Why is the Forbidden City building red roof yellow walls

Standing at the top of Jingshan Mountain, overlooking the Forbidden City, the palace houses like a golden sea; into the Forbidden City, thousands of halls and pavilions of various styles, the palace eaves outside the eaves and are decorated with brilliant color paintings. The Forbidden City is worthy of the architecture of mankind's greatest artistic creation.

Why do the buildings of the Forbidden City generally use red and yellow colors?

Originally, in the traditional Chinese concept, yellow is the most noble, which is because the Chinese people originated from the Loess Plateau. Most of the roof of the Forbidden City palace with yellow glazed tiles to symbolize the supremacy of imperial power, and ordinary civilians, and even high-ranking aristocrats must not use yellow roofs, otherwise it is treason. Undeclared emperor Puyi in his "my first half of life", wrote this paragraph: "Whenever I think back to my childhood, my mind floats a layer of yellow, glazed tile roof is yellow, sedan chair is yellow, chair cushion is yellow, clothes hat inside, waist tie the belt, eating and drinking tea porcelain dishes, wrapped cover the diluted rice pots and pans of cotton sets, wrapped books wrapped in leather, curtains, Horse bridle ...... none is yellow. This exclusive possession of the so-called bright yellow color, from childhood to my exclusive self-consciousness buried into the bottom of my heart, gave me a different 'nature'." Therefore, when he saw his second brother Pu Jie's cuffs in the sleeves, in the clothes is yellow, then immediately sullen face, reprimanded, "This is bright yellow, should not you make!"

Of course, the Forbidden City, individual roofs do not use yellow is another reason, such as the Wen Yuan Pavilion roof with black glazed tiles, because the black represents water, water can be fire, Wen Yuan Pavilion in the collection of the "four libraries of the Encyclopedia", so the black is to prevent the Wen Yuan Pavilion fire. In addition, the Forbidden City's high walls, piers of the gate, the palace of the bright columns, doors and windows are mostly red, this is because China since ancient times, will be red as auspicious, festive, beauty, happiness symbol.

The Forbidden City buildings, despite the roof color is relatively single, but the style is very different, broadly speaking, can be divided into the following ten:

Heavy eaves hipped roof: this is the highest level of the roof form, more buildings in the Forbidden City axis, such as the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of qianqing Palace, kuning Palace, the main building of the noon gate, the Shenwu gate building and the Fengxian Temple, the Palace, and other imperial poles.

Single-eaved hipped roof: rank lower than the heavy eaves, such as the body of the Pavilion, Hongyi Pavilion, Jingyang Palace, Xianfu Palace.

Heavy-eaved hipped roof: the grade is lower than the heavy eaves hipped roof, there are the Taihe Gate, Baohe Temple, Ningshou Palace, Cining Palace and so on.

Single-eaved hipped roof: such as Cuxiu Palace, Changchun Palace, Yikun Palace.

Hanging roof: such as the imperial garden in the 扌离藻堂and Shenwumen inside the east and west room.

Hard roof: such as the imperial garden in the place Yuzhai and Longzong door in the military chapter of the capital of the value of the room and some of the hall.

Scroll roof: such as the Imperial Garden Jiangxue Xuan in front of the holding building and Chengrui Pavilion, floating Pavilion holding building.

The four corners of the roof: such as the Hall of the Middle Kingdom, the Hall of the Jiao Tai.

Circular pointed roof: such as Wanchun Pavilion and Qianqiu Pavilion in the Imperial Garden.

Pan roof: such as the Imperial Garden in the Hall of Qin An and some well Pavilion.

Feudal court system of strict hierarchy, so the size of the palace, the roof style and so on there is a strict distinction, can never be built at random.

The Forbidden City in the size of the Palace of the eaves on the back of the ridge installed a number of glazed ornaments, the front, is flying in the sky riding a phoenix immortal, followed by a varying number of small beasts, generally odd, respectively, are dragons, phoenixes, lions, Pegasus, seahorses, mythical beasts, fish, Xie Xie, bullfighting. Some of these beasts are animals that symbolize good luck in myths and legends, some are fierce beasts that love and hate and punish evil and good, and some are exotic animals in the water. They all have good luck, fire prevention and elimination of disaster symbolism. The number of small beasts and building level has a close relationship, such as the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City level is the highest, so it is also the most small beasts in the eaves, in the bullfighting after adding a line Sh, *** 10; Qianqing Palace level is second only to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the eaves of the small beasts is 9; Kuning Palace eaves of the small beasts is 7; consort living in the East and West Six Palaces, the eaves of the small beasts is 5. These are used to fix the ridge and bump tile components, both beautiful and practical.

