It is said online that "the Forbidden City has lasted for 600 years and has never been flooded." Did the ancients really have advanced drainage technology?

Over the years, there has been a saying circulating on the Internet that "the Forbidden City in Beijing embodies the superb wisdom of ancient craftsmen in design. In the past 600 years, there has never been any accumulation of water in the palace after rain." As for the photos and videos of water accumulating in the Forbidden City after rain, the blame is placed on the reconstruction of the Forbidden City after the founding of the People's Republic of China, which "destroyed the design of the ancients."

Is this really the case? Let me first give you the answer: Of course not. The Palace Museum has already refuted the rumor and it has become a hot topic on Weibo .

Image source: Sina Weibo

Nanjing Palace: Filling the lake to create a palace

Lessons from flood disasters

The blueprint of the Forbidden City in Beijing was the "New Palace of King Wu" built by Zhu Yuanzhang in Yingtian Prefecture on the eve of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. In August of the 26th year of Zhizheng in the Yuan Dynasty (1366), Zhu Yuanzhang, who called himself "King Wu" at the time, ordered Liu Ji and others to divine the site for his new palace. In December of the same year (January 1367), Zhu Yuanzhang personally worshipped the gods of mountains and rivers, and the construction of the New Palace of King Wu, which later became the Nanjing Palace City of the Ming Dynasty, began.

The site for the new palace of King Wu avoided the old city of Jiangning from the Five Dynasties to the Yuan Dynasty. Instead, a location was chosen outside the city's eastern suburbs, at the foot of Fugui Mountain, a branch of Zhongshan Mountain, and near Yanque Lake. Huge stones were laid on the bottom of the lake, and dense large wooden piles were rammed in. Broken bricks and loess were filled in, and most of the surface of Yanque Lake was filled up to serve as the foundation of the palace.

However, due to the objective geological conditions of the lake bottom, the palace began to sink after a few years. The palace was high in front and low in the back, which was not auspicious, so Zhu Yuanzhang had the idea of ​​moving the capital.

In the 24th year of Hongwu, he recalled his second son, Prince of Qin Zhu Chong, from his fiefdom of Xi'an to Nanjing on the grounds that the son had made many mistakes. He also ordered Crown Prince Zhu Biao to inspect Guanzhong to investigate the possibility of establishing a capital there and prepare for moving the capital to Xi'an.

However, Zhu Biao caught a cold during this tour and died shortly after returning to Nanjing the following year. Zhu Yuanzhang was devastated and gave up the idea of ​​moving the capital. In the "Sacrificial Essay to the Kitchen God of Guanglu Temple", he expressed his feelings: "I have been managing the country for decades, and everything has been done according to the ancient times. The palace city is high in front and low in the back, and the situation is not suitable. I wanted to move the capital, but now I am old and exhausted. Moreover, the country has just been settled, and I don't want to trouble the people. Moreover, the rise and fall are predetermined, and I can only leave it to God. I hope you will understand my heart and bless my descendants."

After the capital was moved to Beijing in the 19th year of Yongle, the Nanjing Imperial Palace was left vacant and in disrepair. During the Zhengde period, the famous scholar Huang Sheng took the opportunity to follow the Nanjing Minister of War Qiao Yu into the Nanjing Palace on a mission and saw that there was "a few feet of water in front of the Xingqing Palace", which was caused by the sinking of the foundation of the Nanjing Palace and the accumulation of water.

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Beijing Forbidden City:

A "crazy and crisscross" foundation?

In general, the overall level of the Forbidden City in Beijing is about two meters higher than the surrounding areas. This height difference determines the fact that the Forbidden City in Beijing will not be easily flooded.

According to actual measurements, the Forbidden City's elevation is 44 to 46 meters, of which Shenwu Gate has an elevation of 46.05 meters and Wumen Gate has an elevation of 44.28 meters. Vertically, it presents a trend of being higher in the north and lower in the south, and higher in the back and lower in the front, forming a natural slope. This is much better than the Nanjing Ming Palace, which has a high front and a low back.

In the past, it was said that the Forbidden City had a "full-house" foundation, which was completely dug out of the old soil, and then the foundation was manually rammed with clay, clay, lime and broken bricks, and then paved with 15 layers of bricks in a "horizontal and vertical" pattern. In recent years, trial excavations have found that the foundation of the Forbidden City is generally made by digging out the original soil layer and backfilling it with clay and broken bricks in a 2:1 thickness staggered manner.

Important buildings such as the three main halls are padded with multiple layers of bricks. The ground of the courtyard in front of the hall is usually padded with two layers of bricks under the bricks, and then three-in-one soil and plain rammed earth. The thickness of the rammed earth in the general area is more than two meters, and the depth of the rammed earth layer of the three main halls is more than seven meters.

