The Construction of Forbidden City

  Large-scale construction of the Forbidden City started in 1407, the 5th year of the Yongle region of the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. It is said that 100,000 artisans and one million civilians took part in the project. The building materials were from all parts of the country. For example, the timber was from Sichuan and Yunnan province in southwest China. The bricks used for laying floors were made in Suzhou, which is a city in the lower Yangtze River Valley. Stone needed was quarried from Fangshan, a suburb of Beijing.

  It was said that a well was dug every 15 meters along the road in order to pour water onto the road in winter to slide huge stones on ice into the city. Ancient Chinese people displayed their very considerable skills in building the Forbidden City. Take the grand red city wall for example. It has an 8.6 meters wide base reducing to 6.66meters wide at the top. The angular shape of the wall totally frustrates attempt to climb it. The bricks were made from white lime and glutinous rice while the cement is made from glutinous rice and egg whites. These incredible materials make the wall extraordinary strong.

  Since yellow is the symbol of the royal family. It is the dominant color in the Forbidden City. Roofs are built with yellow glazed tiles; decorations in the palace are painted yellow, even the bricks on the ground are made yellow by a special process. However, there is one exception. Wenyuange, the royal library, has a black roof. The reason is that it was believed black represented water then and could extinguish fire.

  The construction of the Forbidden City took 14 years and was completed in 1420. In the next year, the capital of the Ming dynasty was moved here from Nanjing. Starting from the third Ming Emperor Zhu Di, 24 emperors resided in the Forbidden City over 490 years. Fourteen of them were Ming emperors and the other were Qing emperors.