Chapter 33 Section 3 screen wall

When people stroll through the ancient buildings and enter the gate through the archway, they often see an independent short wall standing inside or outside the gate, and there are decorations on the wall. This short wall is called a shadow wall. Facing the gate, it acts as a barrier, because it always faces the people who enter and exit the gate, so it is also called Zhaobi or Zhaobi. The screen wall can be divided into the following categories because of its different positions inside and outside the door. The first is the screen wall outside the gate. It is a wall standing outside the gate of the building complex, directly facing the gate and at a certain distance. Or the archway forms a square.The Ningshou Palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing, as the palace where Emperor Qianlong lived after his abdication, is naturally more imposing. Directly opposite the Huangji Gate, the first gate of Ningshou Palace, stands a very long shadow wall with nine giant dragons on it. That's why it's called the Nine Dragon Wall, and it's the largest among the shadow walls.Beijing Beihai and Shanxi Datong also have a Nine Dragon Wall, and now people appreciate them as an independent large-scale artwork, but in fact they were a group of buildings west of Beihai Tianwang Hall (now destroyed) and Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang's son Zhu Yuanzhang. The glazed screen wall in front of Gui's Daiwang Mansion in Datong.There is also a very long shadow wall in front of the East Palace Gate of the Summer Palace in Beijing. It is behind the wooden archway and forms a rather large square in front of the Palace Gate with the buildings on the left and right in front of the East Palace Gate.In addition to this kind of palace complex, there are also such screen walls in front of some big temples.There are screen walls in front of the gates of Baiyun Temple in Beijing, Wenshu Monastery in Chengdu, and Baoguang Temple in Sichuan; the Qinhuai River flowing in front of the Nanjing Confucius Temple is used as a pond, so the screen wall in front of the gate is placed on the south side of the Qinhuai River, across the river. Confronted with the temple gate.

The second type is the screen wall set inside the gate. They stand in the gate of the building complex, facing the entrance, and keep a certain distance from the gate. They block people's sight and prevent people who enter the gate from seeing the inner courtyard of the building. , It plays a good role as a barrier, so this kind of screen wall often appears in the emperor's bedroom and residential buildings.The Hall of Mental Cultivation on the West Road of the Forbidden City was the residence of the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Inside the Zunyi Gate, the first gate of it, there is a yellow glazed screen wall in front of it.There are also many wooden and stone screen walls in the palaces where the emperors and concubines live in the east and west roads of the inner court.This kind of screen wall appears more widely in northern courtyard houses. They are located inside the gate and facing the entrance. They are a short wall alone or use the gable of the courtyard wing room as a screen wall. This form has become a standard model of courtyard houses. .Some are in the inner courtyard of the courtyard, and there is a screen wall facing the courtyard gate, which makes the environment inside the courtyard more peaceful.

The third type is the screen walls set up on both sides of the gate.In addition to the function of barrier, the screen wall also has the function of decoration at the same time, so sometimes screen walls are set up on both sides of the gate to increase the momentum of the entrance.The gate of the inner court of the Forbidden City, Qianqing Gate, naturally cannot exceed the gate of Taihe Gate in the outer court, so it is lower than the Gate of Supreme Harmony in terms of the number of bays, the form of the roof, and the height of the platform, but it must remain It is quite imposing, so a screen wall is erected on both sides of the gate, arranged on the left and right in a figure-eight shape and formed as a whole with the gate (Figure 34).This kind of screen wall is added on both sides of the Zhai Palace Gate, Yangxin Gate, and Tianyi Gate of the Imperial Garden in the Forbidden City, but this screen wall no longer exists independently but is connected with the gate to become an inseparable part of the gate.

If classified from the materials used to build the screen wall, it can be divided into brick screen walls, stone screen walls, glazed screen walls and a small amount of wooden screen walls.Brick screen walls are the most, and they are all made of bricks from top to bottom. The exquisite large-scale brick screen walls also have the base part of the screen wall replaced by stone, which makes the screen wall stronger and more stable.Paste glass on the outside of the brick screen wall to become a glass screen wall.There are not many screen walls made entirely of stone, because the processing is time-consuming.As for the wooden screen wall, because the wood cannot withstand the sun and rain, it is even rarer.

A small screen wall, because it is located inside and outside the gate, and its position is prominent, so it pays attention to its own shape and decoration.From the overall image, the shadow wall is similar to the ordinary wall, which can be divided into the upper wall top, the middle wall body and the lower wall seat.The top of the wall is the same as the common roof, and can be made into various forms such as a four-sided sloping hall, a resting mountain, a hanging mountain, and a hard mountain, which are used according to the importance of the screen wall.The wall body is the main part of the screen wall, and it is also the place where the decoration is concentrated.Most of the wall seats are in the form of xumizuo.From the external shape, most screen walls are just a simple wall, but a few screen walls are made into two wings in the shape of a figure-eight at both ends of the wall, facing the gate in an encircling shape, making the square in front of the gate more cohesive.The top of some screen walls is made into a ladder shape with a high center and slightly lower sides, with masters and slaves, which enriches the shape of the screen wall.

