Unleashed Voices: Beijing’s increasingly Forbidden City / Part I
Xi Jinping, China’s most recent emperor, reaches deep into his nation’s past for a new lease on an ancient kingdom…A stroll down The Imperial Way 2023….back to the future. The first of two parts.
By Audrey Ronning Topping
The recent welcome by China’s President Xi Jingping in Beijing to France’s President Emmanuel Macron indicates that China is making every effort to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between East and West. As noted in Andelman Unleashed, the two world leaders met publicly on the steps of The Great Hall of the People, the equivalent of Washington’s White House, before Xi accompanied the French leader inside. It is hardly a coincidence that the Great Hall of the People is located in Tiananmen Square, just across Chang’An Boulevard (Eternal Peace Street) from The Gate of Heavenly Peace leading to Imperial China’s “Forbidden City.”
For some 600 years, worthy kings and leaders were received by the “Son of Heaven” in The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the VIP’S kowtowing nine times to the emperor who sat astride the golden “Dragon Throne.” The ancient Hall of Supreme Harmony was the equivalent of today’s Great Hall of the People, where the ritual life of the empire was conducted. Here, imperial edicts were announced, war and peace were declared. And on one corner of the yellow-tiled roof sat a mythical lion-dog, I call Chimaera, who has an improbable story to tell.
Today is clearly no different as China’s latter-day emperor—the longest tenured ruler since the last hereditary emperor—cements his hold over the kingdom and attempts to extend his sway far beyond the ambition of any Chinese imperial ruler.
If any place deserves to be haunted, it is China’s Forbidden City, enclosing the Imperial Palaces in the center of the Middle Kingdom. Amid the marble courtyards and vermillion corridors leading to palaces and purple-tiled temples bursting with tribute treasures, there have occurred more ritual ceremonies, love affairs, sinister intrigues, eunuch power plays, and mysterious happenings than mortal imagination can encompass.
The Imperial Way, leading into the Hall of Supreme Harmony, resembles a marble carpet carved with clouds and dragons.
Only the emperor riding in an ornate sedan-chair carried by eight bearers walking along the stone steps on each side was allowed to tread on this sacred path. That was then. Today, there are no bearers but innumerable supporters to lead Xi’s way.
Instead, let me take you back on an incredible journey of a mythical lion-dog who made his way from the Forbidden City to my home in America.
We shall call him Chimaera.
If treasures could talk
This is the story of a mysterious “Chimaera,” (kimura) or mythical lion-dog that, during China’s Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644), was one of nine other creatures, with metaphorical significance, guarding a corner of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the center of the Forbidden City. The fabled creatures stood for 300 years on the corner of the Ming-yellow tiled roof above spectacular eaves, painted with dragons, and supported by 60-foot-high pillars created from perfectly straight pine trees. They witnessed the reign of 16 different Ming Dynasty emperors who either had died or were ousted by revolution.
For 300 years, Chimaera occupied a lofty position on the roof of the imposing crimson Hall of Supreme Harmony. Back in 221 BC, Qin Shi Huangdi, the first Emperor of United China, swallowed the six other Warring States “like a silkworm devouring a mulberry leaf,” establishing the Imperial Dynastic System. This type of absolute monarchy ruled for 2,000 years under 83 dynasties and 559 emperors. Elections were not an option. When an emperor lost the “Mandate of Heaven,” the people revolted. Revolution was the only way China ever changed governments—revolution and heredity.
Today, my 655-year-old Chimaera stands imperially in my living room. You may ask: How in the world did this royal lion dog make its way from the middle of the ancient world to my humble home in America? Well, like the historic fly on the wall, if my anthropomorphic Chimaera could talk it would have an incredible tale to tell.
A Chimaera’s tale
The Ming Dynasty
My magical Chimaera stood on the roof corner of the crimson-colored Hall of Supreme Harmony which was about the size of a football field balanced on an ornate, three-tiered marble terrace in the “Outer Palace” of the Forbidden City. The Historic Hall is now one of China’s main tourist attractions.
It is across Tiananmen Square from the Forbidden City that the communist rulers of contemporary China built their own answer to the Great Hall and where world leaders have been paraded since the time of Mao Zedong and now by Xi Jinping, treated in circumstances equally lavish as the great emperors of the Middle Kingdom did with their most distinguished visitors.
