46 Fun Facts About Forbidden City

The 24 emperors who lived in the Forbidden City each bore which title of China's rulers?

Son of Heaven: fourteen Ming and ten Qing emperors ruled here as heaven's deputies, a claim with a catch, since a dynasty that fell was said to have lost heaven's mandate.

Before the court moved into the newly built Forbidden City in 1420, which city was the Ming capital?

Nanjing lost the court when a prince who had seized the throne from his nephew moved it to his own northern base, the better to watch the Mongol frontier.

Which Ming emperor, who sent Zheng He's fleets to sea, moved the capital to Beijing and began the Forbidden City?

The Yongle Emperor had barely four years in his new palace: he spent much of his reign leading armies into Mongolia and died on campaign in 1424.

Which servants, numbering in the thousands, staffed the emperor's private quarters in the Forbidden City?

Eunuchs were trusted to serve inside the emperor's household precisely because they could father no children there.

The 'golden bricks' paving the Forbidden City's great halls were made in which canal city?

Suzhou and its neighbouring prefectures baked the dense paving tiles from fine clay; despite the name, there is no gold in them.

The 'purple' in Zijincheng, the Forbidden City's Chinese name, points to which star, the celestial emperor's seat?

The North Star, the Ziwei star, sat at the still centre of the turning sky and was held to be the celestial emperor's home, so his earthly counterpart's palace took its name.

What is the name of the northern gate of the Forbidden City?

The Gate of Divine Prowess (Shenwumen) is the northern gate, facing Jingshan hill; it was originally the Gate of Black Warrior (Xuanwu), renamed to avoid the Kangxi Emperor's personal name.

Chinese speakers usually call the Forbidden City 'Gugong', a name that means what?

Former Palace: the name took over once the dynasty had fallen and the emperors' home had become a museum, the Gugong Bowuyuan.

In counts of the Forbidden City's fabled 9,999 rooms, what is one 'room'?

The space between four pillars is one bay, so a single great hall counts as dozens of 'rooms'; even so, surveys find fewer than 9,400, short of the legend.

Which rebel leader took the Forbidden City in April 1644 and declared himself Shun emperor?

Li Zicheng held the palace for barely forty days: beaten at Shanhai Pass by Qing and turncoat Ming armies, he set parts of it alight as he fled Beijing.

Which conquering people from the north-east enthroned a boy emperor in the Forbidden City in 1644?

The Manchus proclaimed the boy Shunzhi ruler of all China there, though real power lay with his uncle Dorgon, the regent whose army had just taken Beijing.

In which war did Lord Elgin, in 1860, reportedly weigh destroying the Forbidden City before burning the Old Summer Palace?

The Second Opium War brought Anglo-French troops to Beijing; the palace Elgin burned was the emperors' main residence, with the Forbidden City kept largely for ceremony.

Who was the final emperor to live in the Forbidden City?

Puyi abdicated as a small boy in 1912, yet the republic's terms let him keep his title and go on living in the Inner Court for another twelve years.

After his 1924 expulsion from the Forbidden City, the former emperor became a puppet ruler for which country?

Japan crowned him in 1934 over its client state in China's north-east; he had lost his palace home when a warlord's coup tore up the terms of his abdication.

The Palace Museum opened in the Forbidden City on 10 October 1925, the anniversary of which event?

The 1911 revolution began with an army mutiny at Wuchang on 10 October, so the republic threw open the emperors' home to the public on its own national day.

The pick of the Forbidden City's art collection, shipped out in 1948, is now housed in which city?

Taipei's National Palace Museum holds about a fifth of the 13,491 crates first packed off in 1933 as war threatened Beijing; the Nationalists shipped the best to Taiwan as they lost the civil war.

Who sent an army battalion to guard the Forbidden City during the Cultural Revolution?

Zhou Enlai, premier since 1949, sent an army battalion to guard the palace in 1966 as Red Guards attacked other heritage sites; its gates stayed sealed until 1971.

Roughly how far is it from the Forbidden City's south gate to its north gate?

1 kilometre is close: the walls run 961 metres from south to north and 753 across, enclosing more ground than the whole of Vatican City.

Researchers link the two-degree tilt of the Forbidden City's axis to an alignment with which Mongol capital?

Xanadu, Shangdu in Chinese, was Kublai Khan's summer capital; the tilt goes back to the axis his dynasty laid out for Beijing, which the Ming palace inherited.

What is the emperor's seat in the Forbidden City's main throne hall traditionally called?

The Dragon Throne looks like solid gold but is carved wood under gilt lacquer, with dragons coiling over its back and arms.

What is the name of the main southern entrance of the Forbidden City?

The Meridian Gate was the palace's stage: from its tower imperial proclamations and each year's calendar were issued, and captives were paraded before the emperor after a victory.

Bronze lions guard the Forbidden City's gates in pairs; the male paws a ball, but what lies under the lioness's paw?

A cub lies under her paw, a sign of nurture and a thriving imperial line, while the male's ball stood for the emperor's sway over the world.

Besides the emperor, who could pass through the central arch of the Forbidden City's main southern gate?

New empresses and top scholars each got one turn: a bride entered through it on her wedding day, and the three best graduates of the palace examination walked out by it.

