When did the division between the inner city and the outer city occur?

Before the 32nd year of the Ming Jiajing (1553 AD), the earliest southern gate of the city of Beijing was not the Yongding Gate, but the Zhengyang Gate. Before the construction of the Outer Kuo Cheng, there was no distinction between the inner city and the outer city. Zhengyangmen, in fact, was the southern gate of Beijing. It appeared at the southern end of the central axis in a tall and upright posture, like a tall warrior, to protect the imperial palace it defended behind. The layers of rough masonry are like dusty scales on his armor.

The need for a fortified city to defend a luxurious palace demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between power and force. In the 18th year of the Yongle era (1420 AD), the smug Ming Emperor Zhu Di completed the construction of the capital city walls. On the fourth day of the eleventh month of this year, he formally promulgated the imperial edict of moving the capital, in which he praised the construction of Beijing with magnificent rhetoric: "Since the construction of the building, the world's army and people have been happy to tend to the affairs of the world, and the heavenly beings have praised the construction of the city, and Jing Kuang has been accomplished, which has been completed now." And the next New Year, held a grand celebration ceremony in the new capital. However, he built the Beijing city wall, many are the yuan dynasty city wall on the basis of the old brick repair, the moon tower, building store is not complete, revealing that he set the capital to build the capital of the haste. Imperial capital obviously can not be so perfunctory, the first year of Zhengtong (1436 AD), the Zhengtong Emperor ordered the eunuch Ruan An, the Governor of the Tongzhi Shen Qing, Ministry of Industry Secretary Wu Zhongping led tens of thousands of military craftsmen and laborers, rebuilt the Beijing nine doors city walls, towers, three years, and finally completed.

As the military high point, Zhengyangmen has always been the highest gate in Beijing. In the 38th year of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1610 AD), a fire destroyed the Zhengyangmen Gate. It was necessary to rebuild it. Wanli period, corruption, eunuchs dictatorship, this fat job, soon fell into the hands of eunuchs. At that time, the proposed budget of 130,000 taels of silver. Management of the works of the Yamen Ministry of Public Works, the repair division of the Langzhong Chen Jiayan, in the dynasty at that time is more enlightened people, he thought that this budget expenditure is too large, the result is only 30,000 taels of silver reimbursement to complete the work, Zheng Yangmen rebuild has become his anger eunuchs of the fuse, and soon, he was the eunuchs in the dynasty cleaned out of the game.

170 years later, another fire destroyed the archery tower at the gate of Zheng Yang. This time, the dynasty has been reversed, the owner of the Forbidden City, has been the Qing Emperor Qianlong, the only constant, no matter how wise monarchs, large-scale construction, as usual, giving corrupt officials the opportunity to use their power for personal gain. When the Arrow Tower was rebuilt, Emperor Qianlong once ordered to use new masonry, but the ministers who managed the project at that time disobeyed, and still utilized the old coupon holes for construction. After the construction was completed, the masonry was too heavy and the old hole was cracked internally. According to the rules of the Qing Dynasty, the ministers in charge of supervising the construction work, such as Yinglian, He? etc. could only ask for compensation for repair. Qianlong was allowed to build half of the cost by Yinglian, half by the government treasury expenses. Sort of punishment for Yinglian. This matter is recorded in the "qianlong real record", not recorded, is the yinglian, and? and others, will be their own punishment, no less than a little transferred to the heads of the people.

Zhengyangmen for the heavy eaves hiatus three drops of water of the pavilion, gray tiles green glazed shear edge of the roof, temperament simple and dignified, and behind it Tiananmen Square, the Noon Gate and other palaces buildings of the red walls of the golden tiles form a sharp contrast. Reminiscent of the pass of the moonlit night bow and sword, and the deep palace of song and dance.

