Huang Shicheng

Unique "stone Palace"

Huang Shicheng

Huang Shi Cheng (Hu á ng sh ǐ ch é ng) < / I is the royal archives of Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, also known as biaozhangku. It is located at the south entrance of Nanchizi street in the east of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

It was first built in July 1534 and completed in July 1534. Huang Shicheng covers an area of 8460 square meters, with a construction area of 3400 square meters. It is the most complete existing royal archives in China.

By the end of 2019, the retirement of Huang Shicheng cultural relics will be completed. On May 6, 2020, the work of dismantling illegal articles in the hospital was officially launched. After the demolition, the Palace Museum will restore the original appearance of the ancient buildings.

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Cheng is the royal archives of Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, also known as biaozhangku. It is located at the south entrance of Nanchizi street in the east of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Huang Shicheng was first built in July 1534 and completed in July 1535. It covers an area of 8460 square meters and a construction area of 3400 square meters. The hall has no beams and columns. The north and south walls are 6 meters thick and the East and west walls are 3 meters thick. There is a 1.42-meter-high stone platform on the ground, on which there are more than 150 camphor wooden cabinets wrapped with copper skin and carved dragons, which are called "gold cabinets". The whole building and fittings are perfect in design, excellent in workmanship, complete in function, luxurious and durable, which can prevent fire, moisture, insects and mildew. It is warm in winter and cool in summer, and the temperature is relatively stable, so it is very suitable to keep archives. It is the archives for the royal families of Ming and Qing Dynasties to keep their royal history. Cheng refers to the house used for collecting books in ancient times. Since then, Longqing years and Jiaqing years of the Qing Dynasty were repeatedly repaired.

The main hall faces south, and the whole body can be called the stone house. The foundation and walls are made of brick and stone, and imitation wood stone is also used in doors and windows, beams, arches and other places where wood is traditionally used. Stone house is conducive to fire prevention and moisture-proof, can ensure that the collection of ancient books from damage. Among them, there are 152 "Golden Chamber" on display, in which the Royal sermons, records and yudie are stored.

Historical evolution

As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, China had the system of "Golden Chamber". It is recorded in the book of the Han Dynasty (the second chapter of the reign of emperor Gaodi), "to carve an oath with a meritorious official, to make an oath with a red book and an iron certificate, to build a golden chamber and a stone chamber, and to build a ancestral temple." The so-called "Golden Chamber" is a cupboard made of copper; the so-called "stone room" is a house built of stone, whose purpose is to prevent fire, so that its precious archives can be preserved forever.

After that, the archives of the past dynasties inherited the old system of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and each had its own development. They were used to preserve the royal archives of the emperors of the different dynasties, such as the "real records", "holy precepts" and "jade discs". In history, such archives have been built in all dynasties, but most of them have been destroyed. There are almost no such complete archives as Huang Shicheng, which shows the special value of this group of buildings.

The construction of huangshicheng originated from Shangshu, which was given to the emperor by Qiu Jun, a scholar of cabinet University in Ming Dynasty. As early as the fifth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1492), Qiu Jun once played a role in emperor Chen, proposing that the classics of the past dynasties should be collected and sorted out, and set up as a file for preservation, so that "today's world depends on it to know the ancient, and later generations rely on it to know the present." As to what kind of storehouse should be built to keep these books, he suggested: following the ancient Chinese idea of "the golden chamber in the stone chamber", a heavy building built of bricks and stones without wood planting should be built near the Wenyuan Pavilion in the Forbidden City. The upper layer should use copper cabinets to store the emperor's records and state affairs documents, and the lower layer should use iron cabinets to store the emperor's imperial edicts, letters, imperial edicts, and internal affairs documents, which can be used for editing Documents of the whole history. His proposal basically outlined the rudiment of Huang Shicheng. However, due to various reasons, his proposal could not be put into practice at that time. In the 13th year of Jiajing 42 years later, Emperor Jiajing ordered the reconstruction of the real records of Lei dynasty emperor, and asked the ministers to propose to build a pavilion to collect the emperor's "Royal statues, Baoxun, and real records". Only when Zhang Fujing, the Minister of the Ministry of officials and the great scholar of huagaidian, reiterated the previous proposal and officially built the "Golden Chamber of the stone chamber" . However, the new building has changed a lot on the basis of Qiu Jun's proposal.

According to Zhang Fujing's agreement and the approval of emperor Jiajing, the construction site was selected in the area of Nanchizi. In this way, it can be integrated with other palace buildings, not far from the Forbidden City, and convenient for special storage and inspection. Its architectural regulation is not the double tower, but the same as that of Nanjing zhizhai palace, with brick and stone groups inside and outside. On the pavilion, the emperors of past dynasties are worshipped, and you can store the actual records and holy precepts of the emperors of Lei Dynasty. The whole construction project took two years.

On August 20 of the 15th year of Jiajing reign, the reconstructed records of the emperor and the sacred precepts were put into use.