The five bridges over the Forbidden City's Golden Water River are built of which stone?

White marble makes all five, set side by side over the stream's bow-shaped bend; they lead to the gate where Ming emperors sat to hear their officials' reports.

What is the largest building in the Forbidden City, used for enthronements and imperial weddings?

The Hall of Supreme Harmony was a stage, not an office: Qing emperors held court elsewhere and kept it for enthronements, weddings and the great festivals.

Legend says the ball hung above the Forbidden City's throne would do what to a usurper?

Fall and kill him, the tale ran; Yuan Shikai, who declared himself emperor in 1915, is said to have had the throne shifted back so the Xuanyuan Mirror no longer hung over it.

Which hall of the Forbidden City's Outer Court held the final stage of the Imperial Examination?

The Hall of Preserving Harmony was a banquet hall first; only in 1789 did the palace examination settle there, the one round whose questions the emperor set himself.

How was the Forbidden City's giant carved stone ramp probably hauled from its quarry?

On sledges over ice roads: a 2013 engineering study showed that a film of water on winter ice cut the friction enough to slide such blocks, the method used in place of log rollers.

Which Forbidden City building housed the Ming emperors and later became the Qing audience hall?

The Palace of Heavenly Purity lost its emperors to smaller quarters in the 1720s; after that emperors hid their secret choice of heir behind the tablet above its throne.

From the Yongzheng Emperor on, Qing emperors lived and worked in which smaller Forbidden City building?

The Hall of Mental Cultivation (Yangxindian), west of the main axis, became the emperors' home and office from Yongzheng's reign; Cixi later ruled from behind a screen in its eastern chamber.

Which treasures were once kept in the Forbidden City's Hall of Union?

The Qing imperial seals, twenty-five of them, were kept there; at an imperial wedding the bride's own seal and book of investiture were laid out in the same hall.

Who lived in the Six Western and Six Eastern Palaces of the Forbidden City's Inner Court?

The emperor's consorts lived there, and an address could become a title: Cixi was the 'western' empress dowager and her co-regent Ci'an the 'eastern' one.

Which emperor built the Forbidden City's Palace of Tranquil Longevity as a retirement complex?

The Qianlong Emperor built it in the 1770s for the day he would step down, then never moved in: after abdicating he kept his old rooms and his grip on power.

What colour are almost all the roof tiles in the Forbidden City?

Yellow glazed tiles cover almost every roof because the colour was reserved for the emperor's house; the princes' quarters were roofed in green instead.

Why was the Forbidden City's imperial library roofed in black tiles?

Black stood for water against fire in five-element thinking, a charm for a pavilion built to hold the Siku Quanshu, the court's vast hand-copied library.

On Forbidden City roofs, what does the number of statuettes lined along each ridge show?

The building's rank: lesser roofs carry three or five figures, and only the great throne hall was allowed ten, the last a creature found on no other roof.

The Forbidden City's Hall of Union stands between the emperor's and empress's palaces to mark the meeting of what?

Yin and yang: the emperor's palace stood for one and the empress's for the other, so the small square hall between them marks the point where the two meet and balance.

Jingshan, the artificial hill just north of the Forbidden City, was built up from what?

Earth dug from the moat and nearby lakes was heaped up behind the palace because, by the rules of feng shui, a ruler's house should have a sheltering hill to its north.

Zhongnanhai, the emperors' old lakeside pleasure grounds west of the Forbidden City, now serves as what?

China's leadership compound: the State Council works in its northern half and the Communist Party's central offices in the south, in grounds that were a public park before 1949.

Whose portrait hangs at the centre of Tiananmen Gate, south of the Forbidden City?

Mao Zedong's portrait first went up in 1949, the year he proclaimed the People's Republic from the gate, which had earlier carried Sun Yat-sen's and then Chiang Kai-shek's.

Roughly how many objects did the Palace Museum's 2016 stock-take count in its Forbidden City collection?

About 2 million: the tally came to 1,862,690 after a three-year check of every storeroom, most of it inherited from the Ming and Qing imperial households.

Switzerland is famed for watches, but which country made the largest share of the Forbidden City's foreign clocks?

Britain supplied the largest share of the foreign pieces; one showpiece of the collection holds a clockwork figure that writes Chinese characters with a brush.

Which film was the first Western feature authorised to shoot inside the Forbidden City?

The Last Emperor made the most of that licence: virtually its first ninety minutes unfold inside the palace, a gilded cage its child ruler is forbidden to leave.

Up to 200 of which animals live wild in the Forbidden City, looked after by museum staff?

Cats have prowled the palace since emperors kept them as pets; today's strays are neutered, named and fed by staff, and repay them by keeping mice off the timber halls.

Which two bronze creatures, emblems of long life, stand on the terrace of the Forbidden City's main throne hall?

Crane and tortoise, both long-lived in Chinese lore, wished the dynasty an everlasting reign; they share the terrace with a sundial and a grain measure, emblems of the emperor's authority.

What lies at the northern end of the Forbidden City's central axis, just inside its back gate?

The Imperial Garden packs old trees, a Daoist shrine and a rockery mound into a compact plot; each Double Ninth Festival the emperor climbed the mound to look out over the palace.