Judging from the decoration of the screen wall, the Nine Dragon Wall in front of the palace building should be the most gorgeous.The Nine Dragon Wall in front of the Ningshou Palace in the Forbidden City was built in the thirty-sixth year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (AD 1771). It has a total length of 29.4 meters and a total height of 3.5 meters. It is a short and long large screen wall.Except for the wall seat, which is made of stone, the wall body and the top of the wall are all made of glazed bricks and tiles.The roof of the Nine-Dragon Wall adopts a four-sided sloping veranda roof. In addition to the positive kisses at both ends of the ridge, there are nine glazed dragons on the ridge that is more than 20 meters long. The left and right four face the center, and the central one is the front. Sitting dragon, the body of the dragon is green, surrounded by yellow clouds, each of the eight walking dragons has a white flame orb, and a simple main ridge, after such decoration, it looks very gorgeous and eye-catching.The wall body is the main part of the Nine Dragons Wall. Nine giant dragons are arranged on the huge wall body. Their postures are different, and their left and right sides are not symmetrical. sitting dragon.Each dragon's body is coiled and its claws are stretched, full of dynamic power.There are steep rocks, floating cloud patterns and undulating water waves interspersed between the dragon bodies. Nine giant dragons leap and dance among the water waves, clouds and mountains.From the color of the screen wall, the nine dragons are in five colors of yellow, blue, white, purple and orange. The background outside the body is blue and green cloud patterns, water waves and rocks, and white and yellow flame patterns.This color configuration makes the nine dragon bodies and the flame orb very eye-catching on the turquoise background.It is worth noting that this glazed wall with an area of ​​40 square meters is made up of pieces of glazed bricks. The whole wall is divided into 270 glazed bricks. Due to the complexity of the wall patterns, none of the pictures are the same.In the manufacturing process, the whole picture should be designed and shaped firstly, and then carefully divided into blocks. The seams of each row of blocks should be staggered up and down, and the seams should not fall on the faucet as much as possible to maintain the image of the faucet. These 270 plastic bodies with different patterns and different heights must be painted with coloring materials, sent to the glazed brick kiln to be fired into glazed bricks of different colors, and then they are collaged one by one on the wall in order; When pasting, make sure that the patterns between the blocks, the top, bottom, left and right, the colors must be consistent, and the connections must be firm, so that a complete Kowloon screen wall can be obtained in the end.Today, after more than 200 years of wind and rain, the image of the nine giant dragons we see is still so complete and vivid, and the colors of the dragon body, clouds and water, mountains and stones, and fire beads are still so crystal and shiny. There is no misalignment between the glazed bricks, and even the glaze skin of the glazed tiles rarely peels off.It can be seen from here that during the Qianlong period, my country had reached a fairly mature level in the design, firing process, and installation technology of glazed products.

There is another interesting phenomenon in the decoration of the Nine-Dragon Wall. The top of the shadow wall is a veranda roof with five ridges, and nine dragons are decorated on the main ridge. , there are nine giant dragons on the wall, and the wall is spliced ​​by 270 (30×9) glazed bricks, that is to say, the numbers nine and five are implicitly or explicitly hidden everywhere in the Nine Dragon Wall.The ancient theory of yin and yang has been introduced in the previous part of the palace. Among the numbers, the singular number is the yang number, and the number nine is the largest, so it symbolizes the emperor. Get full performance all at once.

Naturally, most screen walls cannot be decorated like Nine Dragon Walls, they just carry out some emphatic decorations on the walls.Judging from the layout of these decorations, they are mostly concentrated on the center and four corners of the wall; judging from the content of the decoration, there are various animal patterns and plant flowers, which are very extensive, but often have something to do with the content of the building. connect.The Chonghua Palace on the West Road of the Forbidden City was the residence of Emperor Qianlong when he was the prince, so the screen walls on both sides of the gate are decorated with dragon patterns; The screen walls in the two palaces use the decorative content of "Mandarin ducks crouching on lotus". In the begonia-shaped decorative frame, two white mandarin ducks swim on the clear water, surrounded by green lotus leaves, lotus pods and yellow lotus flowers; Qin'an Hall is a Taoist palace, and the screen walls on both sides of the gate in front of the hall are decorated with cranes and flowing clouds.Of course, among the large and small screen walls in different locations, plants and flowers are the most used decorative themes. These decorations are mostly made of colored glaze on the screen walls of palace buildings, with bright colors and outstanding effects.However, the screen walls of most temples and residences are brick screen walls. They are mostly decorated with brick carvings instead of glass. Some wall parts are painted with white ash and colored paintings are painted on the white base to make the decorative effect more prominent.“Three Squares and One Zhaobi” is a traditional dwelling in Dali, Yunnan, which is a quadrangle compound surrounded by houses on three sides and a screen wall. In addition to breaking the monotonous style in the form of matching heights, patterns of different colors are used to form the surrounding borders on the wall, and sometimes marble with patterns is inlaid on the wall as a key decoration, making the screen wall both gorgeous and local. .The screen walls inside the gates of Beijing Siheyuan are all made of bricks, some of which are all brick surfaces; , the lake stone bonsai makes the screen wall more lively and becomes the first excellent landscape at the entrance of the house.