Forbidden CityThe imperial palace where the emperors resided during the Ming and the Qing dynasties is known today as the Forbidden City in English (though a more accurate translation would be the Purple Forbidden City) so named because only members of the royal clan could enter. The palace, which has been converted into a museum and tourist attraction, is located north of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Completed in 1420, the Forbidden City took 14 long years to build and over 200,000 laborers. Over the centuries, about 24 emperors have lived there.
At 178 acres, the Forbidden City is the largest palace compound in the world. It’s surrounded and protected by both a moat six meters deep and a wall ten meters high. Rectangular in shape, the city is constructed on a north/south axis, with the most important buildings on the central axis. The Forbidden City compound includes five halls, seventeen palaces and numerous other structures. There are four gates in all – the Meridian Gate, used only by the emperor, and the Gate of Divine Might, used by all others, are the two most prominent. The palace rooftops are all yellow, the royal color, and each has a certain number of statues on it, signifying the power of the person occupying that house. The emperor’s own buildings have nine statues. There is only a single building that has one statue more than the emperor’s number.
The City is divided into two sections, namely the outer and inner courts. The emperor lived in the inner court with his wives, eunuchs and servants. The outer court, on the other hand, had several more public uses, including ceremonial purposes such as weddings and coronations. There are three major halls in the outer court, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Gate of Supreme Harmony and the Palace of Heavenly Purity. The library archives as well as lantern storage are also in the outer court. The Heavenly Purity Hall is the most important hall in the Forbidden City, for it houses the imperial throne. The city garden, towards the northern end, has trees over three centuries old.
So large is the Forbidden City that there are several parts of the palace that are not open to the public for lack of maintenance. The city has burned numerous times, and some parts have never been restored, though work is ongoing. The restoration and protection of those parts of the City open to the public has been thorough. In particular great care seems to have been taken in reconstructing the huge wall around it. The walls are strong enough to resist even canon attacks.
Commercialization has entered the Forbidden City. Small snack and souvenir shops, including a Starbucks, are everywhere inside the compound. In the past few years there has been significant opposition to the commercialization of one of China’s greatest historical and culture monuments; the Starbucks in particular has attracted intense criticism.