Taihe Palace of the Imperial Palace, the Hall of Peace, the Hall of Baohe Temple and other halls, plastered are generous "gold brick", folklore has it that the Forbidden City gold bricks are gold, the fact that this is not the case. Gold bricks are made of clay with special processing methods of fine material clarified mud bricks, clay to the best in suzhou, so the forbidden city fine material square bricks are made in suzhou five house. Manufacturing gold bricks to spend a very high cost of labor, there are very detailed processing procedures, there are selected soil, practice mud, clarified slurry, billet making, drying, smoking and other processes. Let's say smoked it, into the kiln after 130 days to kiln, that is, to chaff smoked for a month, the piece of wood burned for a month, a month of wood burned, pine wood burned for 40 days. After becoming a brick to "knock the sound, broken without holes", visible processing of its fine. Plastering bricks when the process requirements are extremely strict, the first cut and grind, and then to copy the flat, paving mud, bullet line, test paving, and finally formally paved plastering, the requirements of plastering, scraping flat, and soaked in raw tung oil. Chopping and grinding and plastering bricks require very high quality, according to the official regulations of the Qing Dynasty, chopping and grinding two-foot-square gold bricks, each worker can only cut 3 pieces per day, plastering bricks, tile work 1 person and 2 strong workers can only be plastered 5 pieces per day. Plastering of the Hall of Supreme Harmony gold bricks will need to cut and grind 1573 workers, 944 tile workers and strong workers 1888. Hall of the Imperial Palace of gold bricks are still black and shiny, flat and wear-resistant, not slippery and not astringent, like a smooth ink and jade in general.

The Forbidden City, the eaves of each palace outside the eaves are decorated with colorful paintings, it is the Forbidden City palace buildings indispensable decorative arts. Ming and qing dynasties of the forbidden city of color painting has a strict hierarchy, generally speaking can be divided into the following three kinds:

and the seal color painting: is the highest level of color painting, such as the temple of taihe temple, in the hall of peace, the hall of baohe temple, qianqing palace, the hall of crossroads, kuning palace, the royal pole temple, ningshou palace and so on, all with the and the seal color painting. Painting by square heart, looking for the head, hoop head three parts, square heart in the middle of looking for the head, the picture is the largest, the position is prominent, painted in various postures of the dragon and phoenix pattern. Santalum on both sides of the heart is looking for the head, looking for the head of the two ends of the serrated two bracket line to the square heart and the hoop head to separate, the center is the picture, also painted as the dragon and phoenix. Hoop is the outermost part of the two ends of the vertical line between the middle picture is called a round box. Because of the dragon and phoenix pattern are leaching powder paste gold, thus creating a brilliant effect.

Spinning color painting: rank last in the and seal color painting, mostly used in secondary palaces, supporting halls and gatehouse, hipped rooms and other buildings. Its components are the same as and seal painting, the main difference is to find the head. The center of the design is called the heart of the flower, and the outer ring of the heart is surrounded by two or three layers of overlapping petals, and the outermost ring is surrounded by a circle of swirling floral motifs, called the whirligig. Looking for the head of the two ends of the two bracket lines will square heart and hoop head separated. The square centers are painted in a variety of ways, and the layout of the picture is dexterous and full of changes.

Su-style paintings: the square heart of the picture mainly has two styles, one is the same with the and seal paintings, spinning color paintings with a long narrow square heart, the other is in the larger [wooden beams] square or will be the eave purlins, eave cushions, eave square square square three parts of the square heart together, for a large semicircle, commonly known as "baggage", to form a large square heart. The square center. Soviet-style colorful paintings because of the large area, the layout is more flexible, drawing a wider range of subjects, mostly landscapes, figures, birds, flowers, insects and fish and auspicious motifs. Painting and the surrounding environment is closely linked, such as the East and West of the six palaces of some of the palace, painting and interior inlays carved furniture and various furnishings to form a harmonious whole, more rich in the flavor of life. Qianlong garden in the Soviet-style color painting and pavilions, landscapes, flowers and trees reflect each other, forming a unique artistic style of the Chinese palace garden.