After Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty moved to Beijing, an altar was built in the south of Beijing, modeled after Nanjing Great Sacrificial Hall, covering an area of 2.73 million square meters. The main building is the Fourth Hall, which is where the Hall of Praying for the New Year is located today. The Temple of Heaven has an outer altar wall and an inner altar wall, which is round in the north and round in the south, meaning round land. At first, both the Temple of Heaven and the place of worship were the Temple of Heaven. They didn't separate until they built an earthen altar in the northern city during Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty. In addition, a circular mound altar was added in Mengdong to worship heaven, and the original big sacrifice hall was changed into a big pleasure hall, which was dedicated to praying for the valley in Meng Chun. At that time, the roof of the temple was already triple eaves, and the blue, yellow and green tiles from top to bottom represented the universe respectively. During the Qianlong period, the Daxiang Hall was changed to the current Hall of Praying for the New Year, and the roof tiles were changed to green glazed tiles. Thus, the world's largest building complex dedicated to heaven was formed.
However, such a sacred place was looted by the British and French allied forces in 1860, and then ravaged by Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900. 19 16, when Yuan Shikai ascended the throne, he also staged a farce to worship heaven in the Temple of Heaven. 19 18, the Temple of Heaven finally opened as a park. After liberation, the Temple of Heaven has not only become a famous tourist attraction, but also an integral part of Beijing's urban green space. There are not only tourists here, but also some elderly people who specialize in fitness.
Now let's start this trip along the route that the emperor entered the altar.
Now we are marching south along the central axis of the Temple of Heaven, and we will see the ball altar where the ancient emperor sacrificed to heaven. There are two retaining walls in the dome, which make the outside round, which accords with the saying that the sky is round. Each wall has four groups of Lingxingmen, starting from the east, which are Taiyuan, Zhao Heng, Guangli and Chengzhen in turn. Each group has three doors, with a total of 24 * *, which is called "Yunmen Yuli". You can notice that the size of the gate is different, because the middle gate is dedicated to God, so it is higher. The emperor can only enter through the door on the left; Other officials can only go through the smallest door on the right. A platform outside the door is the place where the emperor changed clothes and washed his hands before the worship ceremony, which is called dressing table. We are almost at the bottom of the altar, and we are about to climb the altar, but please pay attention to how many steps there are on each floor. At the highest time, everyone found that all the steps and guards on the altar were nine or multiples of nine. Every time you climb a floor, there must be nine steps. The middle of the slate on the table is called Tianxin Stone. The first circle of the periphery is made up of nine huge fan-shaped stone slabs, and the second circle is 18. By analogy, the outermost ninth circle is exactly 8 1. Looking up, you can see that the coaming is divided into four parts by four steps, and each part also has nine pieces, while the coaming in the middle layer is 18 pieces, and the coaming in the lower layer is 27 pieces. Are these coincidences? Of course not, because according to the five elements of yin and yang, 9 is an extreme yang number, so ancient craftsmen used this number to give the table a lofty idea.
After talking about the wonders of the altar, I will introduce you to the grand ceremony of offering sacrifices to heaven. Every winter solstice, the emperor would sacrifice to heaven here. Two days before the ceremony, the emperor will fast in the Forbidden City, and on the third day, the day before the winter solstice, he will fast in the fasting palace in the Temple of Heaven. On the day of winter solstice, seven minutes before sunrise, it's past four in the morning. The emperor started to drive, and the bell tower in the northeast corner of Zhaigong began to ring. When you go to the dresser to wash and change clothes, the cards are sent to the corresponding position on the table, that is, the seven groups of gods, called the seven gods; Put a calf on the firewood stove in front of the mound and burn it with pine branches. Southwest light poles are hung high, and dragon lanterns stay up all night. The band was arranged in Tainan Square, accompanied by civil and military officials, and the ceremony of offering sacrifices to heaven officially began. The emperor entered the altar through the left door of Nanxing. At this time, the bell stopped, and when he reached the south side of the second floor, he listened. Read the message from God. After the ceremony, the offerings in front of the shrine should be sent to the wood-burning furnace (the offerings removed from the altar should be burned again, and the emperor should stand and watch, which is called meteor watching) and the meteor furnace (there are 12 meteor furnaces in the dome, and there are eight in the north of the mound, arranged from east to west; There is a pair of inner walls outside the east and west doors. The sacrifices on the coordination car were sent to eight stoves for burning, while the four sacrifices on the coordination car were sent to Lingxingmen for burning. The smoke was empty, symbolizing being sent to heaven. Then the oxtail, ox hair and ox blood will be sent to the mound for burial, symbolizing the meaning of not forgetting the food and blood of the ancestors. At this ceremony, what needs special mention is the place where the emperor stood and read the imperial edict, which is the Tianxin stone in the middle of the table just mentioned. He is one of the three major sound phenomena in the Temple of Heaven. It's very loud when reading here, and it's the same here now. Visitors may wish to experience this strange effect, like the emperor of that year, and tell the good wishes to heaven.
