To begin with, I must mention that I have never been to Beijing, although I am a history-lover and have read large numbers of books about the Qing Dynasty, especially the late Qing history. Impressed by the magnificence of the Forbidden City and the detailed introduction given by the documentary called “the Palace Museum”, I cannot wait to visit the mysterious palace.
Located in the center of Beijing, the entire palace area, rectangular in shape and 72 hectares in size, is surrounded by walls ten meters high and a moat 52 meters wide. As the home to 24 Ming and Qing emperors, it was established in 1406,during the reign of emperor Zhu Di. It is said that after Zhu Di seized power from his nephew named Zhu yunwen, he felt anxious and fearful, and started to doubt whether what he did was right or not. What’s more, there were still some civil officers against him in the court. All these drive him make up his mind to consider moving the capital to Beijing—his military and political base. The establishment of the palace, is a great project, costing large amount of manpower and material resources.
In 1644 AD, Li Zicheng captured Beijing and set fire to destroy the Forbidden City. However, it seems that the palace has not been badly damaged and rebuilding started in 1863. This makes me think of Epang palace which was burned by Xiang Yu. To some extent, they both have narrow mind. The Forbidden City is the crystallization of the wisdom of the skillful craftsmen whose technism is unequalled nowadays.
The palace survived during the period of the collapse of Ming and the rise of Manchus. Then the rulers took control of the regime. Thank goodness that the Manchu rulers inherited the palace, making numerous curiosities protected and remaining till today. Nevertheless, during the 13 years between 1911 and 1924, the last emperor Puyi smuggled a number of painting and calligraphy scrolls out in the name of giving them to his brother Pujie, which leaded to the missing of many valuable thing. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, a great many cultural relics were returned to the Palace Museum. Nowadays, common people are accessible to those precious things there.
To sum up, I’m not only most surprised to see the well-made jade objects , the dazzling western clocks , the musical instruments and so on but attracted by the craftsmen’s superb skills as well. I feel proud of my country, which has been an ancient civilized nation. However, when Bourgeois revolution and industrial revolution were conducted in western countries, on the contrary, China was still a feudal state. In addition, its ruler lost himself in the belief that China is strong and among the world’s leading countries. As a matter of fact, China’s political system didn’t adapt to its economic development, making China fall far behind western countries. That is to say, in the late Qing Dynasty, it’s inevitable for China to be bullied by other countries.