Forbidden City 紫禁城
This was once the focus of all creation, standing at the center of the world, the univer and the mind of God. For 500 years, it sheltered a court dedicated to privilege and power. It was built for one man, the Son of Heaven(天子). But it was also a palace and prison in one. And at the best of times and the worst of times it was hard to tell them apart. In the end, here was a dynasty expected to last forever until time brought it all to a clo. This is the Forbidden City.
In the year 1688, the government official from Anhui province arrived in Beijing. His name was Yang Suyun(杨素蕴). He had traveled almost a thousand miles, a journey of thirty days. The last mile he walked alone without his rvants, without transport, for beyond the gate was the Great Within, the Forbidden City.
We know about Yang's audience becau everything that happened inside the gates was obssively written down and stored. Funeral orations, dinner menus, declarations of war, all here in the imperial archive of 50 million manuscripts. This attention to detail was one defining feature of the Forbidden City. Harmony with the univer was another. When that h
armony was disturbed, it meant dynasties could collap. As a young man, Yan had en the 300-year-old Ming Dynasty fall after an eclip of the Sun.
快乐近义词His mission now was to report on the latest bad omens, typhoons off the Cantone coast, a comet en above the Gobi Dert. The things spoke of Heaven's weariness and a chaos that could end an emperor's rule.
文明你我他When the Forbidden City emerged out of the North China Plain at the start of the 15th century, it was the biggest complex of palaces in the world. It still is. It was designed to reflect the eternal glory of the Ming Emperors. One hundred thousand men built it and at night their kilns lit up the surrounding plains. One hundred million bricks, two hundred million tiles, timber from the trees of southern nanmu, trees that took four years to get here by river and the Grand Canal. When the work was over, the people vanished, leaving the city to an emperor and a court who rved him. Sealed off from the world, it aspired to contain all the cosmos within its walls, a univer within a univer.
At the center of this controlled univer, the imperial throne. All power flowed from this room. Around it, a fabled 9,999 rooms, the yellows were for power, the reds for good luck,
and everywhere the imperial dragons to bring the rains and make the land prosper. One carving of dragons decorated a single piece of marble so vast that it was transported in winter along a highway of ice. When it was found to be too big, legend has it that the emperor's soldiers whipped the marble until it buckled and moved on. There were 18 provinces in the empire. And intelligence reports and tax ledgers arrived in the Forbidden City every day. An empire of 150 million people, Han Chine, Mongol, Manchu, was governed from here by the world's oldest and most sophisticated bureaucratic machine.
A bureaucrat might cross the entire empire, but he could not cross this wall. Beyond it was the Inner Court(内廷). Other than the emperor himlf, the only other people allowed here were his concubines and the castrated eunuchs. There were more eunuchs than anyone el in the Forbidden City. Up to 3,000 orbited around the Son of Heaven like satellites. They were his slaves, although he could not function without them.
Every morning they dresd the emperor in one of a thousand gowns, each ordained for a different ason and most of them imperial yellow. One emperor recalled: "Whenever I think of my childhood, my head fills with a yellow mist: my dan chair(轿子) was yellow, 森林火灾作文
my clothes were yellow, the bowls on which I ate, everything was yellow. This made me feel from my earliest years that I had a heavenly nature.
见死不救The Emperor Kangxi ascended the throne in 1661. He was to reign for the next 61 years, the golden age of Chine imperial rule. Kangxi's mandate, like the mandate for all the emperors came not from the people, but from the Heavens. Each year at sunri at the winter solstice, that mandate was renewed. The emperor and his entourage left the Forbidden City to travel through the clean and empty streets of Beijing to make the sacrifice and take the vows at the Temple of Heaven(天坛).
A Chine philosopher had once written: "If the ruler is correct, then the creative energies will be harmonious and compliant. Winds and rain will be timely. Auspicious stars will appear, and then, the yellow dragon will descend.色七影院
The emperor was at the center of the univer. Authority derived from Heaven meant that Kangxi, like emperors before him, had absolute power. In his diaries Kangxi wrote: "Giving life to people and killing people, tho are the powers that the emperor has. He k
囊毒豹
nows that people sometimes must be persuaded into morality by an execution. Although a court audience has the important function of reducing arrogance."