What we see now is the Zhengyangmen, was rebuilt in the Qing Guangxu twenty-eighth year (1902). On January 7 of this year, fled two years of Cixi old Buddha by Baoding Palace Kai Luang, take the train to Majiabao, sedan chair to Yongdingmen Palace. At that time, Zhengyangmen Castle has long been the Eight-Power Allied Forces in the British Army in the Indian soldiers in the heating ignited and burned, in a dilapidated scene, had to temporarily build a "colorful pagoda", more or less is to decorate some of the face. The main gate of the inner city is once again facing restoration. Unfortunately, the original drawings together with the Ministry of engineering files were burned by the Eight-Power Allied Forces, so we can not imagine its original image. Because it was built according to the form of Chongwenmen, Xuanwumen, only according to the wide and narrow, the height and width of the discretionary increase some, which in turn allows us to speculate has disappeared in the inner city south of the other two gates - Chongwenmen and Xuanwumen outline.

Ming Jiajing thirty-two years (A.D. 1553), give the Chinese Zhu Bochen's speech, once again changed the pattern of the city of Beijing. He asked in the original outside the city and then surrounded by a circle of the citadel, in order to ward off Mongolia Iida Department of the iron cavalry harassment attack, is the year leap March construction, but because of the high cost of labor, the court can not afford to support, in the south wall was completed after the north fold in a hurry, and the original citadel articulation, the formation of convex-shaped walls. Thus, located in the outer city in the middle of the south wall of the Yongding Gate, to replace the zhengyangmen, become the southern gate of Beijing. The highest of the outer city towers is Yongdingmen, which is about 20 meters high and corresponds to Zhengyangmen. It should be noted that the newly built outer city surrounded the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of the First Peasant, which were the so-called sacrificial rites in ancient times, in the city. This is a major change that breaks through the norms of the capital city of the Zhou ritual system.

Traditional Chinese architecture usually avoids door-to-door confrontation, and even the courtyards of ordinary people have walls and hanging gates separating the rooms from the gates. Only the doors and queues on Beijing's central axis are far from each other. The Travels of Marco Polo describes: "The streets of the city are so wide that you can see them from one end to the other. They are purposely so arranged that one can see the opposite gate by this one." From the Yongding Gate, the Zhengyang Gate, the Daming Gate, the Tiananmen Gate, the Duanmen Gate, the Wumen Gate, and the Taihe Gate, a thoroughfare traversed the heavy walls of the city, leading from the marketplace folk to the lavish Imperial Palace of Harmony. Of course, only the emperor is the legal passer-by of this thoroughfare that leads directly to the imperial throne. In imperial times, the gates in the center of the citadel and the archery tower were never open to the people.

The giant landscapes created by the ancients on the earth often contained special symbols that only the heavens knew. Since no one can get the perspective of the sky, it is impossible to read these pictures specially presented for the sky from half a claw. 2003, a set of remote sensing aerial photographs over Beijing attracted extra attention. It was found that the overall design of the ancient architectural complexes on the central axis was strongly symbolic. Scientists from the Geological Remote Sensing Center of the Ministry of Geology and Minerals, who conducted in-depth research on the subject, corroborated the remote sensing photographs with historical data, and eventually discovered, to their surprise, that the design and construction of the Ming Dynasty city of Beijing implicitly included the shapes of two giant dragons --- one was a water dragon, and the other was a land dragon.

The ancient city-builders' drawings have long since faded, and scholars have tried to rely on technological means to outline the ancient people's original imaginations --- the South China Sea is the dragon's head of the water dragon, the lake island happens to be the dragon's eye, the South China Sea and the North China Sea make up the dragon's body, and the Shichahai is the dragon's tail, which is quite dynamic. Land dragon lying in Beijing's central axis, Tiananmen Square is like a dragon's kiss, Jinshui Bridge for the dragon's jaws gnarled, east and west Chang'an Street as if the dragon's two long whiskers, from Tiananmen Square to the Wumen area is the dragon's nose bone part of the temple and the altar of the Jikji as the eyes of the dragon, the Forbidden City is like the dragon's bones and the dragon's body, the four corners as if it were the dragon's four claws, stretching to the eight directions, Jingshan, the Di'anmen Avenue and the Bell and Drum Towers form the Dragon's Tail. And the pearl in front of the dragon's head is precisely the Zhengyangmen Gate. Overview of the ancient buildings on the central axis of Beijing, showing a huge dragon locking the pearl of the situation, the performance of the two meters, the four elephants, the image of gossip.

Perhaps it is an intentional design, perhaps natural coincidence, but this discovery reveals a certain mysterious connection between the city platform gate and queue, guiding us from a new path into this ancient city.