Within the Great Hall, the emperor’s Dragon Throne marked the precise point where the very heart of Imperial China once throbbed, strong and unchallenged, in the epicenter of the 5,000-year-old Chinese universe, termed The Middle Kingdom, humbly implying its superior role in the civilized world.
The third Ming emperor, Yung Lo, had moved China’s capital from Nanjing to Beijing. From his roof corner Chimaera had a clear view from the one million workers laboring for 14 years to construct a splendid walled-in city (Peking) over the ruins of the once beautiful capital of the Yuan Dynasty. Within the Peking City Wall, the emperor constructed another walled-in city called the “Forbidden City” exclusively for his imperial palaces. If any unauthorized person was caught entering the gates of the Forbidden City, he was doomed to the lingering death of a thousand cuts.
The only relic from the Mongol era of Kublai Kahn (1271 to 1368) visible to Chimaera from his perch on the roof was a white “dagoba”—a Tibetan Buddhist hemispherical structure, resembling a large stupa, that still stands in Beijing’s Western Hills.
In 1378 the Yuan Dynasty was banished by the Mings. Mongol rule had lasted only 78 years. In the early 13th century, the notorious Genghis Kahn (Universal Lord) galloped west into China, with his “Horsemen from Hell.” They ruthlessly destroyed all cities refusing to surrender. In 1368, he established the Yuan Dynasty and continued to thunder across Asia and much of Europe. When he was murdered by a Chinese concubine in 1227, China was ruled by his sons and then grandson Kublai Kahn, who had hosted Marco Polo. When Emperor Kublai Kahn converted to Tibetan Buddhism, he lost the will to fight the Chinese forces struggling to retrieve their homeland. In 1352, Zhu Yuanhang a compassionate Chinese monk with new ideas who had converted to Tibetan Buddhism, joined the “White Lotus Society” and led the revolution to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty. He anointed himself the first Ming Emperor Taizu.
The benevolent Ming monk inherited a wild empire which had been forcefully expanded by Genghis Kahn. He soon discovered the only way to restore order from anarchy was to revert to an absolute monarchy—a lesson certainly not lost on today's rulers of China. In the more extreme fashion of that Ming era, anyone opposing his authority was executed. My Chimaera watched with alarm as the history of the Ming Dynasty, after centuries of comparative peace, unfolded with tales of the misuse of power by eunuchs with an eye to their own glory. Some eunuchs achieved power by flattery and organized secret police to hunt down their imagined enemies—another object lesson from the past. From time to time, this led to hideous reigns of terror. In former dynasties, such as the Song and Tang, when the artists, philosophers and intellectuals could no longer face the horrible happenings in the real world they retreated into the wooded mountains to paint, drink, write and indulge in abstract thought.
These moments of pause to regroup may well have contributed to the preservation of China’s culture when other ancient civilizations crumbled. And they could be an object lesson for today’s rulers of communist China if they had the will to stop and consider the impact of their actions. During the Ming period, however, the intellectuals stood fast. They formed a school of political criticism called "Tung Lin" (Eastern Forest) which was founded by former high court officials and Confucian scholars who had retired in disgust at the internal corruption and petty personal rivalries at court. The Chinese intellectuals organized themselves. Their aim was the moral regeneration of the ruling class.
The scholars advocated a return in the official court to the original spirit and ethical character of Confucianism. In search of “truth” they sought the destruction of rigid moralism, prudishness, and hypocrisy. In other words, they advocated a Cultural Revolution. In the 20th century this scheme was lethally twisted, for political reasons, by Chairman Mao Zedong.
By this time, my mythical lion was hiding with other intellectuals in a “Corner Tower” of the wall around the Forbidden City.
By 1600, the Ming dynasty passed its zenith. A new age was dawning which would take another 300 years to mature. The Ming Dynasty (1388-1644) may not have been the most progressive, but the arts and crafts flourished, and court life was often rich and brilliant. Ceramics, cloisonné, embroidery, furniture, architecture, and other art forms, may not have rated as highly by the Chinese as painting and poetry, but were fully appreciated in the West.
