Chapter 71 2. Hundreds of rivers return to the sea

The most intuitive material carrier of "The Forbidden City" is the Forbidden Palace.The Palace of the Forbidden City is not only nurtured by Chinese culture, but also a treasure house of Chinese culture. One of the characteristics of Chinese culture is "tolerance", the inclusive "tolerance". "Shuowen Jiezi" says: "Rong, Sheng Ye. From 宀 (mian, house), valley." Both houses and valleys are empty and can accommodate.Specifically, it includes melting and melting——melting, such as sugar is dissolved in water, but the sugar still exists and turns into sugar water; melting means that sugar and water are dissolved into one.This kind of integration, on the one hand, the Forbidden City, as a royal palace, has inherited the essence of Chinese culture; on the other hand, the Forbidden City is branded with the multiculturalism of the Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties (that is, the third millennium).Chinese culture, hundreds of rivers return to the sea, and the essence of cultural relics gather in the Forbidden City.Residential houses are rooms, and emperor's residences are palaces.This kind of convergence and fusion, from the Song Palace to the Yuan Palace, from the Yuan Palace to the Ming Palace, from the Ming Palace to the Qing Palace, is analyzed in separate sections.

From Song Palace to Yuan Palace.The emperors of all dynasties in China attached great importance to the collection and collection of cultural relics.Yin Shang cultural relics are mostly concentrated in the palace and ancestral temples.The treasures of cultural relics of the Zhou Dynasty are collected in "Tianfu" and "Yufu".The Afang Palace in the Qin Dynasty gathered the treasures of the seven heroes of the Warring States Period."Tianlu" and "Shiqu" in the Han Dynasty were the places where the Han Palace stored precious cultural relics and books.When it came to Song Huizong, the collection was particularly rich.The direct collection of the Forbidden City in Beijing can be traced back to Bianliang in the Northern Song Dynasty. It has been a thousand years since the tortuous course.The palace collections of the Song Dynasty were rich, and during the Jingkang Rebellion, classics and treasures were all returned to gold; Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty moved his capital to Lin'an and collected them extensively.With the rise of the Mongol Yuan, the Jin Dynasty was destroyed first, and then the Southern Song Dynasty.After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the court collected them and transferred them to Yuan Shangdu (now Zhenglan Banner, Inner Mongolia), Yuan Ding moved to Dadu (now Beijing), and this batch of cultural relics was also transported to Dadu.

From Yuan Palace to Ming Palace.After Kublai Khan moved to Dadu, he built the Dadu Palace.Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty planned to build the Palace of the Forbidden City on the basis of the Dadu Palace.For example: First, the pattern of the palace city and gardens in the capital reflects the idea that water is the most important thing in the grassland culture: Taiye is the main thing, and the palace is the guest.The Ming Dynasty’s idea of ​​focusing on farming culture is the opposite: the palace is the mainstay, and Taiye is the guest.Two cultures blend with each other. Second, the layout of the palace takes its advantages.Dadu (imperial palace) is a continuation of the tent-style building in the upper capital of the Yuan Dynasty, that is, the imperial tent of the Great Khan is in the center, and the curtains of other princes and nobles are arranged on the left and right.The east and west sides of the three front halls and the three rear palaces of the Ming Palace are not separated by walls, but enclosed by corridors, verandas and pavilions.This is the application of the shape of the Mongolian tent to the layout of the palace.

Third, the interior of the palace is decorated with "plain silk on the four walls", obviously the walls are like a yurt; the Danbi of the palace pavilion is "all planted with green pines", and the outside of the palace is like a green forest or grassland. (Xiao Xun's "Records of the Forbidden City") Ming palaces introduced carpets. Fourth, the Longfu Palace and Xingsheng Palace in the capital of the Yuan Dynasty became Xiyuan in the Ming Dynasty. The Leopard House of Emperor Zhengde and the West Palace of Emperor Jiajing are the combination of palaces and gardens.

Fifth, when Ming prospered and Yuan died, Xu Da, a general of the Ming Dynasty, transported the possessions of the Yuan Dynasty's inner palace to Nanjing; Emperor Yongle moved the capital to Beijing, and these treasures were transported from Nanjing to Beijing. From Ming Palace to Qing Palace.After the Qing dynasty moved to Beijing, the old palaces of the Ming Dynasty "considered the profit and loss due to the old state of victory" (Volume 9 of "Jixia Jiuwenkao").That is, the Qing Dynasty not only followed the original state of the original Ming Dynasty palace, but also made additions, deletions and reconstructions.For example:

First, the Kunning Palace was not only used as the queen's official palace in the Ming Dynasty, but also changed into a temple for shaman sacrifices.In ancient times, shaman culture was popular in the forest and grassland cultures. It started from the Tianshan Mountains in the west, the Great Wall in the south, Lake Baikal in the north, and Sakhalin Island (now Sakhalin) in the east.There are only two sacrificial places on the meridian, that is, the central axis of the Forbidden City: one is the Qin'an Temple built in Yongle to worship Taoism, and the other is the Kunning Palace in the Qing Dynasty to worship Shaman.This is a typical collision and fusion of the three cultures of farming, grassland and forest in the Forbidden City.