When Huang Shicheng was first built, it was not named Huang Shicheng. Because its original intention was to build a statue of the emperor, it was named "Shenyu Pavilion". After the completion of the project, Emperor Jiajing decided to use the building to store the emperor's records and instructions, and the emperor's portraits were worshipped in a temple. Therefore, the "Shenyu Pavilion" was renamed "huangshicheng". According to the records of Chunming dream by sun Chengze, a Jinshi of Chongzhen Dynasty, the name of Huang Shicheng was decided by Emperor Jiajing. The word "Shi" was written in Ming Dynasty, and the word "Cheng" was added with a cover to "Cheng". These characters were all determined by Emperor Jiajing's "self-made handwriting". "Cheng", quoted from the notes of Yandu sightseeing annals in rixia Jiuwen Kao, said: "Cheng is synonymous with Sheng. Zhuangzi says" to Kuang Chengya ", and Shuowen says:" Cheng ", which is accepted by the house." In Chinese history, the emperor is supreme and represents the country, and the emperors of all dynasties boast that their recorded sermons are true historical records. Therefore, the place where the recorded sermons are stored should be not only the collection of Chinese culture, but also the palace for preserving the official history of the royal family. This is the meaning of the name and zigzag of Huang Shi Cheng.

After the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty, Huang Shicheng was still used as a place to preserve the royal archives. However, the Qing Dynasty made a great change in the form of the front door of Huang Shicheng. The word "Shi" no longer used "" and was replaced by a combination of left Han and right man. In 1911, after the Qing government was overthrown, Huang Shicheng was still managed by the internal affairs department of Puyi's small court. After Puyi left the palace in 1925, Huang Shicheng was taken over by the Palace Museum of Peking. In this period, Huang Shicheng was sealed up for a long time.

After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the Beijing municipal government listed Huang Shicheng as a key cultural relic protection unit in 1949.

In 1955, the State Archives Bureau was established, and Huang Shicheng was transferred to the State Archives Bureau for management. Since 1956, the state has successively allocated large sums of money to repair Huang Shicheng for many times.

In 1982, Huang Shicheng was listed as a national key cultural relic protection unit by the State Administration of cultural relics.

At present, the imperial archives of Ming and Qing Dynasties are directly under the jurisdiction of the first historical archives of China. The royal archives of Ming and Qing dynasties have been moved to the first historical archives. The imperial archives has become an important scenic spot for opening exhibitions and displaying ancient Chinese Archives and culture.

architectural style

Huang Shi Cheng is a brick and stone structure, covering an area of more than 2000 square meters. The main buildings are huangshicheng gate, main hall, dongxipeidian, yubeiting, etc., surrounded by Zhu walls. Huang Shi Cheng's forehead was written in Manchu and Chinese. The main hall is built on a stone platform with a height of 2 meters, surrounded by a white marble fence, with a width of 9 rooms, a yellow glazed tile veranda top, and an arched beamless building. The architraves, brackets, doors and windows are all carved with white marble. The architraves are painted with gold and painted with color. There are 5 holes in the gate of the hall, both of which are double. Inside, there is a 2-meter-high white marble xumizuo, on which there are 152 gold-plated camphor wood cabinets. There are opposite windows on the gable to convection the air. It is an important cultural relic building with artistic, scientific and practical features.

It's almost impossible to build a house without a little wood, and it's even more unbelievable to build a hall without a little wood. The achievements of the emperor's history is a stone palace, which is made of bricks and stones without any wood.

Location: Huang Shicheng is a veranda style building with yellow glazed tiles on the roof, kissing animals. It is the highest level palace building. In front of the hall hangs a plaque of "Huang Shi Cheng". The main hall faces south in the north, and the whole body can be called the stone house basically. The main hall is located on a stone foundation 1.42 meters high. The whole hall is a beamless building with an arched roof. The north and south walls are 6.4 meters thick, and the East and west walls are 3.45 meters thick. There are five ticket doors in the south, each of which weighs about 2 tons. Inside the hall, there is a 1.42-meter-high stone platform, on which a golden chamber made of gold-plated copper leather and nanmu is placed. The whole building and fittings are perfect in design, excellent in workmanship, complete in function, luxurious and durable, which can prevent fire, moisture, insects and mildew. It is warm in winter and cool in summer, and the temperature is relatively stable, so it is very suitable to keep archives.

Huang Shicheng mainly collects the imperial family's jade inscriptions, the historical records of the emperors, the holy precepts (Baoxun), etc. These files are kept in the golden chamber. There were 20 indoor golden chambers in Ming Dynasty, 31 in Yongzheng period, 141 in Tongzhi period and 153 in Guangxu period. In the Qing Dynasty, 107 seals of generals were stored in Huang Shicheng, as well as Qing Huidian. A copy of the cabinet Title book was also kept in the side halls of the Qing Dynasty.

Huang Shicheng is an outstanding representative of the archives building in the feudal society of our country.

Chinese PinYin : Huang Shi Cheng