The Forbidden City

Like Tiananmen, the Forbidden City was constructed under the Ming Dynasty, which most people associate only with priceless vases.

It became the home of the Emperor Zhu Di upon completion in 1420 of the project he had ordered to begin 14 years earlier.

Only the Emperor had full access to all areas of this 178 acre palace.

According to our guide Yuan, it was home to as many as 80,000 people, but no one knows for sure.

Who could be trusted to live in this city behind "The Gateway to Heavenly Peace," where all were forbidden except the Emperor and those he allowed to be there?

Dating back centuries, eunuchs had been relied upon by Emperors to surround them and help administer the empire.

Yes, men who had literally been castrated carried out the orders of the Emperor, and by the time the Qing Dynasty supplanted the Ming Dynasty in 1644, it's estimated there were 70,000 eunuchs in the Forbidden City.

Eunuchs were considered to be suitably humble, having sacrificed their reproductive organs to prove themselves worthy of serving the Emperor.

Being eunuchs from childhood meant they were of no threat to the virtue of ladies in waiting, who were the second largest contingent at the palace.

In the historical movie, The Last Emperor, Empress Dowager Cixi tells three year-old Puyi, who will replace her recently deceased nephew as Emperor, that only one real man lives in the Forbidden City, and though he was only a boy, Puyi would be that man from that day forward.

What further rationalizations made eunuchs trustworthy to Emperors?

Eunuchs could not physically procreate sons to carry on their family traditions, so it was believed they would have no political ambitions beyond serving the Emperor loyally.

Because they were dependent on the Emperor who fulfilled all of their material needs and eunuchs had no blood heirs to whom they would pass accumulated wealth, eunuchs  would be honest in all of their responsibilities, monetarily and otherwise, or so the theory went.

Reality proved to unfold somewhat differently.

As poor families saw how well those eunuchs serving the Emperor lived, many chose that "career path" for sons, who otherwise had little chance to escape poverty.

While these young eunuchs may have started with the noble intentions that we might attribute to someone called to celibacy in the Priesthood, many naturally succumbed to temptation once surrounded by royal wealth and excess.

Some Emperors may have behaved nobly and worked diligently to rule their kingdoms, but far more chose to delegate not simply details but essentially all policy decisions to the eunuchs, who became a shadow government that ran everything and accumulated great power.

As Steve Berry wrote in The Emperor's Tomb, "When a government is accountable only from the top down, dishonesty becomes insidious." 

Obviously, that is as true today as it was in the past.

Acting for the Emperor became essentially acting as the Emperor.

The eunuchs did not simply wield power, they accumulated substantial wealth by collecting payoffs and stealing from the treasury.

For example, they might say they were sending 10,000 troops in defense of the country and charge provisions for such but actually only send 5,000, reaping a sizable personal windfall, even if they told the Emperor that through good stewardship they had supplied 10,000 for the cost of 7,500.

In fact, it was probably as much the graft of eunuchs as the incompetence and decadence of Emperors that led to the overthrow of dynasties.

Multiple purges over the years resulted in thousands of eunuchs being slaughtered, but then a new batch of eunuchs eventually rose to power.

Upon returning from China, we found a copy of The Last Emperor DVD at the library, and what might have seemed to be a slow beginning was enlivened by our recognition of places we had walked just days before.

The movie provides not only fascinating insights of what life was like behind the Forbidden City walls, where rituals and styles of dress which no longer were appropriate in a modern world carried on in the Confucian way, with great veneration for ancestors, traditions and ceremonies, but also of the upheaval caused by the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and its ramifications that unfolded over the years.

While the Revolution overthrew the Qing Empire, as compromise for an easier transition, the new government allowed Emperor Puyi and his court to continue to live in the Inner Court of the Forbidden City.

The last Emperor had ascended to the throne in 1908, so he was still only 6 years-old at the time of the Revolution, which gave birth to the Republic of China.  The spoiled child began to consider the luxurious palace to be a prison, because the eunuchs would not let him leave the Inner Courtyard, whether to protect him or their posh existence.  By 1924, they had all been forced to leave.

In 1949, the People's Republic of China, which remains the official name of Communist mainland China today, overthrew the Republic of China, with their leaders fleeing to the offshore island of Taiwan.

For decades, the United States and other countries continued to treat the Republic of China diplomatically as the legitimate Chinese government, which has been a sore spot with the Chinese Communist Party.

You may recall newly elected President Trump being harangued by the establishment for simply accepting a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan's President, emphatically showing how the world has changed since President Jimmy Carter first diplomatically ditched Taiwan to recognize the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate government of China in 1979.  At that time, Congress had quickly retaliated with unofficial recognition of Taiwan which allowed continued arms sales to the island nation.

President Carter's diplomatic recognition the PRC disregarded their support of the Communist side against the USA in the surrogate wars in Vietnam and Korea, essentially relegating our status as enemies to history in hopes of building a better future.

Now, PRC's President Xi Jinping has been assisting President Trump to apply tough sanctions and bring other pressure to North Korea to terminate their nuclear weapons program and possibly officially end the Korean War that began in 1950.

Who would have guessed?

In addition to almost a thousand buildings, there are ancient artifacts on display within the Forbidden Palace, so you really can't see it all in a single morning, but we saw plenty.

"Yuhuayuan" is located outside of the Gate of Terrestrial Tranquility (those Chinese really know how to name a gateway!).  More recently refurbished, this Imperial Garden shows more beautifully than the Forbidden Palace itself.

The Chinese cherish large natural rock formations, which the royal family brought to their gardens, including Yuhuayuan.

All of the architectural details, including roof details, have significance at the Forbidden Palace.