Second, Tibetan Buddhism entered the palace, Yuhua Pavilion, Fori Building, Fanhua Building, Lama Temple, etc., the introduction of Tibetan Buddhism into the palace is a major cultural fusion of Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria. The Qing court painter painted "The Picture of All Nations Coming to Court", which shows the scene of vassals and foreign envoys coming to the Forbidden City to congratulate them. Third, the "three mountains and five gardens", the Summer Resort, the Outer Eight Temples, and the Mulan Paddock are all ethnic groups in the Qing Dynasty, including Manchu, Han, Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur, and Hui. Farming, grassland, forest, and plateau cultures are integrated with each other. typical garden view.

Fourth, the "Records of the Emperors of the Great Qing Dynasty" in Manchu, Han, and Mongolian styles, the "Manchu Tripitaka" and "Tibetan Dragon Canon" edited and carved by the Qing Palace, etc., in Manchu, Han, Mongolian, and Tibetan languages The stele and the "Wu Ti Qing Wen Jian" compiled in Manchu, Han, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uighur are all products of the fusion of farming, forest, grassland, and plateau cultures. Fifth, after the Ming Dynasty died and the Qing Dynasty prospered, the collections of the Ming court were also owned by the Qing court.Therefore, the cultural relics undertaken by the Qing Palace are the summary of the collections of the Chinese courts of all dynasties.

From the perspective of cultural relics, the material and non-material manifestations of these cultures are unique Chinese cultural symbols, such as: language, characters, calligraphy, paintings, porcelain, enamel, music, drama, Beijing opera, dance, classics, archives, architecture, Gardens, culture, furniture, clothing, cooking, silk, embroidery, tea ceremony, crafts, etc., the essence of these traditional material and intangible cultural heritages are concentrated in the Forbidden Palace.Among the cultural relics of the Palace Museum, in terms of age, it ranges from the Neolithic Age to the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties; in terms of regions, it includes the essence of civilization in various regions of ancient China; in terms of humanities, it includes the artistic essence of the Han nationality and many ancient ethnic minorities; in terms of categories , including almost all categories of ancient Chinese artworks.Such as calligraphy, the collection of the Forbidden City ranges from oracle bone inscriptions, Zhong Dingwen, to the art of calligraphy and painting that began to form in the Jin Dynasty.Since then, almost all famous works by famous masters in the past dynasties are available.For example, ceramics, from the black pottery and painted pottery of the Neolithic Age, through the five famous kilns in the Song and Song Dynasties, blue and white porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty, white porcelain, red underglaze, etc., to Qingfencai and enamel, etc., are all collected.The continuous history and culture of the Chinese nation are fully reflected in the various cultural relics collections of the Forbidden City - now the Palace Museum is divided into 26 categories.The emperors of the Qing Dynasty, especially Emperor Qianlong, made the court collection reach the peak of the imperial era.

From a spiritual level, the spiritual expression of these cultures, Kublai Khan's grand mind in building a metropolis, Emperor Yongle's great talent in governing the empire, Emperor Kangxi's "Huang Yu Pan Pan"'s grand vision, the fusion of farming, grassland, and forest cultures, are the talents. With the city of Beijing, there is the Forbidden Palace. The Yuan Dynasty did not interrupt the traditional Chinese culture, and the Han language and characters were preserved.The Qing Dynasty did not forcefully promote Manchu and Manchu among the Han people, so that the Han language and characters were preserved.Therefore, among the four ancient civilizations in the world, there is only the Chinese nation, and only the Chinese civilization, in which one language and one script have lasted for 5,000 years, continuously, and evolved in ups and downs.

Therefore, the imperial palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and their cultural relics are a concentrated expression of the fusion of multi-ethnic and multicultural China.It is the most prominent cultural feature of the "Great Forbidden City", and it is also the internal reason why the "Great Forbidden City" is "big". In ancient China, "Under the sky, is it the king's land; on the shore of the land, is it the king's ministers", the emperor who holds the supreme power must be the owner of the most high-end, most exquisite, rare and precious items in the whole society Readers, collectors, enjoyers.After successive generations of inheritance and integration, these national treasures are finally owned by the state and shared by the people.