The kowtow literally meant knocking one's head. Kangxi loved to e his generals humble in this way. The Emperor Kangxi knew that intimidation had its limits. Fearful men might keep information to themlves. And that could be disastrous. Kangxi demanded that his diviners never distort the truth.
Astronomy was an obssion of Kangxi's. It had been since he was an eight-year-old boy. His tutor was the best in China, although he was not Chine. The Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest was a westerner and therefore a barbarian, but he was also a brilliant astronomer and therefore valuable to the imperial court. In over two centuries only a handful of westerners had come this far.
When he'd come to Beijing from Rome in 1660, Verbiest had brought the knowledge of Kepler and Galileo with him. The emperor had Verbiest appointed to the Board of Astronomers. He revolutionized Chine astronomy. A new obrvatory was built and the westerner began to study the stars for the Son of Heaven.
The elevation of Verbiest was a dramatic break from the Chine custom. The intellectual curiosity of Kangxi allowed a point of outside light into the Forbidden City and the emperor was an ardent pupil.
One evening, the emperor made me sit down by him and he had me name all the constellations that had appeared. (He) himlf had fast named all tho he knew already, delighting to show the skill he had in this science.
Astronomy was science but it was also lf-protection. A new calendar was unveiled every fall at the Meridian Gate(午门). For years, the court astronomers had made bad miscalculations. Their inaccuracies led to famine becau ed across China had been planted too early or harvested too late. Kangxi's prestige and authority were bad on scientific method.
Kangxi's calendars were reliable. They strengthened his dynasty. But help from the West would always have its contradictions in the Forbidden City.
Perhaps the emperor had elevated outsiders like the Jesuit priest Verbiest becau he was an outsider himlf, a Manchu. In 1644, his family had come at the head of a maraud
ing army from beyond the Great Wall of China. In a matter of days, the ancient and enfeebled Ming Dynasty had fallen to the men from the North. The Manchus were skilled hormen. They were good with arrows, but they were not intellectuals.
"Fools," said one Han Chine official," without grace or character." Kangxi, the Manchu emperor of the new Qing Dynasty wanted to change all that. He immerd himlf in ancient Chine history. He developed the mind of a scholar, not a soldier. Not that he could afford to do without soldiers. There were many Chine who would never accept their new masters and rebellion was a constant threat in the early years of Kangxi's reign. It took 19 years before the Forbidden City had been properly cured for the Manchu, and then the new order took root.
Kangxi's first problem had been the power of the eunuchs. They developed the taste for politics during the Ming Dynasty. And nothing emed to get done without bribing them. Kangxi turned them into rvants again. All the emperor's eunuchs were volunteers; all had been given a last chance to change their minds when the knife came out. Kangxi said that they babbled like babies. But they did guarantee the chastity of his women.
Emperor Kangxi had a low opinion of his eunuchs.
They are quite different from ordinary people; they are equivalent to the meanest incts. I keep them working at menial jobs but ignore their frowns and smiles, and make sure that they stay poor. If too much grea are shown, they become uppity.
Instead of politics, for Kangxi, they press(ed) silk, cha(d) rodents. They kept the flies off dried fruit. And they sang faltto in the court operas. It was a far cry from what they might have once expected.
I was castrated by my own choice. It emed a little thing to give up one pleasure for so many. My parents were poor. Yet by suffering that small change I could be sure of an easy life in surroundings of beauty and magnificence. I could aspire to intimate companionship with lovely women unmarred by their fear or distrust of me. With good fortune and diligence, I might have grown more rich and powerful than some of the greatest officials in the empire. Are we happy? How could that be? We have no wives, no sons to bear us grandsons and sacrifice at our tombs. We dare not ask for happiness.