The first Qing Emperor, Shunzhi
In 1644 A.D., a world-shaking event shattered Chimaera’s lofty position and catapulted him into a risky journey. It began with two friendly guys on horseback from Manchuria who tricked an old Han Chinese gatekeeper into opening the North Gate of China’s Great Wall. Unbeknownst to the gullible sentinel, the horsemen were con artists representing the Yellow and Red Manchu Bannermen from the North who commanded the first cavalry regiment of Manchuria’s Eight Military Banners. After a period of warfare, the Manchus conquered all of China and established the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The destiny of China, including the existence of Chimaera, was transformed forever. To save face, the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, hung himself.
The first Manchu Qing Emperor, Shunzhi, proceeded to kick out, most ungraciously, the widowed empress-dowager from the Forbidden City along with all the Ming emperor’s concubines, eunuchs, servants, and various hangers-on. Then, to pour soy sauce on the wound, his newly rich royal court occupied the imperial palaces. This did not bode well for my Chimaera who continued to view the unruly scene from his roof top corner.
Apparently, one of the first Qing Emperor’s fussy wives, like most new homeowners, insisted on major restorations. Trouble! The Qing craftsmen could not match the exact yellow the Ming craftsmen had used to glaze the ceramic tiles and mythical beasts on the royal Ming palaces. The art of creating the precise yellow glaze from the iron-ore used by the Mings was either lost or hidden. No one snitched. Not surprisingly, all the Ming-yellow tiles and mythical beasts in the Forbidden City were torn off and trashed. The new ones were glazed with Qing-yellow. Just a shade darker, slightly orangey, but passable.
Miraculously, my mythical lion was saved from certain extinction by an unknown hero to whom I will always be grateful. At the risk of losing his head, one of the caretakers of The Forbidden City managed to hide some of the battered beasts in one of the four “Corner Towers,” resembling Chinese temples, that had been carefully constructed by the Mings on the wall around the Forbidden City. Their lantern-lit images reflected coolly in “Golden Water River,” a rippling, 52-meter-wide moat flowing around the foot of the wall. This Corner Tower was obviously a fitting place to hide at least one of the nine mythical beasts guarding the heart of China because the magical number “9” was thought to be a heavenly number. In Chinese, “9” sounds like “longevity.” Each tower was assembled with three floors consisting of 9 roof beams, 18 pillars and 72 ridgepoles, all divisible by 9. Amazingly the total adds up to 99. So, you see, it is only logical for my legendary lion to be destined for a long life.
The end of the Emperors
After 266 years of rule by both benevolent and evil emperors, the Qing dynasty was beset internally with the usual problems associated with declining dynasties: political corruption, moral degradation, intellectual withdrawal, eunuch power plays, soaring taxes, and famine. In 1899, a food shortage reduced the people to eating grass, even bark, and in some areas, dirt. Despite this, the government continued to levy heavy taxes on the starving to pay for defense forces.
Five Foreign Powers, including the United States, jumped at the chance to exploit China. Piracy and cheap trading of tea and silk thrived. Britain waged the Opium Wars.
Foreign traders established “concessions,” or exclusive trading zones, in China’s main port cities. Diplomats lived by their own laws. During the next “Hundred Years of Humiliation,” dealers, adventurers, archaeologists, and well-meaning missionaries, including my own grandparents, arrived by ship and mile-long camel caravans trudging along the old Silk Road bringing new ideas. They planted the seeds of different religions, new ideologies and progressive civilizations which influenced China’s history—for better or for worse.
During the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the Imperial palaces in the Forbidden City were inhabited by geomancers, opium sots, eunuchs, effete scholars, and other parasites. The hedonistic Empress Dowager, Tsu Xi, with her arrogant court of wealthy aristocrats in their silk gowns, represented under one percent of the Chinese population. They became so obsessed with luxuries and lavish entertainment that they seemed oblivious to the crop failures, famine, floods, and droughts bringing misery and death to millions of Chinese every year. The anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion culminated in the “Siege of Peking.” The Qing Dynasty lost “The Mandate of Heaven."
END PART I
Next week, stay tuned for Part II, with the denouement of the fabulous saga of the Chimaera, the mythical lion-dog, as told by our Unleashed Voice, Audrey Ronning Topping, bringing the nature of power in China full-circle to the present as we understand fully, where today's rulers of the Middle Kingdom find their roots.
Truly ! The real Middle Kingdom !!
China means middle
An etymological point worth remark