi Emperor. That first Qing enthronement ceremony followed the old Ming court protocol, which is recorded in the Collected Statutes of the Great Ming. Afterwards, the Manchus compiled their own Collected Statutes of the Qing. After the 1911 Revolution, in 1915 Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor. He had planned to be enthroned in the Hall of Supreme Harmony on 1 January 1916, but ended up hastily performing a ceremony beforehand at the Juren Hall in Zhongnanhai. In the end he messed it all up: half a year later, he died of uraemia, racked with pain. Yuan Shikai’s ‘Hongxian’ reign was a farce; he never entered the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and he doesn’t figure in Forbidden City history. After him, in 1917, Zhang Xun, together with Kang Youwei, staged the so-called ‘Dingsi Restoration,’ setting the twelve-year-old Puyi back on the throne in the Hall of Mental Cultivation while the whole court kowtowed on the floor. That one was even more of a disaster: twelve days later, the restoration collapsed, and it’s even less worthy of being written into the official history of the Forbidden City.

Besides enthronements, imperial weddings were of course held in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. If the empress was absent for some reason and the emperor remarried, the ceremony of installing the new empress was also performed here. If an emperor had already married and fathered children before ascending the throne, then he came to power together with his wife and son, and an additional ceremony to install the empress was held here. When a powerful enemy threatened and the emperor led the army in person, a campaign ceremony would certainly take place in this hall. This ‘emperor leading the troops’ business was pretty chancy: in the 14th year of the Zhengtong reign (Ming), Emperor Yingzong (Zhu Qizhen) personally led an expedition against the Oirat Mongols and was badly defeated, spending a long time in captivity – politely referred to as ‘hunting in the north.’ The Qing Kangxi Emperor’s personal expedition against Galdan must have begun with a campaign ceremony here. When the Yongzheng Emperor dispatched troops against the Dzungar Khanate, appointing two route commanders for the distant campaign, it was also here that he poured each of them three bowls of wine before they set off.

Apart from these ceremonies, the emperor’s birthday was celebrated in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. First the officials would merrily cry out ‘Long live the emperor!’ Because there were so many officials, it was called ‘mountain calling,’ which is actually a bit like ‘loud hype.’ The emperor’s wedding had a wedding banquet; his birthday had a birthday banquet, both laid out in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The guest list for a wedding banquet was small – only relatives. A birthday banquet was different: anyone who shouted ‘Long live!’ could get a share – provided, of course, they were qualified to enter the palace to do so. Every year, after the autumn harvest, when the emperor had finished collecting rent and it was time to spend it, on the winter solstice the common folk ate dumplings, and the emperor also hosted his ministers to a banquet in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In truth, the ministers would have preferred to eat dumplings at home, because even vegetarian ones were at least freshly cooked and hot. Attending an imperial feast in the Hall of Supreme Harmony was different: in the bitter cold, the chicken, duck, fish and meat carried from the imperial kitchen would all be stone-cold by the time they reached the ministers. The ministers had one other chance to eat the emperor’s cold food: New Year’s Day – not the present-day solar calendar’s 1 January, but the first day of the first lunar month. We now distinguish them by calling one ‘New Year’s Day’ and the other the ‘Spring Festival.’ The Western solar calendar is a sun-based calendar; the Chinese calendar is lunar – a moon-based calendar; the Islamic calendar is also a lunar calendar.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony had another very important function: it was the highest seat of learning. In the civil exam system that took formal shape under the Tang, the highest-level examination, the palace examination, was held in the Hall of Supreme Harmony throughout the Ming and Qing periods. In the Ming, it was occasionally held in the Hall of Literary Glory. After the Qianlong period of the Qing, it was shifted to the Hall of Preserving Harmony behind this hall, but the announcement of the results, known as ‘chuanlu,’ still took place in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. ‘Lu’ means ‘to state,’ and ‘chuanlu’ means to state the results of the palace exam.

During the 544-year span of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was one major ceremony that was held only once in either the Hall of Heavenly Worship, the Hall of Imperial Zenith or the Hall of Supreme Harmony. On the first day of the first month of the first year of the Jiaqing reign (1 January 1796), the Qianlong Emperor held the ‘Return of the Seal’ ceremony in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, handing the throne over to his fifteenth son, Yongyan (who took the Jiaqing reign title), and giving him the imperial ‘Treasure of the Emperor’ seal.

The last great ceremony in the forecourt of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the surrender ceremony of Japanese forces in the North China theatre, held at ten minutes past ten on the tenth day of the tenth month, 1945.