Now we continue to walk along the central axis. The building in front of us is called Tianku, and its main hall is the Imperial Palace. The imperial vault was built in Jiajing nine years of Ming Dynasty. It was originally called a Thai temple. In seventeen years, it was renamed the Imperial Vault. Its function is to store the place where the Oasis Altar sacrifices to the Lord God on weekdays, so it is also called the Oasis Altar Bedroom. On the circular stone platform in front of the temple, there are tablets of the gods, while on the four square stone platforms on both sides of the temple, there are eight ancestors and things for storing the sanctuary. The word imperial vault also represents the meaning of supremacy, heaven and universe respectively, which shows its sacredness and supremacy.
It is a temple with very high architectural artistic value. Generally round, there is a round Sumitomo with a height of 2.85 meters at the bottom. It is made of blue-and-white stone, with three directions, namely steps, in the southeast, and a Dan stone and two dragons beating pearls in the south. Above it is a blue tile with a single eaves and a gold-plated roof. There are also eight eaves columns and eight gold columns in the hall. The main hall is not supported by beams, but is supported by various kinds of bucket arches, which shrink step by step to form a beautiful dome. It also makes use of the lever principle in physics. This group of buildings is not only very beautiful, but also has echo walls and three-tone stones, which, together with the Tianxin stone we just mentioned, are called the three major acoustic phenomena of the Temple of Heaven. The echo wall is the outer wall of the imperial vault. The grinding brick built by the fence is very smooth and is a good sound carrier, which can transmit sound. There is almost no loss of sound in the transmission process. As long as you talk to the wall, you can clearly hear each other even if you don't meet each other 40 or 50 meters apart. Sanyin stone is three stones in front of the main hall of the palace. Standing on the first stone and clapping your hands, you can hear one echo, the second stone can hear two echoes, and the third stone can hear three echoes, so it is called Sanyin stone. Later, some people called it the stone of three talents, which means three talents in heaven and earth.
Perhaps you have just noticed that there are many cypress trees in the Temple of Heaven. Yes, it's like the natural oxygen bar in Beijing. Among these numerous ancient cypresses, there is an ancient cypress that is more than 500 years old, that is, the Kowloon cypress outside the western wall of the Echo Wall. Its trunk texture is very strange, full of gullies, winding, like nine dragons winding and playing, it is not an exaggeration to call it Jiulong White.
After visiting the ball altar and the Imperial Dome, we are about to enter the Valley of Prayer. Now the single bridge connecting the two altars under our feet, also known as Haiyuan Avenue, is the only way for the emperor to climb the valley to pray. The total length is 360 meters, and the bridge deck is divided into three roads, with Shinto in the middle, Imperial Road in the east and King Road in the west. And why is it called a bridge as a passage? There are two ways to say this. One is that the road surface is low in the south and high in the north, rising step by step, like a bridge connected with the sky; The other is that there is an entrance gate under the road, which is similar to an overpass, so it is called a bridge. Speaking of entering the sacrifice gate, before the sacrifice, cattle and sheep have to go through a ticket gate under the bridge to the sacrifice pavilion 500 meters away to be slaughtered and made into sacrifices, so this passage is also called the gate of hell, because once they enter, there will be death and no life.
