the ancestral shrine

the ancestral shrine

The Taimiao temple is rectangular in plane, 475 meters long from north to South and 294 meters wide from east to west. It has three walls and three closed courtyards composed of front, middle and back halls.

Taimiao, the main hall towering in the center of the entire Taimiao building complex, 11 wide, four deep, with a construction area of 2240 square meters; double eaves veranda top, triple white marble sumitou type platform, surrounded by stone barriers; the main beams of the hall are wrapped with agarwood, other building components are precious gold Phoebe.

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Construction history

Taimiao is the ancestral temple of Ming and Qing emperors. It was built in 1420, covering an area of more than 200 mu. It was built according to the traditional ritual system of "respecting heaven and Fazu" in ancient China.

Ceiling and porch column are all pasted with red gold flowers, which are delicately made and luxuriously decorated. The Taimiao temple is the place where the emperor held ancestor worship ceremony. There are 15 auxiliary halls on both sides of the main hall. The East auxiliary hall is dedicated to the meritorious Royal deities of the past dynasties, and the west auxiliary hall is dedicated to the meritorious ministers of different surnames.

After the main hall, the middle hall and the back hall are the nine main halls on the top of the yellow glazed tile veranda. The middle hall is called the bedroom hall, and the back hall is called the Yi temple. In addition, there are some other buildings, such as the divine kitchen, the divine storehouse, the slaughter Pavilion, and the livestock house. Taimiao is famous for its ancient cypresses. Most of the trees are hundreds of years old.

After the revolution of 1911, Taimiao was still owned by Qingshi. In 1924, it was opened as a peace park, and in 1950, it was changed to the current name of "Cultural Palace of the working people". In January 1988, Taimiao was listed as a national key cultural relic protection unit.

Overall layout

Overall layout: the main building of Taimiao is three main halls, opposite to which is the halberd gate. Outside the gate of Daji is Yudai River and Jinshui bridge. To the north of the bridge, there are six corner well pavilions in the East and west respectively. To the south of the bridge, there are God kitchen and God storehouse. Further to the south is the colorful glazed gate. To the southeast of the gate are slaughterhouses, livestock houses and well pavilions.

Main gate of Taimiao Temple

The main gate of Taimiao: it is located in the east of Yulu in Tiananmen Gate, which is called the street gate of Taimiao. It is the gate that the emperor went through when he offered sacrifices to Taimiao. The gate is symmetrical to the gate of the state altar on the west side of the inner royal road of Tian'anmen.

After opening to the outside world, the main gate of the temple was changed to the main gate of the Cultural Palace of the working people on Chang'an Street.

Colorful glass gate: it is the main gate of the sacrificial hall, which is named after the decoration of colorful glass.

Inside the gate are the Yudai River and the Jinshui bridge, which have the same function and name as the Jinshui bridge in the Forbidden City.

Big halberd gate: This gate got its name from the eight halberd frames inside and outside the gate. Each halberd frame had 15 halberds, a total of 120 halberds.

There are five bays in the gate, three of which are front and back, nine in the middle and seven in the left and right. There is a small golden hall in the east of the gate, which is specially used for changing clothes and washing when the emperor worships.

Burning furnace: there are yellow brick burning furnaces in the East and southwest of dajimen, which are specially designed for burning silk.

Reconstruction of main hall

The front hall is the main hall of the three halls, where the emperor held the great sacrifice.

The front hall was first built in the 18th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty. In the 15th year of Jiajing, it was slightly modified because of the change of temple system. In the 20th year of Jiajing, it was burned by lightning and rebuilt in the 24th year of Jiajing.

It was damaged in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, but the main wooden frame was well preserved. It was still the original structure of Jiajing, which was restored in the Shunzhi period of Qing Dynasty.

The main hall has eleven couplets, four deep ones, double eaves and ridges, and the hall is full of "Taimiao" in Chinese.

The triple base outside the hall is surrounded by white marble columns, and the front of the platform royal road is engraved with Longwen stone, Shiwen stone and sea animal stone in turn. The main beam of the hall is agarwood, and the rest is made of golden elm; the floor is paved with "gold bricks"; the ceiling and four columns are pasted with red gold leaves.

Inside the hall, there was a wooden and gold painted God's seat, the emperor's seat was carved with dragons, and the back seat was carved with phoenixes.

The surface is wide and the depth is deep

There are offerings, incense tables and bronze stoves in front of the seats. On both sides of the side hall, there are tablets for the royal family and meritorious officials.

The central hall was built in the 18th year of Yongle in Ming Dynasty.

Wide nine Ying, deep four Ying, through the stone terrace connected to the front hall, outside the hall of stone steps, there are two stone lamps on the left and right. The central room of the hall is for Taizu, and the other ancestors are divided into different rooms.

Besides the shrine, there are the same number of empress and Emperor's chairs. For the empress's sacrifice, the Ming Dynasty was only the original one, and the Qing Dynasty was also the successor. Also known as the central hall, the place where the ancestral tablets of the emperor are worshipped. It was first built in 1420 with yellow glazed tiles and single eaves.

The hall is nine rooms wide (62.31 meters long) and four rooms deep (20.54 meters wide).

Each room is decorated with chairs, incense tables, beds, pillows and other objects. The memorial tablet stands on the mattress, symbolizing the living and sleeping of ancestors. The Qing Dynasty did not offer the memorial tablets of Nuerhachi, Huangtaiji, Fulin, Xuanye, Yinzhen, Hongli, etc. Every day before the ceremony, the cards were moved to the hall of enjoyment and placed, and they were offered back after the ceremony.

