Beijing Travel Guide - Forbidden City Documentary (Palace Museum) Part 1 _Secrets_ HD

It's the biggest palace complex in the world, with almost 10,000 rooms. So big that it's a city unto itself. And it was all built for one man. For 500 years, it was the seat of the most powerful ruler on Earth. He had absolute control over the life and death of his followers. Until the 20th century, entry to the inner precincts was prohibited to all males except the emperor and eunuchs. Trespassers in this palace met one fate – death. Even the name of the palace inspired fear. 24 Chinese emperors called it home. But their subjects called it the Forbidden City. Today, its long closed doors open as we go deep inside China's Forbidden City. When it was first built, the Forbidden City was one of the most secret places on Earth. Even today, when it attracts 8 million visitors a year, only a small part of it is open to the public. But on the eve of the 600th anniversary of its construction, the entire complex is unlocked for our cameras. Between 1407 and 1420, up to a million convict and conscript labourers did the heavy work, while 100,000 skilled craftsmen completed the fine detail. It's the biggest palace complex still standing in China. And it had to be big, because it was the home of a god. The Chinese emperor was more than just a ruler. To the people of imperial China, he was a divine being, the sun of heaven, and the link between this world and the celestial. They believe that the supreme deity lived in a 10,000-room palace on the Polestar. But the sun of heaven's palace was here on Earth. And, as legend has it, because the sun shouldn't outdo the father, his palace had only 9,999 rooms. As the sun of heaven, the Chinese emperor's actions were said to make the sun rise and the crops grow. His palace, the Forbidden City, was both the seat of government and a sacred place. The ancient Chinese believed that just as the Polestar Palace of the supreme deity was the centre of the heavens, so the Forbidden City was the centre of the Earth. To them, it was the navel of the world. The start of the 15th century was a chaotic time in China. And at the heart of that chaos was a prince named Zhu Di. The victorious Chinese army had only recently pushed the Mongols back over the Great Wall when the country was once more torn asunder. Zhu Di, the prince from the north, rebelled against the emperor in the south. Zhu Di seized the throne, but his troubles were far from over. Although he had conquered the capital, Nanjing, he still had powerful enemies there. Even executing his opponents didn't solve his problems. There was an assassination attempt, and it became clear to Zhu Di that Nanjing remained a dangerous place. Haunted by the ghosts of his opponents, he sought a way out. But it wasn't only the situation in Nanjing that gave Zhu Di sleepless nights. Mongol armies were once more on the march and threatening to breach the Great Wall. So Zhu Di found a radical solution to both his problems. He abandoned Nanjing and created a new capital, Beijing, in the north. It was a massive undertaking. By the time it was done, millions of people had moved to Beijing and built one of the greatest cities of all time. Zhu Di was a ruthless but gifted ruler and a megalomaniac. He never did anything small. At the same time as he started building the new capital, he equipped a huge armada of ships to sail the western seas. The ships were the largest wooden vessels ever built, and he assembled a fleet of 300. The biggest had nine masts and could carry 1,000 people. It was the largest armada in history until the Second World War. The fleet was commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He. But Zhu Di had even bigger projects at home. He had the Grand Canal rebuilt and the Great Wall extended. But his largest project was to tear down Kublai Khan's old palace in Beijing and build a new one in its place. The heirs of Genghis Khan had lived in Beijing for almost 100 years, but the old palace wasn't good enough for Zhu Di. He had it razed to the ground to make way for the new one. The rubble was used to make a mountain that overlooked his new palace complex. The construction of the new palace took 14 years. By the time it was done, it was said to have 1,000 buildings and more than 9,000 rooms. For 500 years, its name would be spoken with awe. It was called the Forbidden City. At the very heart of Beijing, it formed a large rectangle, 3 quarters of a kilometre wide and nearly a kilometre deep. High walls and a wide moat separated it from the rest of the city. The walls enclosed an immense space, 720,000 square metres. 55 Buckingham palaces or more than 100 football pitches could fit inside its grounds. From the 15th century to the 20th, the Forbidden City was the hub of the Chinese Empire. It was the home of 24 emperors, the seat of government and the heart of a civilisation. The Forbidden City was a city within a city. Deep inside the walled city of Beijing was another walled city, the Imperial City. This was reserved for the royal family and the highest members of society. And within that was yet another walled city, the most secret and exclusive place in China, where mistaken entry could result in death, the Forbidden City. Hidden behind its high, impenetrable walls, life in the Forbidden City assumed mythic qualities. The only thing that most people outside could see were the gold-coloured roofs of the highest buildings soaring above the walls. For them, the Forbidden City was synonymous with mystery. But today, we can go where they could not. On the eve of the 600th anniversary of its