Jiatong Han (Tonya)
Professor Klepper
English 113B
13 December 2013
The Forbidden
City
The
Qing Palace Museum or Forbidden City, encrusted in the centre of China’s
capital Beijing is one of the most wonderful architectural masterpieces in the
world. The Qing Palace is China’s largest museum and according to the
historical document, its construction lasted fifteen years. The palace witnesses
the vicissitudes of royalty of China, with Fourteen Ming emperors and ten
Qing emperors living there. The Forbidden City is also the one of the greatest
works ever undertaken, boasting a diverse collection of artworks and unique
building structures and design. Just as Guo Changhong said “It is an important
bearer of Chinese culture and an epitome of Chinese history (Guo, 83).” The
Forbidden City’s history did not just impact the imperial family, it impacted Chinese
culture as a whole.
The Forbidden
City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the
Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the
Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and
their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese
government.
The
Forbidden City is a rich and mysterious palace is one of the architectural
masterpieces to the world. It includes large courtyards, different palaces, and
many buildings decorated with golden roofs that convey a strong image of the
wealth and power of the Imperial family. Jim Antoniou said that “ The city of
Beijing consisted of three concentric and rectangular walled areas. The outermost
of Beijing’s concentric rectangles housed the lower ranking civil servants and
was known as the Inner City, or Tartat City”. He also said that “The Forbidden
City, while expressing monumentality, retains its sense of human scale and is
able to provide splendid buildings on multiple platforms, skillful perspectives
through a succession of opening and closing spaces and colorful reflections in
infinite pools, all experienced through a sequence of sensations (Jim, 7).” It
means that in Forbidden City, every building has their unique design style. For
example the Palace of Heavenly Purity is the place where Ming and Qing’s
emperors to deal with daily affairs. Heavenly means clean, like the sky, not
muddy like a cloud, that means the emperor's actions are as magnanimous as the
clear sky, and he did not do any shameful thing.
Today’s
Palace has already shifted to a cultural heritage site. It used to be inhabited
by all the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties and was also the center of
the country’s political life and the imperial power. It is the world's largest
palace complex and covers 74 hectares. Surrounded by a 52-meter-wide moat and a
10-meter-high wall are more than 8,700 rooms. There is a story saying that if
the emperor changes the rooms every single day, he can not visit every room in
the Forbidden City until he dies. Nobody knows exactly how many rooms are in
Forbidden City. This unclear data also adds to the mysterious color to the
Forbidden City. In October 1925, the Forbidden City was officially transformed
into a museum. “During the 1950s, the museum was defined as an exhibition site
for ancient works of art. From March 1961 onward, it became listed as one of
the key cultural ‘units’ under state protection. By December 1987, it emerged as
a formally recognized world-class heritage site”. It means that Forbidden City
has already became a cultural heritage that expresses Chinese culture through
Ming and Qing dynasty. The Forbidden city was the first national museum in
Chinese history. According to a survey, “about 1,500,000 of its listed items
are housed at the Palace Museum of Beijing while 650,000 were transferred
between 1948 and 1949 to Taiwan by the Guomingdang, and later integrated within
the collection of the Palace Museum of Taipei, formally established on 12
November 1965”. The numbers of listed items represents not only an expansion of
the original inventory, but it also shows that they are cultural
valuable.
Throughout
history, the Forbidden City was not only rich in works of art, but also showed
Chinese history and culture. As we all see, the museum's design are
unique, highlighting the characteristics of the royal wealth. As China's largest
and most authoritative National Palace Museum, it shows the traditional culture
of Chinese and also carries forward the majority.
Works Cited
Guo, Changhong. The Qing Palace: From a
Forbidden City to a Public Heritage.
ISSN 1350-0775. No. 237-238 (Vol. 60.
No. 1-2. 2008). published by UNWSCO
Publishing and Blackwell Publishing
Ltd.
Mon.28 Oct. 2013
Jim, Antoniou. The forbidden City In
Beijing: China’s Hidden Heart. Issue Number (1250) And ISSN (0003861X) And Volume Number (209)
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