By Jack Souther
Modern Beijing is a city of profound contrasts: peddle-carts wind through narrow cobblestone hutongs under six-lane elevated freeways, glass and steel office buildings tower above rows of tiny street-level shops, outside a KFC restaurant a woman ladles out noodles for her sidewalk customers — but nowhere is the contrast more striking than at Tiananmen Gate. On one side a large portrait of Chairman Mao gazes out across Tiananmen Square, a vast desert of pavement that has come to symbolize the revolution, and on the other the gilded splendor of the Forbidden City. Here, in the very heart of Beijing, Tiananmen Gate personifies the ideological boundary between Socialist China and its Imperial past.
Flanked by low, somber buildings Tiananmen Square's barren expanse of pavement is the very heart of Communist China. At its centre the Monument to the People's Heroes is adorned with larger-than-life revolutionary figures — stern, dedicated, and resolute. We paused there for a while before leaving the Square and making our way to Tiananmen Gate and the outer wall of the Forbidden City. Before the revolution this wall was an impenetrable barrier between the imperial household and the general population. Commoners dare not even approach it.
We crossed one of the seven bridges leading to the five archways of Tiananmen Gate. In times past only the Emperor was permitted to use the middle bridge and the large central archway, but as we approached the gate it seemed that all of Beijing was streaming into the once forbidden city. We joined the crowd and were swept through the tunnel-like archway onto a broad walkway bounded on both sides by parks. Directly ahead of us the magnificent Meridian Gate with its ornately gilded roofs and slender red columns — symbol of another era, another world as different from the austere architecture of Tiananmen Square as day and night.
For more than 500 years the Forbidden City was home to 24 successive emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was the power base of Imperial China, the residence of "the son of heaven" whose whims, issued as edicts from a rostrum above Tiananmen Gate, controlled the lives of his impoverished subjects. Whether it was a demand for emergency taxes to support the lavish excesses of the court or the conscription of a million labourers to work on the great wall the assembled people prostrated themselves and "kowtowed" before the Son of Heaven by touching their foreheads to the ground nine times, and then complied with his demands. Until October 1, 1949 — that is when Mao Zedong stood on the same rostrum above Tiananmen Gate and announced to the crowd, and the world, that "the Chinese people have now stood up."
We continued along the walkway from Tiananmen to the Meridian Gate. That massive U-shaped red buttress surmounted by five elaborate pavilions is the southern entrance to the Forbidden City proper. Its five square portals lead into a vast paved courtyard where five intricately carved marble bridges cross the Jinshui He (Golden Water Stream). And beyond the Jinshui He, yet another gate. The Supreme Harmony Gate, guarded by a row of stylized lions, passes into an even larger courtyard, a paved space large enough for the entire 100,000 members of the Imperial court to assemble and kowtow before the emperor.
The first structures on the site of the Forbidden City were built by Kublai Khan around 1264 but these have long since disappeared and the present layout is attributed to Emperor Yongle. In 1403 Yongle moved the capital to Beijing and undertook to build a living space worthy of the Son of Heaven. His plan was made in strict accordance with the laws of yin and yang, buildings face due south to catch the positive energy of yang and provide a buffer against the harmful elements of yin flowing out of the north. Employing an estimated work-force of a million craftsman and labourers, he created the Gugong — the Imperial Palace now dubbed the Forbidden City. With an area of almost a square kilometre, the 800 buildings of the palace have more than 9,000 rooms, apparently deemed adequate by the emperors who succeeded Yongle over the next five centuries.
During our visit in November Beijing was in the midst of a major facelift in preparation for the 2008 Olympics and several buildings in the Forbidden City, including the Hall of Supreme Harmony, were closed for renovation. The intricate gilded architecture of the palace buildings requires constant maintenance. It takes the full-time restoration squad about 10 years to do a full renovation and as soon as they are done it's time to start over. But the effort pays off. Everything from the mythical carved figures adorning the roofs to the glittering opulence of the imperial thrones is as bright and flawless as they were centuries ago.
Of course the Son of Heaven shared his quarters with several thousand members of the royal household. About half of them were eunuchs — commoners, usually from poor families, who opted to trade their manhood for a better life in the Imperial Court. Many died from the operation and those who survived carried their severed parts in a little sack in the hope that they would be reattached in the after life. Since eunuchs were virtually the only males allowed into the palace grounds the emperor was assured any child born to his vast stable of concubines was his own, and therefore a legitimate successor to the throne. In reality some eunuchs rose to positions of considerable influence, taking on the work of governing, and enriching themselves, while their besotted masters dallied in the palace bedrooms.
Although the walls of the Forbidden City kept the common people out they also became a prison for those inside. Confined to their gilded cage, isolated from the real world, the court elite were obsessed with pomp, pleasure, and power. And of all the quirky characters cloistered within those walls the Empress Dowager, Cixi, better known as "the dragon lady" is possibly the most notorious.
At the age of 16 Cixi was chosen to be one of the emperor's many concubines. She performed her duties so well that she quickly became one of his favourites, not only in the bedroom but also as a confidante in the affairs of state. Her big break came when she bore him a son and heir. But that was only the beginning. Fate was destined to clear a path for Cixi's rise to power, but fate was undoubtedly helped along by Cixi herself.
When the emperor mysteriously died at age 30 Cixi's infant son, Tongzhi, became emperor and Cixi, now the dowager empress and regent, seized the reigns of power and hung on for more than 40 years. By bribing the eunuchs and palace guards she secured her role as undisputed ruler of China. When her own son died of syphilis she chose her three-year-old nephew, Guangxu, as emperor and continued to rule the country herself, and when Guangxu became old enough to have a mind of his own she had him locked up and kept out of sight. In the end he too died mysteriously, making room for Puyi, another of Cixi's chosen infant emperors. When Cixi herself died in 1906, three-year-old Puyi became the emperor of a rudderless dynasty spiraling into decline. And that is where director Bernardo Bertolucci picks up the story in his epic film The Last Emperor .
If you can't make it to the Forbidden City yourself then by all means revisit the movie. I'm planning to.