construction, its doors are opened and we can finally reveal the secrets of the Forbidden City. In 1407, Europe was recovering from the plague. The Aztecs in Mexico were building an empire. And in Beijing, preparations had begun on the Forbidden City. It would take almost ten years just to gather the necessary building materials and assemble the workers. Little is known of most of the men who did the construction work. Their names have been lost to time. Even some of the building techniques they used remain a mystery. Yet these master architects and craftsmen built a palace of enduring beauty. The Forbidden City was the largest wooden palace complex in the world. At its heart were the three great halls, standing on high white marble terraces that raised them more than two storeys above the courtyard. More than a thousand carved marble dragons drained rainwater away from the huge terraces. The palace complex was an architectural masterpiece and today is one of the United Nations World Heritage Sites. The Forbidden City was conceived on a grand scale. Visitors had to walk down a majestic ceremonial avenue just to get to it. On the way, they passed through three gates. Today the most famous of these is Tiananmen Gate. But even larger was the Meridian Gate, which pierced the wall that surrounds the Forbidden City. The Meridian Gate was the main entrance to the Forbidden City. It was the tallest gate in Beijing. The height of a 12-storey building. The Hall of Supreme Harmony was the most important building in the Forbidden City. And at half the size of a football pitch, it was also the biggest, sitting on three white marble terraces. Like all the buildings in the Forbidden City, it was made of wood. Although it contained the most important throne room in the palace complex, the largest imperial audiences took place not inside the building, but in the vast courtyard outside. Thousands of officials would gather there to hear imperial proclamations. Audience days would begin in the dead of night. Government officials, called mandarins, would start to gather at 3am. At 4 o'clock, the palace gates would open, and they would file inside. Although they were the highest officials in the land, they would walk in near silence. There were heavy penalties for talking, coughing, or spitting. There were nine ranks, or grades, of mandarin. Rank was designated by the colour of button on their hats, and by the square emblems on their clothes. Different birds were embroidered on their official robes, from a crane for the highest rank, to a flycatcher for the lowest. Conscientious emperors took audience days very seriously. But not all emperors were conscientious. On one occasion, a notoriously dissolute emperor failed to show up at all. His mandarins waited all day before the assembly was finally cancelled. Hungry and thirsty, they were in such a rush to finally leave, that one of the ministers was crushed to death. The forbidden city was divided into two sections, the inner court and the outer court. The main entry to the palace was from the south. Furthest from the entry gate was the inner court, the residential part of the palace. The outer court was the official part of the palace. The most important state ceremonies took place in these halls and courtyards. The Hall of Supreme Harmony was the largest and most splendid building in the Forbidden City. Key events in the life of the empire took place here. Behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the smaller, square-shaped Hall of Middle Harmony. And behind that was the Hall of Preserving Harmony. These three great halls were used only for the most important ceremonies and events, like the enthronement of a new emperor, his wedding, or the celebration of the Lunar New Year. The vast Hall of Supreme Harmony's own history was less than harmonious. Disaster struck the hall with alarming regularity. It was the victim of several catastrophic fires. As the tallest building in the Forbidden City, it was frequently hit by lightning. The first time this happened was just 100 days after the building was officially opened in 1421. The building sat a burnt-out shell for 18 years before it was restored. Special trees called nanmu provided the timber for the rebuild. They were found only in southwestern China, and obtaining them was a hazardous occupation. It was said at the time that 1,000 men went into the forest, but only 500 came out. Monsoon rains were used to float the logs down from the mountains. In one famous legend, a nanmu log crashed into a boulder with a sound like thunder, smashing the rock to pieces. When the current was against them, the floating logs were dragged upstream. The journey of a single log could take up to four years. 100,000 nanmu logs were used in the construction of the Forbidden City. Nanmu wood was the most important building material. Each of the pillars that formed the main supports of the Hall of Supreme Harmony was hewn from a single tree. The pillars that surround the throne were given special treatment. Creating the texture are gilded dragons that wind sinuously around the pillars. The Forbidden City had many throne rooms, but the grandest was in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where both the hall and the throne were heavily decked out in gold. The throne was made of gilded rosewood and surrounded by incense burners and perfumers. There were also thrones in other audience halls, all covered with dragons. Images of dragons could be found throughout the Forbidden City, appearing high overhead and underfoot, on roofs, ceilings, walls and pavements, and on thrones, furniture