沈阳故宫 Audio Guide

Welcome to the Shenyang Imperial Palace, known in its day as the Mukden Palace. Its story begins in 1625, when Nurhaci, founder of the Later Jin dynasty, started building here. His successor Hong Taiji carried the work on, and for nearly twenty years this was the seat of the early Qing court. In 1644 the Qing took Beijing, and the court moved south with them. This palace lost its rank as the official imperial residence and became a regional palace instead. The gate here, guarded by its pair of stone lions, opens onto the central part of the grounds. Since the end of imperial rule the whole place has been a museum, sitting in the center of Shenyang. In 2004 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, as an extension of the imperial palaces in Beijing. Beyond this gate, the story of the court begins.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

A dragon coils across this panel in glazed tile, its scales rendered in deep blues and greens against the kiln-fired color. It belongs to the Daqing Gate, the Great Qing Gate, the main southern entrance of the palace's Middle Section. The gate went up between 1627 and 1635, in the same building campaign that raised the halls beyond it. In a palace like this, a gate was more than a doorway. It marked the line between the ordinary city and the space of the court, and everyone who entered passed beneath its roof. Dragons were the right choice for such a threshold, since the dragon belonged to the emperor alone. The tilework was made to survive weather and time, the colors fired into the clay itself. What visitors saw first, the court wanted them to read as authority.

Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. · CC0

Hong Taiji ruled an expanding empire from this hall. Chongzheng Hall was built between 1627 and 1635, in the years when he led the state his father Nurhaci had founded. This was the emperor's throne room and his workplace, where the daily business of government was carried out. Princes, ministers and Ming officials who had gone over to the Qing were received here as well, standing before the throne of a court that was still young. The hall sits at the heart of the Middle Section, on the central axis, with smaller buildings ranged symmetrically on either side. Its broad tiled roof and red columns follow the ceremonial pattern of Chinese palace architecture. But this was no distant ceremonial stage. Day after day, the decisions that shaped the early Qing were made under this roof.

Photo: Kallgan · Public domain

The plaque above the hall is written twice, once in Chinese characters and once in Manchu script, side by side. That small detail says a great deal about this court. The building itself stands on Han Chinese technique, the post-and-beam builder's craft that raised the great palaces of China. Onto that frame, the builders set decoration drawn from several traditions. Dragons wind down the pillars in carved and painted color, a motif shared across the empire's peoples. Traces of Tibetan and Mongol taste appear in the ornament as well, alongside the Manchu forms of the court itself. The palace as a whole deliberately blends Manchu, Han and Mongol features. A single dynasty ruled all of these peoples, and the architecture made that claim visible before a word was spoken.

Augusthaiho · CC BY-SA 4.0

The throne itself is a raised seat carved with dragons, set on a low platform. Its cushion is yellow, the color reserved for the emperor. Behind it hangs a wide screen covered in columns of calligraphy, dark characters on a dark ground. Flanking the seat stand tall stands holding incense burners, their bronze bodies shaped like crouching beasts. This is furniture made for use, not display alone. When the emperor took his seat here, incense rose beside him, and the text at his back faced the hall. Petitioners and envoys saw the throne framed by writing and smoke, an arrangement that turned a chair into the center of government.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

Phoenix Tower rises three storeys above the palace's central axis. It was once the tallest building in the whole city of Shenyang, and its name comes from the phoenix, the bird of the empress. The tower is the gateway to something unusual: the residential quarters of the emperor and his consorts sit on a platform of blue brick about four metres high. Ceremonial halls stand at ground level, and daily life happens above them. This palace-high, hall-low arrangement echoes the Manchu habit of living on raised ground, and it sets this palace apart from its counterpart in Beijing. The tower itself worked hard. The emperor held banquets here, and the royal records were kept within its walls. A gatehouse, a banquet hall and an archive, stacked one above the other.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

Every tier of the tower repeats the same rhythm in timber. Red columns carry carved bracket sets, the brackets step out to support the eaves, and a balcony runs along the front of each floor. Three storeys of this stack on one another, each roof edged in glazed tile. Nothing here is hidden behind stone; the wooden skeleton is the facade. The carpenters cut each joint so the parts lock together without nails doing the heavy work, and the whole frame flexes rather than snaps. Look at the brackets under the eaves and you can read the labor: each one carved, painted and set by hand. The tower's beauty is its construction, worn openly on its face.

Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 2.0

Winter in Shenyang is long and bitter, and the imperial household lived here through it. The answer is the kang, a raised bed-stove built of brick, the traditional way of keeping warm in northern China. Flues run beneath the platform, carrying warm air from a fire so that the whole bed surface heats up. People did not simply sleep on a kang. It served as the warm heart of the room, a place for sitting, working and receiving guests through the cold months. This palace keeps another Manchu signature: the chimney stands at the rear of the building, detached from the wall it serves. These rooms on the raised platform were the living quarters of the emperor, his wives and the rest of the household. Behind the ceremonial halls, this was where the court actually slept.

Photo: Pauloleong2002 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Between two tiled roofs rises a tall wooden pole with a small vessel at its top. It is a Solon Pole, part of the ritual furniture of a Manchu courtyard. The story attached to it belongs to Nurhaci, the founder of the dynasty. The legend says that as a young man he was fleeing enemies who wanted him dead. Exhausted, he collapsed on open ground, and a flock of crows came down and covered his body with their wings. His pursuers saw only birds gathered on the ground and walked past. From that day, the story goes, the Manchu owed the crows a debt. Grain and scraps of meat were set out in the vessel at the top of poles like this one. The tale is legend rather than chronicle. The feeding, though, was a custom kept in these courtyards, and the pole still stands where the household could watch over it.

lienyuan lee · CC BY 3.0

Inside Qingning Palace, where Hong Taiji lived with his empress, a dark carved shrine stands on a low table. Small metal vessels are arranged in front of it, vases and cups waiting for offerings. This is a Shamanic altar, the religious heart of the residential palace. The early Manchu court practiced Shamanism, the traditional religion the people had carried with them from their homelands beyond the wall. Its worship centered on spirits honored through offerings made at shrines like this one. The court kept such altars inside its own living quarters, in the western rooms of Qingning Palace, which served as the shrine hall. The carved canopy above the shrine, open at the front like a small house, marks it as a dwelling for the spirits themselves.

Photo: Liuxingy · CC BY-SA 4.0