紫禁城为什么叫紫禁城?
Why is it called the Forbidden City?
Name: ________________ Date: ________
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 紫 | zǐ | purple; violet |
| 代 | dài | on behalf of |
| 四周 | sìzhōu | all around; surroundings |
| 宽 | kuān | wide; broad; width |
| 老百姓 | láobǎixìng | ordinary people; common folk |
| 墙 | qiáng | wall |
| 天上 | tiānshàng | in the sky; in heaven |
| 古代 | gǔdài | ancient times; antiquity |
| 区域 | qūyù | area; region; district |
| 围 | wéi | to surround; to encircle |
| 修建 | xiūjiàn | to build; to construct |
| 据说 | jùshuō | it is said; reportedly |
English (for the teacher)
Ask the way in Beijing: “How do I get to the Purple Forbidden City?” Many people will think for a moment and then say with a smile, “You mean the Gugong, right?” Why does one place have two names? And what do the “purple” and “forbidden” in Zijincheng actually mean?
Let’s start with “forbidden”. This one is easy: it means “no entry”. Under the Ming and Qing it was where the emperor lived, surrounded by high walls, and outside the walls ran a moat more than fifty metres wide. Ordinary people couldn’t go in, or even come near. Only the emperor’s family, ministers, eunuchs, palace maids and the like could come and go. So this city was a “forbidden city”.
Now for “purple”. Many people assume it’s because the palace walls are purplish red. In fact the word has to do with the stars in the sky. People in ancient China believed the stars were divided into regions too: the patch of sky around the North Star was called the Purple Enclosure, the home of the Emperor of Heaven, and every star turned around it. The emperor called himself the Son of Heaven, the son of that heavenly emperor, so naturally his home on earth had to carry the same word “purple”. Put “purple” and “forbidden” together and you get the Purple Forbidden City.
The palace was built on the orders of the Ming dynasty’s Yongle Emperor, begun in 1406 and finished in 1420, more than a decade of work that is said to have used over a million labourers. In the nearly five hundred years that followed, twenty-four emperors of the Ming and Qing lived and ruled the country here.
There’s also a popular story that the palace has 9,999 and a half rooms, because only the palace of the Emperor of Heaven could have ten thousand, and the emperor did not dare to go beyond that. It’s a nice story, but sadly it isn’t true. According to surveys, the palace has more than nine hundred surviving buildings with over 8,800 rooms.
In 1912 the Qing dynasty came to an end. Even so, the last emperor, Puyi, lived on in the palace for more than a decade, until he was forced to leave in 1924. The next year, 1925, the Palace Museum was officially founded, and for the first time this “forbidden city” opened its gates to ordinary people. Gugong means “the former palace”, and the new name says exactly how its role had changed.
Today the palace welcomes more than ten million visitors a year, making it one of the most popular museums in the world. A place ordinary people once didn’t even dare go near is now open to anyone who books online in advance and buys a ticket.