and carpets, even on the emperor's dishes and clothes. The emperor's dragons were special. Unlike the other dragons in China, the emperor's dragons had five claws. The dragons were revered as bringers of rain, vitally important in an agricultural country and for people living in buildings prone to lightning strikes. Unlike the malevolent dragons of Western mythology, Chinese dragons can be playful and benevolent. Here in the Forbidden City, they didn't breathe fire but spouted water. They were often depicted frolicking in clouds or waves. In front of the Hall of Preserving Harmony was one of the marvels of the Forbidden City. It was carved from a single block of stone. No-one ever walked on this heavily sculpted ceremonial stairway and only the emperor in his palanquin was carried over it. It would have taken enormous skill to hew the huge stone slab out of the earth, but that was the easy part. The real challenge was moving it to Beijing. The architects were master builders, but moving a 300-tonne slab about the same weight as 250 cars required more than just brute strength. It also required imagination and 50 kilometres of ice. In 1420, there was no vehicle big enough or strong enough to carry the stone slab, and it was so heavy that rollers put under it would sink into the ground. So the engineers came up with an ingenious solution. They moved the slab in the dead of winter, and not just over the frozen ground, but on a sheet of ice. Every half kilometre they dug a well and spread the water onto the road. Then 20,000 men and horses dragged the slab over the ice that formed. Even so, it took them 28 days to make the 50-kilometre journey from the quarry to Beijing. In 1679, disaster struck the Hall of Supreme Harmony for a third time. But on this occasion, it was not an act of God, but the hand of man that brought the building down. Twice before, the hall had been struck by lightning and burnt to a cinder. But the third fire was ignited by careless kitchen eunuchs, and there was nothing anyone could do to quell the raging inferno. The six eunuchs who caused the fire paid with their lives. When the palace had previously burned down, it had been relatively easy to rebuild it. All it required was the political will and a source of Nanmu timber. But this time it was harder. Eighty years had passed since the last fire, such a long time that no one remained who could remember how to make the puzzle-like brackets that locked the beams in place. The palace archive was scoured. Even the emperor himself tried to solve the puzzle. But the secret of how to build the complicated structure had been lost to time. Eventually, a commoner provided the solution. He was an old man in his 70s, but for more than 40 years, he'd laboured in the construction department of the Forbidden City. He created a model of the hall that revealed the secret of the interlocking brackets. When that model was scaled up, to the surprise and delight of all, the design worked perfectly. The Hall of Supreme Harmony would burn down twice more in its long history, the curse of being the tallest building around in an age before lightning conductors. But every time it burnt down, it was rebuilt. Lesser buildings could be replaced with others, and over the years, many new buildings were erected in the back courts of the Forbidden City. But the Hall of Supreme Harmony was always rebuilt on the same spot. It was a constant presence in the life of the palace. Also constantly present were the palace eunuchs, the largest group in the Forbidden City. They kept the place running. But the eunuchs were not born. They were made, from a surprising number of volunteers. The Forbidden City was frequently swamped with eunuchs. They did the brunt of the palace work, from cooks and cleaners to laundrymen, bearers and guards of emperors' women. Eunuchs were everywhere. With the exception of the emperor himself, they were the only men allowed to live in the inner court. Until the 15th century, many eunuchs were prisoners of war who had been forcibly castrated. Adult male captives were usually executed, but captive boys had both the scrotum and the penis removed. If a boy survived this operation, he was allowed to become a palace servant. Some upwardly mobile boys even put themselves forward for castration, or were volunteered by their penniless parents. One eunuch described his reasons for doing this. It seemed a little thing to give up one pleasure for so many. By suffering that small change, I could be sure of an easy life in surroundings of beauty and magnificence. So many boys volunteered that the palace became awash with eunuchs. Eventually laws were put in place to limit the number of eunuchs allowed in the palace at any one time. From a maximum of around 70,000, the number of eunuchs in the Forbidden City dropped over time. When Puyi, the last emperor, was overthrown in 1912, there were only around 1,500 eunuchs on his staff. But despite the size of his entourage, the emperor must have had a lonely job. His was a role of breathtaking complexity. He was the moral leader of the nation, statesman, legislator, supreme judge, administrator, commander of the army, patron of art and chief examiner. He sat at the apex of a huge bureaucracy. Although thousands of mandarins reported to him, he had the final say. The government produced a relentless flow of written documents. Literacy and good handwriting were the keys to a job in the government. China was the world's first meritocracy, and government officials were selected for their literacy examination scores. Exams for the top offices were held every third