The Forbidden City

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The Forbidden City
Abstract
The Forbidden City, Chinese imperialist powers vast and imposing seat for nearly 500 years, is in sharp contrast to modern Beijing. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is the oldest, wooden palace building on earth and has been an open museum of Chinese culture for over a century, making it the world's largest educational, scientific and cultural organization. Together with the Great Wall, it is one of the most stunning tourist attractions in China and a must-see for any Chinese traveler. Here we discuss the origins of the Forbidden City and the process of thinking behind the architecture, describing the cultural meaning of some of its color and numerical components.
Symbolism of color
The planners of the Forbidden City used bright colors for esthetic and cultural reasons. The Chinese used to develop the idea of Wu Xing in ancient times, which attempted to understand such events based on the interaction among various elements. They have been used in a variety of areas including fitness, physics, architecture and martial arts. Wu Xing was initially based on five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth), but later expanded with instructions and colour, each of which was of significant significance: green / blue, yellow, red, white and black. The viving colors of the Forbidden City are particularly prominent as it is opposed to the drab grays of the houses and the luminous white marble used for the terraces, stairs and balconies.
The ancient Chinese regarded yellow as the earth's colour, a producer of all life, as a single most important factor. In particular, yellow was held in high regard and intended for the emperor's exclusive use. Its importance in the prohibited city was intended to demonstrate the unique relations between the emperor, as the son of heaven, and the earth, which legitimized his reign. In reality, Ming's rule stipulated that yellow should only be used for the palaces of Imperialism, tombs, and temples and the emperors used to wear a broken dredger in yellow robes. The Ming Dynasty's favorite yellow glaze roof tiles are widely displayed in the large halls and buildings around the Forbidden City, which are an indicator that the emperor has business inside the structures. Sometimes, smaller structures with gray roof tiles serving more utilitarian uses.
Until entered into the Forbidden City by way of the Meridian Gate, tourists can see six large halls on white marble platforms with yellow-tyled roofs and many smaller houses, including the yellow roofing, acted as residences for the servants and advisors of the emperor. With yellow clay from Hebei province, the walls of the big halls of the Forbidden City were washed in order to show a prominent colour.
The use of yellow for imperial roofing is one example. The Emperor's Bibliothek, the Hall of the literary depth (the back of the Hall of Literary Brilliance), was granted a black roof for a very practical reason: for the sake of protecting precious books (the old Chinese were once kept in as many as 36,000) the ancient black was synonymous with water, which builders of the Forbidden City considered very useful. Otherwise, on the roof tiles of many houses, such as the Prince's Quarters and other s...