Chapter 7 Section 6 Shenyang Forbidden City

In addition to the Forbidden City in Beijing, the ancient palace buildings preserved in our country also have the Shenyang Imperial Palace, which was built in Shenyang, Liaoning Province before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs.Qing Taizu Nurhachi was originally the leader of the Jurchens (Manchus) in the Northeast. After he merged the tribes to gain the ruling power and established the Jin Kingdom, he organized all the people under the Eight Banners.The leaders of the eight banners are all held by himself, his brothers, sons, and nephews. They lead the battle in wartime and manage household registration, land tax, corvee and other matters in peacetime. Therefore, the banner is the organizational form of the Nurhachi regime, and the banner king has become his political authority. The main ministers of the emperor, whenever there is a big event, will set up eight tents in front of the king's hall, lined up on both sides, and call the kings and ministers of the Eight Banners to discuss state affairs.In 1622, Nurhaci moved the capital to Shenyang, and immediately built a palace, which is now the east road of Shenyang Imperial Palace (Figure 8).The building on the East Road takes the Dazheng Hall in the center as the main hall, which is the hall for holding national ceremonies; the front of the hall maintains the form of the Eight Banners tent, and 10 royal pavilions are built. The sequence of the eight-banners is arranged on the left and right, and this is the place where the kings of the Eight Banners are called to discuss state affairs.Such a layout has not been seen in ancient palace buildings, and it is actually the architectural embodiment of the political requirements of the ruling class in this period.After Nurhachi's death, his son Huang Taiji succeeded to the throne, changed the name of the country to Qing, strengthened the centralization of power, and weakened the power of the Eight Banner Kings. A group of palace buildings dominated by the Chongzheng Palace, this is the middle road of the Shenyang Imperial Palace.The Daqing Gate on the south side of the middle road is the main entrance of the Forbidden City. Entering the gate, you pass through the Yudao to the Chongzheng Hall. This is the main hall where Huang Taiji handles state affairs. Every court meeting, meeting with envoys, and important banquets are held here.Qingning Palace behind it is the sleeping hall of the Forbidden City. It is built on a platform more than three meters high. In front of it is the Phoenix Tower as the entrance of this group of harem buildings. After going up to the high platform, there are five palaces for the emperor, empress and concubines. they live.The West Road part of the Shenyang Imperial Palace is a building complex built by Emperor Qianlong during his northern tour of Shenyang in 1781, including a stage and a Wensu Pavilion where the "Siku Quanshu" is stored.

On the whole, the East Road and Middle Road of the Shenyang Imperial Palace represent the architectural forms of the early Qing Dynasty before entering the customs. Compared with the palace buildings of the Ming Dynasty, what are their characteristics? First, from the perspective of the overall layout of the building, the Shenyang Forbidden City not only inherits the tradition of Han palaces, but also expresses its own national characteristics.The buildings on both the East Road and the Middle Road are arranged in a symmetrical form on the central axis.The Dazheng Hall on the East Road is in the middle, and the 10 royal pavilions are symmetrically arranged in front; the Daqing Gate, Chongzheng Hall, Phoenix Tower, Qingning Palace and other main halls on the Middle Road are all placed on the central axis, with side halls on both sides. There are several courtyards at the front and back; the palace is still the pattern of the front court and the back bedroom; these are the traditional forms of the Han nationality.However, the Ten Kings Pavilion on the East Road shows the tradition of the Jin Dynasty after the Jurchen tribe.The rear dormitory in the middle road is built on a high platform, forming a pattern in which the front hall is low and the rear palace is high, which is exactly the opposite of the arrangement of the three front halls of the Forbidden City in the Ming Dynasty on the high platform, and the three inner palaces and the rear palaces lower than the former palace.This form of high palaces and low halls is related to the living habits of the Jurchens. The Jurchens have lived in the Changbai Mountains for a long time and are used to living on high terraces. After Nurhaci was established, the Jin Kingdom built palaces in Xinbin, Liaoyang and other places. These buildings also Most of them were built on high ground, or built a high platform on the mountain, and then built palaces on the high platform. This habit was naturally brought to the Shenyang Imperial Palace.

Second, in terms of architectural form, the Shenyang Imperial Palace has not yet fully grasped the traditional style of palace buildings that had been formed in the Ming Dynasty.The Hall of Supreme Harmony and the Palace of Qianqing in the Forbidden City in Beijing use the highest-level double-eave hipped roof, the Palace of Preserving Harmony and the Gate of Supreme Harmony use double-eave and gable roofs, and other buildings also use different roofs according to their grades. The form of the roof reflects a set of strict feudal hierarchy in the architectural structure.However, in Shenyang Forbidden City, the most important Dazheng Hall uses an octagonal double eaves and drill-pointed roof, and the Chongzheng Hall only uses the most common hard gable roof, which does not reflect the status of these buildings in terms of architectural style. They show architectural importance only by decoration.For example, in the Chongzheng Hall, there is an exquisite throne with a wooden platform under the throne and a pavilion with a roof on it, which is called Tang Bi. The beams, throne and screens of Tang Bi are covered with wood carvings.Although there is no smallpox on the top of the hall, the beams and beams are also painted with colored paintings, which makes the Chongzheng Hall with a simple hard mountain top still look very gorgeous.

Third, in terms of architectural decoration, the Shenyang Forbidden City not only follows the traditional decoration of Han architecture, but also can see some forms unique to Manchu and Mongolian areas.As a symbol of the emperor, the dragon is also widely adopted by the Shenyang Imperial Palace. On the front eaves column of the Dazheng Hall, a golden dragon coiled around the column body is specially made. Orbs form a three-dimensional pattern of two dragons playing with beads.In the center of the algae well in the Dazheng Hall, there is also a wooden dragon painted with gold.In the eaves of the Chongzheng Hall and the Daqing Gate, the short beams connecting the inner and outer columns are completely made into the form of a dragon. The tail extends into the room, and the image is very vivid. This style and style is rarely seen in Han official buildings.Glass has long been a decorative material for palace buildings. When Nurhachi and Huang Taiji built the Shenyang Forbidden City, they used a large number of glass components for decoration because they had a base for burning glaze in Haicheng nearby.The roofs of the main palaces are made of yellow glazed tiles, some of which are surrounded by green glazed tiles; on the Chongzheng Hall with a hard mountain roof, in addition to all glazed tiles, there are also Bofeng panels on the left and right walls and the top of the front wall. They are all decorated with colored glaze, several roof ridges and wind panels are covered with glazed dragons, one after the other, each dragon has a pearl in front of its head, the dragon is blue, and there are green water waves in the middle, in yellow On the base of the palace, the colors are very bright, forming a dazzling ribbon on the roof, which greatly enhances the expressive force of this palace building.

From the planning layout, architectural form and architectural decoration of the Shenyang Imperial Palace, we can see some characteristics of the early Qing Dynasty architecture. On the one hand, it reflects the original political situation and living habits of the nation, and at the same time, it also adopts and continues to use the Han nationality. Traditional forms and techniques.It shows that Qing Taizu and Qing Taizong paid great attention to absorbing the more advanced skills of the Han and Mongolian nationalities in the process of building the Qing imperial palace, and paid attention to recruiting craftsmen and craftsmen of the Han and Mongolian nationalities, so that the architecture of the Shenyang Forbidden City has a multi-ethnic culture. specialty.