year. This is the list of successful candidates. To become a government officer, a mandarin, one had to score highly on the tests. The exams were given in stages around the country. Then, every three years, the top candidates from the regional exams came to the Forbidden City for the final test, where the examiner was the emperor himself. The highest-scoring candidates were given jobs in the government. One examination candidate recalled his feelings as he waited to hear the exam results. It was a little cold that day. Just before dawn, I knelt with the other candidates on the ground in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony to wait for the results. The day before, there had been a lot of gossip about who did best, and I had lost all hope. When the results were read out, I'd heard that the top candidate was none other than me. Whenever my name was called, a fanfare was played. I couldn't believe my ears, and I didn't dare to step forward. But in the end, a protocol officer dragged me out of the line. The emperor gave me a prize, and I was carried out of the palace through the emperor's own gate. In the bureaucratic and status-conscious imperial court, everything had a hierarchy. Mandarins and concubines were graded, and even buildings were ranked. The rank of a building was determined by the mythological creatures on the eaves of its roof. The more creatures there were, the higher the status. At the front of this roof is a man riding a chicken, a reminder of a tyrannical ruler who was hanged from the eaves of his palace. Behind him is a row of nine mythological beasts. In the 18th century, the multiple ranks of Mandarin sorely taxed the patience of one great emperor. He was a hands-on ruler who found the bureaucracy cumbersome, and he dreamed of centralising more of the power in his own hands. He penned a couplet expressing his longing for more power, which still hangs on the wall of his former home. He may even have put his words into action. Some people claim that he practised what he preached and used a secret passage that allowed him to bypass the bureaucrats. This mysterious gap between the palace and the government office is rumoured to have been a private passage, his own personal shortcut to his government ministers. Now sealed up, the passage has yet to reveal all its secrets. The Chinese New Year is the most joyous time of year here. Families come together to celebrate and wish each other good fortune. And, as this ancient painting shows, New Year was also celebrated in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was more than just the seat of government. It was also the home of the emperor and his family. Hidden deep within its walls, the inner court was the most private part of the palace complex. It was the domestic heart of the empire. Even though he was the son of heaven, the emperor had a family life. He had many wives, like any man of the time. In imperial China, polygamy was the preferred status. Nuclear families were for the poor. The inner court was located in the northern third of the Forbidden City. This was the woman's realm, the female, private part of the palace. Its densely packed courtyards were separated from the wide spaces and great halls of the public, male part, by a wall. No man could enter the woman's realm of the inner court without the emperor's permission, except, of course, the eunuchs. The architecture of the inner court was less grand and more domestic than that of the outer court. The principles of yin and yang governed its layout. There were 12 residential palaces for the emperor's women, six on each side of the palace's central axis. Between the six east and six west palaces lay the most important buildings of the inner court. Called the three rear palaces, they mirrored the three great halls of the outer court. The largest of the rear palaces was the emperor's residence, and the second largest, the residence of the empress. One of the most notorious residents of the Forbidden City was the empress Dowager Cixi. A close contemporary of Queen Victoria, she virtually ruled China between 1861 and 1908. Cixi was a middle-ranking concubine who had borne the emperor his only son. But her good fortune was a tragedy for China. She exercised power for almost 50 years, first as a favourite concubine, and then, when her husband the emperor died, by controlling her young son and nephew when they ascended the throne. On her 50th birthday, Cixi spent 6 million silver tales redecorating her palace, the equivalent of more than 80 million US dollars in today's money. Her daily routine was highly extravagant. Every morning her female attendants would greet her, proclaiming, May luck be with you, venerable ancestor. Then they made her bed and brought her a silver basin of hot water. To ease the joints in her hands, Cixi wrapped them in hot towels and soaked them in the hot water for so long that it had to be replenished several times. After that, a hot towel was placed on her face to reduce wrinkles. A eunuch was then called in to brush her hair, paint her eyebrows, powder her face and rouge her cheeks. Then Cixi would smoke two pipes of dipping snuff and drink a cup of milk tea. She was partial to drinking human milk and cow's milk and thought them both tonics for youth. Cixi was as rigid and demanding outside her boudoir as she was within. The manipulative former concubine ruled the court with an iron will. It was a thousand years since a woman had last sat on the dragon throne. But that didn't stop Cixi. She devised an extraordinary arrangement of a throne behind the throne. The two separated by a thin