Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Now let’s talk about the capital cities of the Ming Dynasty.
In the early Ming Dynasty, Nanjing was the capital.
As we know, the city had been the capital of six dynasties
including Eastern Wu, Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, Liang and Chen,
as well as Southern Tang during the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
In the Ming Dynasty, its core area was in fact located in the east of the entire city,
rather than on the original middle axis of the old capital city of the six former dynasties.
Enclosed by three layers of walls,
the city consisted of the palace city and imperial city in an orderly way
and the outer city whose plan appeared very irregular
because the need to adapt to the terrain.
Besides the imperial city located inside, it also included many residential areas, market areas,
and a military defence area in the northwest.
So far, a Jubao gate of the Ming Dynasty’s city-wall system of Nanjing has been preserved,
which is today’s Zhonghua Gate.
The constructions on the rostrum have been burnt down. Only the walls remained.
This Jubao gate was the most important gate in the south of the old Nanjing City.
Apart from the gate itself, there were several jar cities or double city gates—
an very important jar-like defence facility in the city gate system in ancient China,
whose function was to strengthen defence.
These are parts of a painting by a Ming painter entitled Prosperous Southern Capital.
Just like Zhang Zeduan’s Along the River during the Qingming Festival
which represents the scenes in the Northern Song capital,it depicts the bustle of Nanjing
when it was the busiest or at least second busiest city in China in the Ming Dynasty.
In the 2nd year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang issued an imperial edict ordering
that a medium-sizedmiddle capital be built in his hometown Fengyang.
The project lasted only six years before it was terminated.
So the middle capital was never built,
but as the plans and ruins revealed, it was more orderly and neater in layout than Nanjing.
It was also enclosed by three series of city walls
which formed respectively the palace city, imperial city and outer city.
It should be noted that the construction of Nanjing and of the never-finished middle capital
in the early Ming Dynasty constituted a very direct reference for the later planning of Beijing City.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty,
the generals garrisoning Dadu transformed the city’s layout in certain ways
for military defence considerations.
A part in the north of Dadu was abandoned.
The south city wall of the city was moved a little south.
When Zhu Di, the Chengzu Emperor of Ming, moved the capital to Beijing,
he overhauled the entire capital in large scale.
On the one hand, he constructed the magnificent Forbidden City,
On the one hand, he constructed the magnificent Forbidden City,
So originally, Beijing, like Nanjing and the middle capital,
was enclosed by three series of city walls.
During the reign of the Yingzong Emperor of Ming,
bricks were used to further reinforce the city walls.
Rostrums and jar cities were also built.
At every corner of the city, a turret was constructed.
Now the only turret preserved is the one located in the southeast of the old town of Beijing.
During the reign of the Shizong Emperor of Ming,
starting from the 32nd year of Jiajing, Beijing was expanded again.
A city wall was built to the south of the then Beijing City.
The most important reason for doing this was that the area was very thickly populated,
with dense streets, and thus needed defence.
Moreover, the Temple of Heaven, the most important sacrificial structure,
and the Altar of Agriculture were also located in this area.
The city wall was also built to defend them.
Of course, according to the original plan,
the emperor may have wished to build a city wall to the west and north of the city.
However, he never really did it. Eventually,
the T-shaped layout of the old town of Beijing was formed.
It actually had four series of city walls,
except that the outer city did not enclose the inner city, but ran parallel to the latter.
The old Beijing City was praised by Mr. Liang Sicheng
as one of the greatest works of urban planning in the middle ancient times.
It boasted an orderly and neat layout,
with the city walls and city gates in good correspondence
and particularly the magnificent middle axis running
from the south main gate to the outer city,
Yongding Gate, through the south main gate to the inner city, Zhengyang Gate
and then the main gate to the imperial city,
along the middle axis of the main halls of the Forbidden City,
and eventually to the bell and drum towers.
So far an effort has been launched
for the inscription of the 9-kilometre-long magnificent axis on the World Heritage List.
This palace city, of course, is the Forbidden City with which we are familiar today.
It was at the core of the politics of the Ming Dynasty and life of the royal family.
There is a gate on every side of the imperial city.