Ok, back to the topic, what is presented to you now is the complete prayer altar complex. The stone platform in front of it is a service platform. Every year before Meng Chungu's sacrifice, the emperor would come here to build a toilet and change clothes as usual, so it was also called Xiaojindian.
At this time, the main building of the valley prayer altar-the hall of prayer for the New Year appeared in front of us. The pedestal under the Hall of Prayer for the Year is a three-story circular stone platform, and the steps of the three-story stone platform on the front are decorated with huge relief, which is called single stone carving in front of the hall. From bottom to top: Ruiyun Mountain Sea, Shuangfeng Mountain Sea and Shuanglong Mountain Sea. The pattern of each layer of drainage holes also corresponds to the content of the relief. There are nine affiliated halls on the east and west sides, which used to be places to put memorial tablets, but they were moved to Xiannongtan during Jiajing period, so there is no practical use here now. The Hall of Prayer for the New Year itself is a unique building in China. The circular triple-eave pointed roof shrinks upward layer by layer, and covered with blue glazed tiles symbolizes the sky. At the top is a gold-plated treasure top. Looking up, there is a dragon and phoenix algae well with a pattern of dragons and phoenixes in the center. The roof of the huge three-story hall is supported by 28 landing columns in the hall. The four columns in the middle are named Longjing Column, and the southeast and northwest directions represent spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. 12 bays divided by 12 red lacquered gold columns on the periphery of Longjing column respectively represent 12 months of a year; The 24 bays of the outer two rings represent 24 solar terms in a year; At the same time, these 28 pillars also represent 28 stars in the sky. It is said that this Hall of Prayer for the New Year is designed and built after the ancient Ming Hall. While lamenting the buildings in the temple, let us gradually turn our attention to the furnishings in the temple. The furnishings here were restored according to the original state during the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. On the front, the carved dragon throne is dedicated to the version of the God of Man and Han, and the stone platforms on the left and right sides are dedicated to the tablets of the first eight emperors of the Qing Dynasty.
Just like the annual worship to heaven, this is a place to pray for the valley. On the day of the sacrifice, there was a band playing on the platform outside the temple. The emperor entered the temple devoutly in sacrificial clothes, made a big gift to the memorial tablet, prayed to God, and then sent the offerings to the wood-burning stove and the burning stove in the east outside the door of praying for the Year, and sent them to the Heavenly Palace. The etiquette of praying for the valley is similar to offering sacrifices to heaven.
At this time, the Hall of Prayer for the New Year was almost completed, and it also had an annex, similar to the imperial vault, which was also a place to pay homage to the altar of the Valley, that is, the Huanggan Hall on the north side of the Hall of Prayer for the New Year.
Now when we come out of the east gate of the altar for praying for the valley, we can see a long corridor with eaves and ridges. There are seventy-two rooms, commonly known as seventy-two rooms. It is not only used to connect the kitchen and the library, but also used as a channel to transport sacrifices during the sacrifice. At the eastern end of the corridor, there is a slaughter pavilion, which is the livestock artery that passes through the gate of hell and is waiting to be slaughtered. In the southeast of the promenade, there are eight huge bluestones, called Seven-Star Stones, all of which are Feng Shui Zhen Shi. But there are eight stones here. Why is it called seven stars? It turns out that seven stones were put here in the Ming Dynasty, and the smallest one was added in the Qing Dynasty. The statement about the Seven-Star Stone varies from dynasty to dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, a Taoist priest and emperor said that the orientation of the New Year Hall was not good for the country, so seven stones symbolizing the Big Dipper were placed here. In the Qing Dynasty, in order to find the theoretical basis for Manchu people to love Xinjue Roche, Emperor Kangxi sent people to patrol the mountain and found that Mount Tai was the remnant vein of Changbai Mountain, so he placed a small piece of bluestone in the northeast of the original Seven Stones, symbolizing Changbai Mountain in the northeast. In that case, Bashi should be called Qifeng Dongyue.
Whatever their verdict is. Today's sightseeing is coming to an end. I hope this time in the Temple of Heaven will be an eternal memory in your trip to Beijing.