curtain. While her son sat on the throne in front of the curtain, she sat on her own throne behind him, firmly gripping the reins of state. Cixi was the power behind the throne, literally. Yet in 1908, she made a deathbed decision that caused a child to assume power and brought down an empire. There were many women in an emperor's life. In addition to an emperor's, he also had consorts and concubines. This was because the emperor's most important official duty was to produce a son and heir by any means necessary. So rather than place all his eggs in one basket, most emperors had several wives. The 17th century emperor Kangxi, a contemporary of William Penn, the father of Pennsylvania, and the son king, Louis XIV of France, ruled China for 60 years with 38 official wives, plus another 17 unofficial ones. The relatively selfless Guangxu had just one empress and two concubines. Although he died young, so may not have reached his full complement. But although the emperor ruled the country, he was not in charge of his marital life. The woman he favoured most wouldn't necessarily become his empress. Wives and concubines were often selected because of politics, not passion. And there were many to choose from. Girls aged between 13 and 17 would be presented to the court for selection. But it was not a simple beauty contest. During Cixi's reign in the 19th century, neither good looks nor personality ranked highly in the selection criteria. What was really important was breeding and breeding potential. The number one selection was given a sceptre and became empress. The other girls chosen were given purses and they became consorts and concubines. In a strict hierarchical structure, wives came in nine ranks. There was one empress, one imperial consort, two high consorts, four consorts, six imperial concubines, eight worthy ladies and unlimited numbers of the lower three ranks. In 1922, the last wedding was held in the Forbidden City. It was the final throw of the imperial dice. The future depended on how things went in the imperial bedchamber. Things couldn't have gone more wrong. The 19th century was a period of accelerating decline in the Chinese empire. Increasingly, life within the Forbidden City resembled a fairy tale. The wedding procession captured in this 19th century painting shows the pomp and splendour that surrounded one royal wedding, even as the empire outside the Forbidden City crumbled. The bride-to-be was carried in a sedan chair from her ancestral home to the palace. It was the last time she would see her familial home. In the painting, low-flying clouds were depicted swirling around the palace. This was to symbolise that the man getting married was the son of heaven. The last wedding to take place in the Forbidden City wasn't nearly as grand. In 1922, the last emperor, Pu Yi, was a virtual prisoner in the decaying palace. Just 16 himself, he was marrying a 17-year-old girl selected from a photograph. Double happiness characters festooned the wedding chamber. Anthropomorphic figures that resembled a happy couple holding hands. Every surface of the room was covered with these images to promote a successful wedding night. But in fact, the night was a disaster. Pu Yi described the fiasco in his autobiography. It was unfurnished, except for the bed platform which filled about a quarter of it, and everything was red. When we had drunk the nuptial cup and eaten some son's and grandson's cakes and entered this dark room, I felt stifled. The bride sat down on her bed, her head bent down. I looked around me and saw that everything was red. Red bat curtains, red pillows, a red dress, a red skirt, red flowers and a red face. It all looked like a melted red candle. I did not know whether to stand or sit, decided I preferred my own room and went back there. It wasn't only the last emperor who lived by himself. No matter how many women he had in his life, the emperor in the Forbidden City always lived alone. His empress and concubines lived in separate palaces. Emperors weren't in control of their own love lives. As if they were prize bulls, racehorses or show dogs, others decided when they should mate. Astrologers would pick auspicious days for procreation. Yet even then the emperor and his wife would not spend the entire night together. Eunuchs would hustle the concubine out of the bedchamber when the emperor's duty was done. It was their responsibility to ensure that the emperor woke alone, fresh for the next day's work. Although an emperor had a veritable harem of women to choose from, getting one for the night took planning. Each of the emperor's women had a marker with her vital statistics. The emperor would select a marker after lunch to give her time to prepare. Getting ready for the emperor didn't involve dressing and make-up. Rather, the concubine was bathed, depilated and, as legend has it, delivered to the bedchamber naked. This was not an erotic treat, but to ensure that she wasn't carrying any weapons. It was big guns that finally brought down the dynasty. In the 20th century, a tidal wave of revolution rolled over the country. The imperial system was finally swept away. All that remained was the last emperor and a crumbling palace that was forbidden no more. In 1924, the last emperor was expelled from the palace and the buildings began a new life with a new name, the Palace Museum. But this rebirth was traumatic. The palace's very survival was at stake. Years of war and neglect had left the palace in ruins. Today, a mammoth project is underway to restore the palace to its former glory. But as the old is repaired, what new secrets will be uncovered?