The south main gate is called Chengtian Gate, more commonly known today as Tian'an Gate;
the east and west main gates are respectively ***'an Gate and Xi'an Gate,
and the north main gate is Di'an Gate.
In the imperial city, besides the palace city or Forbidden City,
there were also the Imperial Ancestral Temple,
Altars to Land and Grain, Wansui Mountains which is known as Jinshan Mountains,
Western Imperial Garden which is known as Zhongnanhai and Beihai Park,
and other Imperial Household Department organs
whose main function was to serve the imperial family at the core of the dynasty.
The Wansui Mountains was in fact the highest point in Beijing City.
Standing on its top and looking southward,
one may have a bird's-eye view of the entire Forbidden City and appreciate the magnificent middle-axis layout.
There were nine gates to the inner city of Beijing, with three located in the south
and two in the east, west and north respectively.
Of them, Zhengyang Gate and the embrasure watchtower of the jar city in front of it have been preserved,
though all the city walls have been demolished.remained.
The embrasure watchtower of Desheng Gate has also remained.
As for all others, they are all gone. This is indeed very regrettable.
Because of the nine gates to the inner city
and the four gates to the imperial city,
commoners had referred to Beijing as Sijiu City, which literally means 'Four-Nine City'.
The area south of Chengtian Gate, the main gate to the imperial city, was a major government office area,
where the offices of the Six Ministries serving the dynasty
and various other government organs were located.
The lake kept in the north of the inner city in the Yuan Dynasty
was transformed in the Ming Dynasty into Lake Shichahai,
around which many mansions, Buddhist and Taoist temples were constructed.
This area also became the most important sight-seeing area for Beijing residents,
similar in function to the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
Beijing in the Ming Dynasty had generally inherited the street system from Dadu in the Yuan Dynasty.
The network of the streets was basically like a chessboard or grid.
However, the number of hutong or alleys had increased than in the Yuan Dynasty.
Besides, quadrangles had been the major type of residence.
Many of them have been preserved today.
The quadrangle, as a type of residence,
is very suitable for the climatic conditions in Beijing and thus very pleasant to live in.
Besides, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal played a more important role in the Ming Dynasty.
A large part of duties and revenues of the entire dynasty
were conveyed by the canal from the south to Beijing.
The terminal port of the Grand Canal was no longer at the lake we mentioned just now,
but moved to Zhongzhou, where the goods were transported by land to the capital.
This had resulted in a subtle segregation between different classes of the residents.
As a later saying in Beijing puts it,
'The rich live in the east, the powerful in the west,
the poor in the south and the rabble in the north.'
This saying had originated in the Ming Dynasty.
The main reason was that many merchants liked to live in the east of the inner city,
because much of the grain transported from the south
were stored in the granaries built in this particular area of the city.
As for the west, because it is closer to Yuquan Mountain,
it provided easier access to water and other living facilities.
Many officials and nobles preferred to live in the west part of the city.
The outer city was more populous with commoners,
who tended to be poor.
In the north of the city, there was a great population of handicraftsmen.
In ancient times, their trades were regarded as low, hence 'the rabble'.
Of course such segregation was not absolute, exceptions.
but the chances were there. There tended to be some exceptions.
What is especially noteworthy is that there were many 'slanting streets' in the outer city in Beijing.
They were actually derived from the many shortcuts
that came into being in the Yuan Dynasty.
because of the traffic between Dadu and the middle capital to the southwest.
These roads were all ‘slanting’.
Later, houses were built along them to form fixed alleys.
These alleys that have been preserved shed light on the different influences
of the different times on the evolution of the city.
The houses in the outer city of Beijing were evidently inferior in quality and scale to those in the inner city.
They were more cramped and more thickly laid out.
Since the mid Ming Dynasty, the outer city gradually became the business centre of the entire city.
Along the two sides of Qianmen Street
and many alleys in the east and west of the outer city, many shops were built.
Especially since the years of Yongle, numerous guildhalls had sprung up in the outer city too.
They were chiefly built to help those from other places to establish connections
with their fellow provincials.
As places of temporary accommodation and gatherings,
they made the outer city more favourable for those from other parts of the country.