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A few years ago, there was a trending search on Weibo: "The Forbidden City was built in only three and a half years." This was calculated based on the Ming Dynasty historical data that the construction of the Beijing Palace began in the 15th year of Yongle and was completed in the 18th year of Yongle. In fact, this statement is not accurate, or it is not comprehensive.

From ancient times to now, the most important thing in building construction is to lay the foundation. To this day, the start of construction is still called "laying the foundation". During the Jiajing period, the Forbidden City caught fire and the outer court was destroyed. Yan Song said, "Building a house requires laying the foundation, and its cost is several times that of wood and stone." From excavating the earth to tamping backfilling layer by layer, as well as ground guards, earthwork, pillars, and fine-laying the foundation, it takes a lot of time.

Moreover, the northern half of the Forbidden City was rebuilt on the basis of the old rammed earth of the Daming Hall area of ​​the Yuan Dynasty. This workload is much more difficult than excavating raw soil.

According to the records in Ming Shilu, the construction of the Forbidden City should have actually started around May of the fifth year of Yongle (the imperial edict of the fourth year of Yongle read: "All craftsmen in the country...will go to Beijing in May of next year to serve, and will be replaced by half a year"). In November of the fifteenth year of Yongle, "ice froze over the Jinshui Bridge and the pagodas and statues" in Beijing, indicating that the Jinshui River had been built at that time, which further shows that the construction of the Forbidden City had reached a certain progress.

By March of the 18th year of the Yongle reign, "the emperor ordered all military and civilian workers and craftsmen working in Beijing to return home", indicating that the construction of the Forbidden City should have been basically completed by then, with the exception of some finishing work such as drying paintings, polishing and oiling gold bricks, laying out decorations in the halls, and planting flowers and trees.

On the first day of the first lunar month in the 19th year of Yongle (February 2, 1421), Zhu Di personally enshrined the tablets of the five temples in the Imperial Ancestral Temple. Zhu Gaochi went to the suburban altar to enshrine the tablets of the heaven and earth, Zhu Zhanji went to the altar of the land and grain to enshrine the tablets, and Mu Sheng, the Duke of Qian, went to the altar of mountains and rivers to enshrine the tablets of the various gods. Zhu Di then went to the Fengtian Hall to receive congratulations and to host a grand banquet for his ministers. This day marked the official opening of the Beijing Palace and also meant that the Ming Dynasty officially moved its capital to Beijing.

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Reconstruction in the Qing Dynasty: Many Ming Dynasty drainage channels were blocked

Puyi became a victim

As mentioned above, the overall altitude of the Forbidden City in Beijing is about two meters higher than the surrounding area. At the same time, a complete drainage system for the Forbidden City in Beijing was designed and built at one time in the early Ming Dynasty , including the Tongzi River, the Inner Jinshui River, the Outer Jinshui River and other rivers (with a total length of more than 12,000 meters), as well as the drainage culvert system in the Forbidden City that has not yet been fully explored.

After trial excavation in some areas, it was found that the drainage culverts in the harem area were symmetrical from east to west, with the branch culverts flowing into the main culvert. The culvert water in the western area was discharged into the western section of the Neijinshui River; the culvert water in the eastern area passed through the main culverts of "Dongtongzi" and "Shisanpai" and was discharged into the western section of the Neijinshui River east of Wenhua Hall.

In the Ming Dynasty, brick culverts were built along the walls of the Forbidden City, but most of them were silted up and blocked during the Qing Dynasty and became unused.

During most of the Qing Dynasty, the Qianqing Palace and Kunning Palace were not used as sleeping palaces for the emperor and empress. The emperor mostly lived in the Yangxin Palace, and the empress lived in the six palaces in the east and west. In order to make the life of the empress and concubines more comfortable and convenient, the six palaces in the west of the Qianqing Palace were rebuilt several times on a large scale. For example, in the tenth year of Guangxu, in order to celebrate the 50th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi, the Yikun Palace and the Chuxiu Palace were connected (Chuxiu Palace was the place where Empress Dowager Cixi made her fortune, so she loved this palace). Before that, in the ninth year of Xianfeng, the Qixiang Palace (Taiji Hall) and the Changchun Palace were connected.

Emperor Qianlong also carried out a large-scale renovation of the Qianxi Five Palaces, which was his "hidden residence" when he was Prince Bao. The three palaces on the east were converted into Chonghua Palace and Shufangzhai, and the two palaces on the west were expanded westward and southward and converted into the Jianfu Palace Garden.

These reconstructions of the palace city are likely to have had a certain impact on the sewer drainage system built in the Ming Dynasty, cutting off and filling up some Ming Dynasty culverts (many areas of the drainage culverts in the eastern half of the area have retained their original Ming Dynasty appearance).