Hou Dian, also known as Yi temple, was not set up when the Taimiao temple was first built in Yongle, but was added in the fourth year of Hongzhi.

Surrounded by red walls, there are five gates and nine halls. The stone steps outside the hall are engraved with dragon stone. Inside the hall are the God cards of emperors and empresses that were granted before the founding of the Qing Dynasty. Also known as Yi hall, the place where the sacrificial articles are stored has long been living.

Documentation

The ancestral temple where the emperor offered sacrifices to his ancestors is called Tai Temple. According to the Zhou system, it is located on the left (East) side in front of the palace gate.

According to the literature, in ancient times, there was one master of each temple: five temples in Tang and Xia dynasties, seven temples in Shang Dynasty, and seven temples in Zhou Dynasty. In Han Dynasty, there were 176 temples not only in the capital, but also in all prefectures. This is very different from the later system of emperor's ancestral temple with only one imperial temple.

There are seven single span stone bridges across the river. North of Jinshui is the main building of Taimiao, surrounded by an inner wall. Its south gate is called halberd gate, which is named after 120 halberd poles outside the gate. Compared with the general Qing Dynasty architecture, Jimen has obvious characteristics of Ming Dynasty. The front hall, the middle hall and the back hall are arranged on the inner central axis of the halberd gate. The front hall and the middle hall are built on a three-layer clay shaped white marble platform. The front hall is the place where the emperor worships. It was originally 9 rooms, but later 11 rooms, with double eaves of yellow glazed tiles. In front of the hall are platforms and broad courtyards, with 15 auxiliary halls built on the East and west sides respectively for the royal family and meritorious officials. The central hall is dedicated to the throne of emperors and empresses of all dynasties, with a nine room wide surface and a single eaves veranda with yellow glazed tiles. Five auxiliary halls were built on the East and west sides of the central hall to store sacrificial utensils. The back hall is dedicated to the throne of empress and emperor, which has been moved from the middle hall for a long time. It has nine wide faces and a yellow glazed tile roof. The form is basically the same as that of the middle hall. There are walls between the middle hall and the back hall. In the overall design of Taimiao temple, a large area of forest is used to surround the main building complex, and multiple doors, halls, bridges and rivers are arranged in a short distance to increase the depth of the entrance, so as to create a solemn and profound atmosphere. The hall is huge and sits on a three-story platform. The courtyard is broad and surrounded by veranda to achieve a grand atmosphere. In addition, the color of the inner eaves of the main hall is painted with fragrant yellow as the background, and the simple spiral pattern strengthens the solemn and serious atmosphere of the building.

The scale

In addition to Yin Ruins, Erlitou and Zhouyuan, the more definite site should be the "nine temples of Wangmang" site in the southern suburb of Chang'an ancient city of Han Dynasty in Xi'an.

There are eleven groups of sites, each of which is a square site, with walls and tiles around; doors are set in the center of each side; there are ancillary rooms in the four corners of the courtyard, with a rammed earth platform in the center of the courtyard, and the main building is still in the form of high platform and wood structure.

The length of each group ranged from 260 m to 314 m, which was quite large. This kind of layout method, which has two vertical and horizontal axes and is completely symmetrical on all sides, is about the general rule of ancestral temples at that time, and can be seen in the plane form of Mingtang, Biyong, mausoleums, early Buddhist temples and some altars, etc.

The transformation of one master in each temple into a temple with many rooms and one master in each room was about the Wei and Jin Dynasties. There were four rooms in Wei Dynasty, seven rooms in Jin Dynasty, ten rooms to fourteen rooms in Eastern Jin Dynasty.

In the past, the temple was built in the two chambers of the temple to store the deity. Later, another temple was set up at the back of the temple. In the Tang Dynasty, it was designated as one temple with nine rooms; in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was also followed by one temple with nine rooms, and another system of Yi temple was established.

In the Han Dynasty, there was a system in which the meritorious officials were allocated to the ancestral temples; in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the two verandahs of the Taimiao were the places where the meritorious officials were allocated.

In front of the Forbidden City of the Forbidden City in Beijing, go east through the gate of Taimiao street and enter Taimiao district.

This area is covered with Cypresses outside the walls of Taimiao temple. Using evergreen trees to create a solemn atmosphere is a successful experience of ancient architectural greening. Entering the halberd gate of Taimiao temple, the courtyard is empty, which is in contrast to the outside of the wall.

Jingting

The temple covers an area of about 165000 square meters. The temple itself is surrounded by thick walls as high as 9 meters, which is very closed. In the middle of the south wall, there are three doors, which are inlaid with colored glaze, and the bottom is a white stone temple; protruding from the wall, the lines are rich and the colors are bright, which is in sharp contrast with the straight and single long wall. This entry processing is quite successful.

At the beginning, there are small rivers and five small bridges; at the north, there are Jimen gate of Taimiao temple and five single eaves verandahs, with flat roofs and outstretched wings and corners, which are still regulated by the Ming Dynasty.

Entering the halberd gate is Guangting, and going north is the main hall of Taimiao. The hall is decorated with yellow purlin wood powder, with fragrant smell and elegant color.

The memorial tablets are divided into Zhaomu tablets, which are usually kept in the middle hall. When they meet, they are offered to the front hall. To the north of the palace, a district is separated by walls

Chinese PinYin : Tai Miao