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Jingde Chongsheng Hall. CFP
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Here there are bridges with no water. Here there are tablets with no animals. Here there is a bell tower with no drum tower. Here there is a temple with no Buddha."
Paraphrased above are verses from a folk song once popular in old Beijing. It was sung with great reverence to celebrate the Temple of Ancient Monarchs, first constructed in 1530, during the reign of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Here were conducted memorial rituals honoring the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns of ancient China, more recent former emperors, and meritorious civil and military officers. Situated in Fuchengmennei Avenue in Beijing's Xicheng District, spanning 21,500 square meters of land and 6,000 square meters of floor space, the Temple of Ancient Monarchs, the only existent temple of its kind in China, represents royal power and magni-ficence, in Beijing perhaps architecturally subservient only to the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.
At each side of the entrance is a tablet engraved with "Please dismount horse." Those scripts are in six languages, including Han, Tibetan and Mongolian. It is unusual that these two tablets are supported only by a stone base, and not a stone bixi (a legendary animal). Thus the verse: "... tablets with no animals." In front of the gate, once there were three stone bridges with no water below, as the folk song goes. But now there is only a river of cars flowing down the street. It is fortunate that the red screen wall decorated with glazed flowers still stands opposite the gate, the best preserved of its type among the imperial temples of Beijing.
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Visitors within the Jingde Chongsheng Hall. CFP
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After the entrance gate, Jingde Gate comes into sight, serving as a transitional construction to Jingde Chongsheng Hall, the main structure within the Temple. Jingde Gate is decorated with 81 (9x9 - the number 9 symbolizing supreme) nails and pushou (metallic heads of beasts serving as door handle mounts). Pushou originates from the Shang Dynasty (16th Century - 11th Century B.C.), with designs originally representing creatures of the sea, and later beasts of the land. Only royal and noble families were permitted to have pushou affixed to their doors.
Jingde Gate is surrounded by white marble guardrails. There are three flights of steps leading to Jingde Chongsheng Hall, an imperial path with the design of clouds and mountains at the center.
The main structure of Jingde Chong-sheng Hall, first built in 1530, served as the place where the emperors of past ages would honor the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns of ancient China, as well as more recent former emperors. The hall, oriented to the south, measures 51 meters in length with nine houses, 27 meters in width with five houses, and 20.9 meters in average height.
The Hall is clad in yellow glazed tiles. The colors of the glazed tiles during the Ming and Qing Periods represented a strict hierarchy. Yellow was permitted only for imperial buildings, green for princely mansions and temples, black for places of worship, and blue for ceremonial palaces for the offering of sacrifices to Heaven, like Qinian Hall (the Hall of Praying for Harvest) of the Temple of Heaven. Pursuant the terms of Emperor Qian Long's decree, the green colored glaze tiles were re-colored to yellow to upgrade Jingde Chongsheng Hall into a higher imperial palace.
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April 11, 2004: A memorial ritual is recreated in the Temple of Ancient Monarchs, and a visitor tried out an instrument. CFP
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The hall is supported by 60 tremendous golden nanmu columns, 11.13 meters in height and 0.84 meters in diameter. The columns remain as strong today as they were 470 years ago.
The Temple of Ancient Monarchs is referred to as a "temple" but there is no Buddhist statue, as the song points out. Within the hall are 188 memorial tablets. These were erected in honor of Fuxi, Yan Emperor, and Yellow Emperor at the center, with tablets honoring another 185 past emperors at either side.
East Hall and West Hall are to each side of the Jingde Chongshen Hall. Honored here were 79 meritorious civil and military officers. In the courtyard to the east there is a bell tower, but with no drum tower to the opposite facing side. A set of houses serve as sacrificial buildings, including the Holy Kitchen, Slaughterhouse and Sacrificial Utensil Storehouse. In Holy Kitchen, the sacrificial offerings were processed, while the sacrificial offerings were deposited in the Holy Storehouse. It is said that when the emperor personally participated in the memorial ceremony, the process was extraordinarily complex, with 23 procedures, including performances of song and dance. Therefore, the house in which officers would arrange the ritual music and dance was necessarily located within the courtyard.
The Temple has preserved an appreciable quantity of original Ming architecture, fine drawings, and surfaces added during a Qing Dynasty-era renovation. Thus, contained within is an artistic structural melding of two dynasties. In the words of architectural experts, the Temple of Ancient Monarchs is of "Ming bones and Qing clothing." The figures commemorated in the Temple are the ancestors of all Chinese, so the Temple is the tangible representation of Chinese constancy and the embodiment of Chinese cultural diversity.
Having outlived the prosperity of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Temple once served as the campus of the Beijing No. 159 Middle School. To better preserve this outstanding heritage of architecture and culture, in 2000 the Beijing Municipal Government and the Xicheng District Government spent about 300 million yuan to relocate the No. 159 Middle School and renovate the structure. On April 8, 2004, the Temple of Ancient Monarchs was reopened to the public.