So you see, although the Hall of Supreme Harmony is extremely tall, huge and top-grade, it was only used a few times a year. Yet even so, it had to be built resplendently. The Hall of Heavenly Worship that Zhu Di built was made of golden-thread nanmu. In the Ming, China enjoyed great material abundance, and the imperial family could appropriate all the finest things. This nanmu came from Guizhou, transported by rivers – the Chishui, the Yangtze, and the Grand Canal – to Beijing. Completed in the 18th year of the Yongle reign (1420), it was burned down that very year, together with the other two front halls. I wonder if that was the Jianwen Emperor taking revenge; when Zhu Di had purged the court in Nanjing, he had set fires to smoke out the Jianwen Emperor. Zhu Di didn’t dare rebuild, fearing another fire. Twenty years later, in the fifth year of the Zhengtong reign (1440), Zhu Di’s great-grandson, the Zhengtong Emperor (Ming Yingzong) rebuilt the three great halls, still using golden-thread nanmu. Then, in the 36th year of the Jiajing reign (1557), another fire broke out and the three halls were again completely gutted. Rebuilding was completed in the 40th year of Jiajing, and the emperor renamed the main hall the Hall of Imperial Zenith. The final Ming palace fire occurred in the 25th year of the Wanli reign (1597), and reconstruction wasn’t finished until the seventh year of the Tianqi reign (1627). Throughout the Ming, the Hall of Supreme Harmony was always built of golden-thread nanmu. This nanmu was reserved for imperial use; others couldn’t use it. Next door to the palace, in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, the front hall, which served as the offering hall, was also made of golden-thread nanmu. Besides the palace and the Ancestral Temple, golden-thread nanmu was also used in imperial tombs. Today, the Hall of Eminent Favour at the Yongle Emperor’s Changling mausoleum is entirely of golden-thread nanmu; most of the halls of later imperial mausoleums are, too. When the rebel leader Li Zicheng entered Beijing, apart from making the Chongzhen Emperor hang himself, he also set fire to the palace. After Shunzhi passed through the pass, although rebuilding began, the craftsmanship was poor, and the restoration remained rather shoddy, because the Manchus hadn’t even begun to understand Han architectural culture. It was only in the 34th year of the Kangxi reign (1695), when a scale model of the Jiajing reconstruction of the Hall of Imperial Zenith was unearthed from the Ministry of Works’ storehouse, that they fully grasped the Ming structural system. The rebuilding of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was then properly completed in the 36th year of Kangxi. Though this rebuilding followed Ming proportions, it was still a good deal smaller than the original. By the written dimensions of the Ming, the Qing hall is almost one-third smaller. That seems too much – I suspect the actual lengths of a Ming foot and a Qing foot were different. By that time, domestically produced golden-thread nanmu, like today’s domestic hairtail fish, left only thin stock – second-growth timber; there were no old-growth trees left big enough to supply the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Although Kangxi grew up inside the Pass, he was still a thoroughbred northerner, so he had Korean pine shipped from his old home in the Greater Khingan Mountains to build the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In the recent major repairs, old-growth Korean pine from the Greater Khingan Mountains was again used. Korean pine is also very good; though it can’t compare with golden-thread nanmu, it’s highly durable. Korean pine is tall, straight and rich in resin, resistant to water – hence its durability. In the south, Korean pine is scarce; they mostly use China fir (pronounced ‘sha mu’), the fir tree (pronounced ‘shan shu’), which is equally tall and durable. For this rebuilding of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Kangxi ordered complete records kept, which became the blueprint for later restorations. Thus did the Qing emperors learn the Han appetite for luxury, and starting with Qianlong, they, too, wanted to build with golden-thread nanmu, just like the Ming. To rule the Han people, the Qing emperors were actually quite respectful to the Ming tombs; Qing law stipulated the death penalty for anyone who dug up a Ming grave. But while they didn’t dig up the tombs, that didn’t stop them from dismantling the above-ground structures. Qianlong dismantled the sacrificial halls of several Ming tombs and made off with the golden-thread nanmu to build his own halls. I have seen for myself the Danbo Jingcheng Hall in the Chengde Mountain Resort, the Great Benevolence Hall in the West Heaven Pure Land temple inside Beihai Park, and the main hall of the third courtyard of the Kuaixue Hall – all built with that stolen nanmu. Later, the Daoguang Emperor also stole nanmu from Ming tombs to build his own Hall of Eminent Favour. There are almost no completely intact golden-thread nanmu buildings among common folk; I’ve heard that in a remote valley in Enshi, Hubei, there is an old house made entirely of golden-thread nanmu. This must be the one and only in the country – said to be from the Wanli period, already the late Ming, when imperial authority no longer penetrated the mountains.

Look at the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the early morning sun.

And at sunset.

The ten ridge creatures on the roof-ridge in the glow of the setting sun.

The lotus-shaped baluster tops on the white marble railings.

Newlyweds beaming with joy in the great square.

The first task for newly assigned soldiers of the guard unit, fresh from training, is a visit to the palace – these handsome lads are a sight in themselves.

The courtyard of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is enormously spacious, and necessarily has its complementary structures. Stay tuned for the next instalment.

(To be continued)