RESTORING BEIJING’S FORBIDDEN CITY(1)

2007-09-10 13:55:34 [ Big Normal Small ]    　Comment

Beijing is an ancient capital rushing towards modernity. Newsweek comments in its August 13 issue that “The transformation of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics is emerging as perhaps the most ambitious remake of any major world capital in history, short of the postwar reconstructions.” Similarly in its account of stunning new hotels under development the International Herald Tribune quotes Dutch designer Ole Scheeren: “It’s not an accident that this is in Beijing. No other city has this level of ambition.”

Yet at Beijing’s center is the largest wooden temple complex in the world. And it remains esteemed as Beijing’s cultural heart. It is known as the “Forbidden City” as when it served as the Chinese imperial palace nobody could enter or leave it without the emperor’s permission. The Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty commenced its construction in 1406 and 100,000 craftsmen and one million laborers worked on it for 15 years with the best materials available from far and wide-precious woods from the jungles of the south-west China, paving bricks from Suzhou that took months to bake and marble cut from Beijing’s outskirts. 980 buildings survive covering 7,200 square meters. Beijing then became the imperial capital and the Forbidden City housed twenty four emperors- fourteen of the Ming Dynasty and ten of the Qing. The end of the line came with Emperor Puyi’s expulsion in 1924 (the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar winning “The Last Emperor”, the director having secured an unprecedented permission to film on the site).

The Forbidden City escaped the cycle of destruction by invading troops and subsequent reconstruction that marred the Summer Palace. As its structures are wooden-ancient China’s preferred building material- and Beijing’s climate is harsh, the Forbidden City is undertaking systematic restoration.

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