Visit the Forbidden City with a scholar
Watching the moon in the palace, the details you don’t know
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional festival in my country, and admiring the moon is a Mid-Autumn custom that has been passed down since ancient times. Every year on August 15th, the autumn air is crisp, the clouds are less, and it is a good time to enjoy the full moon. By admiring the moon, people express their good wishes and pray for blessings. The Forbidden City was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The emperors, concubines and other court personnel in the palace would also hold moon-viewing activities on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
So, how did the ancients admire the moon in the palace? This article relies on relevant historical materials to sort out and interpret some details of the Mid-Autumn Festival moon appreciation in the Ming and Qing palaces, and guide readers to understand this elegant Mid-Autumn event in the palace.
Sitting by Taiye Pond until midnight
There are few historical data on the details of the Ming Dynasty emperor's Mid-Autumn Festival moon appreciation. Emperor Xuande Zhu Zhanji wrote "Mid-Autumn Festival" ("Collection of Emperor Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty"), which described the scene of himself admiring the moon in more detail. The poem contains: "The air is clear by the Taiye Pond, and the moonlight is the clearest tonight. Going to Qiongdao from the Qingxu Terrace Hall is like playing music and singing in Yujing. The autumn air has passed half, and the night is cool and I don't feel it. Why is it that the world is not in the sky, but I am smiling in the air to see Guangling."
The main idea is: "The clear water vapor in the Taiye Pond is clear and clear, and the moonlight tonight is particularly clear. I landed on Qiongdao, among the quiet palaces, and the sound of sheng and flute music came to my ears, as if I had arrived in the fairy capital in the sky. The autumn season was already halfway through, and the night was getting colder. I sat there until the third watch before I knew it. There is such a wonderful moonlit night scene in the world, so why bother to dream about flying to the Moon Palace and looking at Guangling from afar? "Here, "Looking at Guangling from the air" is a strange story from the Tang Dynasty. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, a Taoist priest used magic to fly over Guangling (Yangzhou) and overlook the lights of the city.
This poem reflects several details of Emperor Xuande's Mid-Autumn Festival moon appreciation. The location for moon viewing is Qiongdao in Taiye Pool in Xiyuan (now Qiongdao in Beihai Park). On a moonlit night, Emperor Xuande sat quietly on Qiongdao for a long time, slowly enjoying the cool breeze, moonlight and night view of the autumn night. At the same time, there was a shengxiao player playing next to him, adding a leisurely atmosphere to the moon viewing. In addition, Emperor Xuande not only admired the scenery while admiring the moon, he also felt emotional after seeing the beautiful scenery: There is a fairyland here on earth, so there is no need to envy the fantasy stories in legends.
Buy mooncakes in the inner market and burn incense to worship the bright moon
Liu Ruoyu, an eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, recorded the details of the concubine and the eunuch admiring the moon in the palace in "Ziuzhongzhi".
Since the first day of August, mooncakes have been sold in the inner market, as well as watermelon, fresh lotus root and other seasonal fruits. The eunuch used his time away from the palace to buy supplies for moon viewing. The imperial guards would also pick fresh lotus roots from Taiye Pond in Xiyuan (near today's Beihai Park) for consumption in the palace. Among the concubines in various courtyards and eunuchs in various supervisory bureaus in the palace, you give me moon cakes, and I give you watermelon and lotus roots. They give each other gifts to celebrate the festival and taste each other.
It should be noted that in the Ming Dynasty, there was a "Royal Grand Market" outside Donghua Gate and in the area of today's Beichizi Street, which was called the "Inner Market". It mainly served the palace, and vendors outside the palace were allowed to set up stalls here. The inner market mainly opens on the fourth, fourteenth and twenty-fourth of each month, and eunuchs can go out of the palace to purchase items.
The Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th is the most solemn festival in the palace. Moon cakes, melons and fruits will be placed in various courtyards in the palace. After the moon rises, everyone will burn incense to worship the moon. After the worship ceremony was over, the banquet started in the palace, and everyone had a good time eating, drinking, and celebrating. The banquets in many palaces lasted all night long. The leftover mooncakes from the Mid-Autumn Festival banquet will be properly stored in a dry, ventilated and cool place, and will be kept until the end of the year to be eaten when the whole family gets together. Therefore, the palace called this kind of preserved moon cake "Reunion Cake", which means reunion every year.