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From April of the 11th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1885) to July of the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1887), the Forbidden City underwent the last large-scale dredging in the feudal dynasty. More than 2,100 meters of the Inner Jinshui River and more than 8,000 meters of ditches were excavated, and river walls on both sides of the river and 15 bridges were built.

From then until the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Forbidden City's drainage system never underwent large-scale dredging and repair. In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, when it rained heavily, the Forbidden City would still be flooded.

In the 1950s, Li Wenda, the head of the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security and deputy editor-in-chief of the Masses Publishing House, was ordered to revise and polish the original manuscript of "My First Half of Life". He interviewed Puyi and collected a lot of scraps about his life. Because the content was trivial and irrelevant to the theme of "My First Half of Life", it was not suitable to be included in the book.

Later, Li Wenda published two documentary novels, "Young Puyi" and "Puyi the Dragon", in which these materials were included. One of them is about the accumulation of water in the Forbidden City: When Puyi was a child, it rained and the Forbidden City was flooded. He and the young eunuchs played barefoot in the courtyard of the Hall of Mental Cultivation. As a result, he felt itchy between his toes that night, and he suffered from tinea pedis from then on, which never healed. This part was written into "Young Puyi".

According to the recollections of his cousin Yu Zhi (Prince Gong), Puyi soaked his feet every night when he was in Changchun, Manchukuo, and applied salicylic acid to his feet to relieve itching. This is also an interesting episode related to the drainage system of the Forbidden City.

In fact, not only did the Forbidden City get flooded after the ditches fell into disrepair in the late Qing Dynasty, but there were also records of flooding in the Forbidden City when the capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties encountered rare heavy rains and the inner city was not drained smoothly. For example, in the 15th year of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1587), the 32nd year of the Wanli reign (1604), and the 35th year of the Wanli reign (1607), Beijing suffered from heavy rains many times, and the flood in the 35th year of the Wanli reign was "unprecedented in more than 200 years."

Zhu Guozhen's "Yongchuang Xiaopin" records that after June of that year, Beijing was rainy and cloudy, and the Shahe River in Changping and the Beiyun River in Tongzhou were flooded. On the 24th day of the sixth month of the leap year, heavy rains suddenly fell, and it rained all day and night, pouring into Beijing, and the water on Chang'an Street was five feet deep.

"In the high and open places of the capital, the water reached two or three feet, and all the government offices were flooded. The flat land in the nine streets became rivers, and the depressions were more than ten feet deep. The houses of officials and civilians collapsed and the number of people drowned was countless. The inner and outer city walls collapsed by more than two hundred feet, and even the Purple Gold (Forbidden) City of the Imperial Palace collapsed by more than forty feet... Three days after the rain cleared, the inside and outside of the Zhengyang and Xuanwu city gates were still surging, and carriages and horses could not move forward, and the city walls could not be crossed. This is truly a change that has never happened in recent times."

There are similar records during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty: "In June of Xinyou (the sixth year of Jiaqing, 1801), the capital suffered a flood that had never been seen before. From the first day to the tenth day, heavy rain poured down day and night. Walls and houses inside and outside the city collapsed, injuring many people. After the fifteenth day, heavy rain continued for several days, and all the houses of the people were leaking. It was heard that the palaces were all leaking and were wrapped with felt. Two boards of the Kunming Lake sluice were removed. The emperor entered the city from the garden, and all the departments and halls had no place to stand. A dozen ministers were specially ordered to investigate the disaster in different routes. There were no boats to cross the river, so they had to cross the river in winnowing baskets."

Later, Jiaqing issued an edict saying, "Since the first day of June, it has rained heavily for five days and nights. The water at the palace gates is several feet deep, and the number of collapsed buildings cannot be counted."

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Therefore, considering the artificial elevation of the Forbidden City in Beijing, its natural slope from north to south, and the complete drainage channels and culverts at the beginning of its construction, it is indeed not easy to be flooded.

But the Forbidden City and Beijing are in a symbiotic relationship, prospering together and suffering together. When Beijing is hit by large-scale and rare torrential rains and waterlogging, it is not uncommon for the Forbidden City to be flooded.

Even with an ordinary rainstorm, it would not be surprising that some places in the palace would be flooded for a day or two.

References

[1] History of Palace Architecture in the Ming Dynasty, by Meng Fanren, Forbidden City Publishing House

[2] A Study on the Construction of Beijing in the Ming Dynasty, Li Xieping, Forbidden City Publishing House

Planning and production

Author丨Salt Dip Science Writer

Reviewer: Wang Hongzhi, Associate Professor, School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University

Planning丨Xu Lai

Editor: Lin Lin

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