Page 17 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - Beijing

Forbidden City ❮❮ 15

Musical Instruments
6 embroidered red silk decorated
with ornate Chinese
In true imperial fashion,
the more lavish the musical mythological symbols.
entertainment, the more glory
Clocks and
it reflected on the emperor. 9
Court musicians used gongs Watches
of all sizes and guqins Arguably the finest of the
(zithers), wooden flutes, and many palace collections, the
heavy bronze bells adorned clocks and watches fill the
with dragons, as well as the Fengxian Pavilion in the
unusual sheng, a Sherlock southeastern corner of
Holmes-style pipe with the eastern Inner Court.
reeds of different lengths The creativity involved
sprouting from the top. in some of the pieces –
The collection is displayed Pagoda-topped which are primarily
in the Silver Vault of the four-sided clock European – is astonishing.
Imperial Palace, on the One particularly inventive
west side of the Outer Court. model has an automaton clad in
European dress frantically writing
eight Chinese characters on a scroll,
which is being unrolled by two other
mechanical figures.
Empress Cixi
0
The Xianfu Pavilion is a
memorial to the Empress Cixi’s
devious rise to power (see p29), as
well as to the great lady’s imperial
Bells in the instrument collection extravagances, which so nearly
crippled her country. Clothes,
Stone Drums
7 jewelry, embroidered socks,
The Hall of Moral Cultivation
imported perfume, jade and ivory
holds the palace’s collection of stone chopsticks, and pictures of clothes
drums. These are enormous tom- and food form the bulk of the
tom shaped rocks that bear China’s exhibits. There are also examples of
earliest stone inscriptions, dating the empress’s calligraphic skills in
back to 374 BC. These ideographic the form of painted wall hangings.
carvings are arranged in four-
character poems, which Empress Cixi’s display, Xianfu Pavilion
commemorate the glorious pasture-
land and successful animal
husbandry made possible by the
Emperor Xiangong’s benevolence.
Daily Life of the
8
Concubines
Every three years, court officials
would select girls between the
ages of 13 and 17 to join the eight
ranks of imperial concubines. The
Yonghe Pavilion exhibits clothing,
games, herbal medicine, and a
food distribution chart relating to
the young imperial consorts, as
well as the “wedding night bed,”
which is covered in a richly

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