In addition to admiring the moon, there is also a unique pastime in the palace: eating crabs and drinking wine. In August, new wine has just been brewed and river crabs are plump and tender. On the moonlit night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the concubines, maids, and eunuchs in the palace often gather in groups to eat crabs and relax. Everyone was chatting and laughing while eating, and the atmosphere was very lively. There are even more dexterous palace attendants who can completely remove the crab breast bone and put it into a butterfly shape to show off their dexterity.
Summer resort, as good as West Lake?
Among the historical records of emperors appreciating the moon during the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong wrote the largest number of moon-appreciation poems. For example, Emperor Qianlong's "Mid-Autumn Festival" records: "Celebrating the moon is really suitable for summer resorts, with high and cold light on the towers. The round sun shines brightly for a long time, and it will last for hundreds of millions of years. I wish you longevity and good health. If you don't send the clouds to cover the sky, you will help the toads to climb up to the east hill early. The wild pools are full of golden waves, so why bother to remember Hangzhou even more on the flat lake."
The main idea is: "It is a good time to enjoy the moon in the summer resort, and the terraces are bathed in the cool moonlight. The bright moon shines all over this fairyland-like place, and I wish the country a long life, longevity and health. There is no fluffy cloud in the sky to cover the vast night sky, and the moon has risen from the hills in the east early. The pool in the mountain resort is rippling with golden waves sprinkled by the moonlight. This scene is better than the flat lake in the West Lake in the autumn moon."
Qianlong's poem contains many details: first of all, the place where he admired the moon was the Chengde Summer Resort. Qianlong often went to Mulan Paddock for Autumn Festival in the autumn, and stayed at the summer resort on the way. Many Mid-Autumn Festivals were spent here; secondly, the mountain resort has a unique environment, with gardens close to mountains and lakes, and towers built along the terrain. , the scenery is elegant and suitable for moon appreciation; thirdly, the weather is fine on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the night sky is clear and clear without floating clouds, which is a good time to appreciate the moon; fourthly, when Qianlong admired the moon, he had the world in mind, and when he saw the bright moon shining on the earth, he thought of the country, the country, and the country, linking the Mid-Autumn moonlight with the national destiny for a long time.
In addition, Qianlong was quite confident in aesthetics. He believed that the moonlight scenery of the northern royal gardens was not inferior to the autumn moon on Pinghu Lake. What needs to be explained is: The Autumn Moon over Pinghu Lake is a famous scene of West Lake, which has been chanted by literati since ancient times. It is the ceiling for literati to appreciate the moon.
Mid-Autumn Festival in paintings, real harem
"Playing with the Moon on Qiongtai" in the collection of paintings "Yueman Qingyou Tu" collected by the Forbidden City shows the scene of the Qing Dynasty palace concubines admiring the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival. The artist, Chen Mei, is a court painter who is familiar with life in the palace, and the paintings are based on the daily life of the palace.
In the picture, the autumn sky is clear and a bright moon hangs among the thin clouds. The courtyard is lush with trees, dotted with rockeries, lakes and rocks. On the high platform and pavilion, several concubines were dressed in simple and elegant gowns. Some were leaning on the railing and looking at the moon, some were pointing at the moon and chatting, and some were listening quietly. A maid stood behind her, holding up a round ceremonial palm fan. The palm fan is a palace ceremonial instrument, used to mark the identity of a person and highlight the temperament of a palace lady. There is a small pavilion with a rolling shed at the bottom of the picture. There are several concubines in the pavilion, some are reclining and sitting, some are talking to each other, some are leaning on the railing and looking into the distance. The figures have different postures.
Although this painting depicts an idealized picture, we can still use this album to roughly understand the details of the Mid-Autumn Festival moon viewing by the imperial concubines of the Qing Dynasty. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the concubines gathered together in small groups and chose a high platform in the palace with a wide view and quiet scenery. They stood leaning on the railing and pointed out the autumn light. They felt the coolness of the night and smelled the scent of cinnamon carried by the wind. They chatted in the long quiet night, each with their own thoughts in mind.
This kind of moon-appreciation activity usually does not involve the concubines serving the emperor. Although the picture has been artistically processed and is not completely realistic, it is still a very precious image material for understanding the Mid-Autumn Festival moon viewing in the harem of the Qing Dynasty.
Through the royal custom of admiring the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival, we can get a glimpse of the life style of the Qing Dynasty palace, feel the presentation of traditional festival culture in the palace, and understand the unique cultural connotation of the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival. (The author is a research librarian at the Palace Museum)
