Do you know which building the “Jinluan Hall” (金鑾殿) actually refers to? The story begins with the Forbidden City, at the center of Beijing’s central axis. The Gugong (故宫), also known as the Forbidden City (紫禁城), was built in the Yongle era of the Ming dynasty, from 1406. The palace of 24 emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties is made up of dozens of halls large and small, covers 720,000 square meters (about 178 acres) with about 150,000 square meters of floor space.It stands at the center of Beijing and is the most complete and largest surviving complex of ancient buildings in China, as well as the largest surviving palace complex in the world.
The name Gugong means simply “the palace of the former dynasty.” Its most striking buildings are the three great halls: the Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿), the Hall of Central Harmony (中和殿), and the Hall of Preserving Harmony (保和殿). The main hall of the Forbidden City was originally named the Hall of Serving Heaven (奉天殿); after reconstruction in the Jiajing era of the Ming it was renamed the Hall of Imperial Supremacy (皇極殿), and under the Qing it became the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony is popularly known as the Jinluan Hall. First among the three great halls, it is where Ming and Qing emperors were enthroned and where the great ceremonies of state were held. Why, then, is the main hall of the imperial palace called the Jinluan Hall?
The real Jinluan Hall stood in the Tang dynasty’s Daming Palace
In imperial times, people commonly assumed that the hall from which the emperor decreed to the realm was the Jinluan Hall. In fact, the Jinluan Hall comes from the Daming Palace of the Tang dynasty. As Shen Kuo of the Song dynasty wrote in Dream Pool Essays (夢溪筆談): “The Tang Hanlin Academy lay within the palace precincts, where the sovereign lived at his leisure; the Jade Hall, the Chengming Hall, and the Jinluan Hall all stood there.” Tang Chang’an had three great palace precincts, the Taiji Palace, the Daming Palace, and the Xingqing Palace, built in different periods and serving as the centers of imperial life under different reigns.
The Daming Palace was built in the eighth year of the Zhenguan era of Emperor Taizong (634) and first named the Yong’an Palace; it was renamed the Daming Palace the following year. Enlarged in the second year of the Longshuo era (662), it was renamed the Penglai Palace, and in the first year of the Chang’an era (701) the name reverted to Daming Palace. It was one of the largest palace complexes ever built in imperial China. Because it lay northeast of the Taiji Palace it was also called the “Eastern Precinct.” As the Old Book of Tang (舊唐書) records: “The Eastern Precinct is the Daming Palace, northeast of the Western Precinct.” The “Western Precinct” is the Taiji Palace.
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The palace was divided into three areas, and by function, into an outer court and an inner court, the outer court comprising the outer and middle audience zones. The outer audience centered on the vast and towering Hanyuan Hall (含元殿), the first hall of the Daming Palace, where the important ceremonies of state were held.
The Hanyuan Hall stood due north of the Danfeng Gate, with the Xiangluan Pavilion to its southeast and the Qifeng Pavilion to its southwest, each fronted by a bell tower and a drum tower and joined to the hall by covered galleries. The hall rose high on the southern rim of the Longshou plateau. Its platform lifted above the groundso that the officials could come to the audience. Asloping ramp called the Dragon-Tail Way was built before it. At New Year and the winter solstice the emperor heard the government and held his great audiences there. Wang Wei’s poem on the morning audience at the Daming Palace describes the scene’s majesty: “The ninefold gates of heaven swing open on the palace; the robes and caps of ten thousand states bow before the imperial crown.” Du Fu’s poem on the same audience runs: “In the warm sun the banners stir like dragons and serpents; in the light breeze swallows and sparrows wheel high above the palace.” By painting the banners and the birds, the poet set off all the more a Daming Palace suffused with imperial grace.
The middle audience centered on the Xuanzheng Hall (宣政殿), north of the Hanyuan Hall. The second hall of the Daming Palace was where the emperor ordinarily received his ministers, heard the government , and held such ceremonies as the investitures on the new and full moons. The court’s key organs, including the Secretariat, the Chancellery, the Censorate, the palace library, and the historiographers’ office, were housed within it.
The Zichen Hall (紫宸殿) lay north of the Xuanzheng Hall and was the heart of the inner court, hence “the inner audience.” The third hall of the Daming Palace was the inner-court hall where the emperor summoned ministers to deliberate. Because reaching it required passing through the eastern and western gate towers, flanking the Xuanzheng Hall, officials summoned to audiences there were said to have “entered the pavilion” (入閣). To enter and weigh affairs of state with the emperor was a great honor for an official. When modern governments recruit leading figures to form the highest executive body, the process is called “forming a cabinet” (組閣), and senior ministers are “cabinet members” (閣員); the usage descends precisely from this.
The Daming Palace also had more than thirty subsidiary halls, pavilions, and towers ranged along its eastern and western sideshe southern half given to court administration and the northern half to daily life. To the north lay the Taiye Pool, ringed by splendid halls and towers. The pool divided the grounds in two: an eastern zone for the emperor and his consorts, with the Zhujing Hall, the Penglai Hall, the Dajiao Belvedere, the Qingsi Hall, the baths, and the Lingqi quarters; and a western zone, with the Linde Hall, the Hanlin Academy, the Jinluan Hall, the Xianju Hall, and the Chang’an Hall, where the emperor received ministers privately or held banquets and theatrical entertainments.
A hall on a slope, next door to the scholars
From all this it is clear that the Jinluan Hall was never the most important main hall of the palace, still less the great hall where the emperor managed the myriad affairs of state. It stood south of the Taiye Pool by the Jinluan Slope, adjoining the Linde Hall and the Hanlin Academy. The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Governance (資治通鑑) records, under the first year of the Yongzhen era of Emperor Shunzong (805): “In haste the Hanlin academicians Zheng Yin, Wei Cigong, and others were summoned to the Jinluan Hall.” The Song historian Hu Sanxing’s commentary quotes Cheng Dachang’s Yong Lu (雍錄): “The Jinluan Slope is a spur of Longshou Hill, rising gently out of the level ground in a long, easy incline. On it stands a hall, called the Jinluan Hall; beside the hall lies a slope, called the Jinluan Slope.”
Li Bai wrote there, and the name became an honorific
The Jinluan Hall was where the court’s literary scholars waited on the emperor’s summons, and it was famous for it. Li Bai, the “immortal of poetry” who served as a Hanlin scholar-in-attendance under Emperor Xuanzong, was often called in by the emperor and passed in and out of the Jinluan Hall. In a poem to his cousin Zhiyao, governor of Nanping, he wrote: “By imperial grace I first entered the Yintai Gate; I write my books alone in the Jinluan Hall.” His meaning: as a scholar-in-attendance he went in and out of the Hanlin Academy every day, and did his writing in the Jinluan Hall. Because the hall adjoined the academy, “Jinluan” became an honorific for Hanlin academicians. As Ma Duanlin of the Yuan dynasty wrote in the Comprehensive Study of Documents (文獻通考): “The former dynasty took the Jinluan Slope as the name of a gate; it adjoined the Hanlin Academy, and so those who served as academicians were styled Jinluan as a compliment.”
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