Beijing Travel Guide - Forbidden City Documentary (Palace Museum) Part 2 "Survival" HD

The Forbidden City in Beijing was an ancient palace whose very name inspired awe and fear. Its nearly 10,000 rooms were built for one man, the Emperor of China. Only he could give permission to enter its inner precincts. He had absolute power over the life and death of his subjects. Until the 20th century, the Forbidden City was one of the most secret places on earth. In the past, people who trespassed paid with their lives. But today, the price of an entrance ticket is cheaper, and 8 million visitors a year walk where once only emperors trod. As the 600th anniversary of its construction approaches, an ambitious restoration project is attempting to turn back the clock and return the palace to its former glory. The renovation has solved some old mysteries and uncovered some new ones. Today, the Forbidden City is China's biggest tourist attraction, but it almost didn't survive at all. Construction of the Forbidden City started in 1407. It took 14 years to complete. At the time in Europe, Joan of Arc was still in pigtails. Constantinople was the Christian capital of the Roman Empire, and in Iceland, dried fish were used as money. The Forbidden City was more than a city. In fact, it was bigger than the world's smallest country. 55 Buckingham palaces or a hundred football pitches could fit inside its walls. It's the biggest palace complex on the planet. For 500 years, it was the heart of the Chinese empire, the seat of its government, and the home of its emperor. But by the 20th century, the Forbidden City and everything it represented, its buildings, the palace contents, and even the emperor himself, was under attack. Some wouldn't survive. The Forbidden City was a city of walls, high walls that separated it from the rest of Beijing. The most that ordinary Chinese people saw of the Forbidden City was a few roofs that peeked over the top. In the 17th century, they would also have heard strange noises coming from within the walls. The Chinese emperor of the time had discovered western music. He commanded that any foreigners who could play a musical instrument perform for him. Their concert lasted for four hours. When it was over, the emperor ordered students, including two princes, to learn to play the western instruments. This song was written for the emperor. The musicians were able to enter where ordinary Chinese people could not. The high walls around the Forbidden City kept the ordinary people out, but they also kept the emperor shut in, isolated and unapproachable. In imperial China, the emperor, as the son of heaven, was too exalted to be seen by the common people. The palace was a physical barrier that kept him separated from the public. Commoners rarely saw the emperor, and if they did, it was from afar. The imperial system lasted for thousands of years, but as the 20th century dawned, it was on the verge of collapse. He, the last emperor, lived in the Forbidden City from 1908 to 1924. For most of that time, he was a virtual prisoner there, having limited contact with the world outside the walls. His isolation would have been absolute, but for the introduction of a telephone. Puyi had the telephone installed despite the objections of his advisors, and the fact that it overturned thousands of years of court etiquette. It meant that for the first time in history, commoners would be able to speak to the emperor. His advisors were horrified at the prospect. My teachers tried to talk me out of getting a telephone installed, saying if a telephone was installed, anybody could talk to the emperor, which was unprecedented. I persisted and told them to get me one. When he got the telephone, he didn't feel like a bird in a cage anymore, so he made as many calls as possible. The telephone helped to alleviate the last emperor's sense of isolation, but it was another invention that first opened the walls to the west. The first mechanical clock entered the Forbidden City in 1601. It was brought by a Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, as a gift for the emperor. Ricci was a missionary who wanted to use the emperor to spread Christianity. The emperor wasn't interested in meeting Ricci, but he was interested in Ricci's clock. In fact, later emperors became so obsessed with clocks that they set up a clockmaking department within the Forbidden City itself, and its creations do more than just tell the time. The emperors became avid collectors of clocks. Ricci's was the first of a collection of nearly 200 that are now exhibited in the Palace Museum. They're displayed in the Hall of Ancestors. In ancient times, this was where the emperor performed sacred rites at the ancestral shrine. But today the hall is filled not with clouds of burning incense, but with the ticking of clocks. The largest clock in the collection is a mechanical marvel that stands more than two meters tall. The clock with a writing man is just one of the million treasures in the palace collections. Today, tourists come from around the world to admire the treasures of the Forbidden City, but they were almost destroyed. A plum ripe for picking, the palace was under frequent attack. In 1937, the Forbidden City faced its greatest threat to date. The survival of its treasures was at stake, and it would take an amazing exodus to keep them from enemy hands. In 1908, almost exactly 500 years after the construction of the Forbidden City began, the last emperor ascended the throne. He was the last of 24 Chinese emperors to live in the turmoil. Foreign imperialists were attacking from the outside, while revolutionaries attacked from within. It was during these difficult times that a child ascended the throne. In 1908, the old emperor died and was replaced by Puyi, a boy not yet three years old. He would be China's last emperor. Later in life, Puyi remembered his enthronement. I ruined the ceremony with my crying. I found it long and tiresome. When they carried me in and put me on the enormous throne, I struggled and cried. I don't like it here. I want to go home. I don't like it here. I want to go home. The young boy's words shocked the court, and they were interpreted as a bad omen. They were certainly prophetic. The last emperor ascended the throne almost before he could walk. But by the time he was six in 1912, revolution had not just pushed him off the dragon throne. It had ended more than 2,000 years of imperial rule. Although Puyi lost his throne, the new government agreed that he could continue to live in the Forbidden City in exchange for a peaceful abdication. He didn't know it, but his palace was about to become his prison. The new government took control of the grand public buildings in the front part of the Forbidden City, while Puyi retreated to the smaller domestic palaces in the rear. In that instant, the last emperor went from being the absolute ruler of a 4,000-year-old civilization and a country almost 40 times the size of the UK to being the ruler of an area half the size of London's Hyde Park. Living in the Forbidden City was like living in a gilded cage. But after the emperor was deposed, even the gilding lost its shine. Puyi's freedom of movement was restricted, and the generous pension promised to him when his stepmother accepted the abdication dried up. It was a lonely life. He didn't see his mother for seven years, and he didn't see another child, not even his own brothers and sisters, until he was 10. In 1922, the 16-year-old emperor was given a bride, two in fact. He'd wanted to marry a 13-year-old, but his advisors preferred the more elegant 17-year-old Wang Rong. She became China's last empress. Her younger brother was one of the few children allowed to enter the Forbidden City. And although the emperor was seven years older than his brother-in-law, they played together when he came to the palace. I had learned to ride a bike when I was at home. Later, I brought my bike to Puyi, and almost everybody learned to ride, even my sister, the empress. I took photos of her riding the bike. These snatched moments of pleasure ended abruptly in 1924, when in the continuing political turmoil, a warlord seized control of Beijing. He put the president of the republic under house arrest and threw Puyi out of the Forbidden City. Guns were trained on Puyi as the final eviction began. In 1912, the last emperor had lost his throne. Now, he'd also lost his home. Puyi departed the palace in a hurry. These photographs were taken at the moment he left. He had little more than the clothes on his back, some hastily packed bags, and what treasure he'd managed to stash. When Puyi went through the palace gate, he severed the last imperial connection, with the Forbidden City. The palace had stood for 500 years, but with the emperor gone, there was no guarantee that it would survive much longer. The previously closed world was suddenly thrown open, and no one knew what to expect. Before that time, entry to the Forbidden City's inner court had been restricted to the few people closest to the emperor. Commoners had never been allowed to enter the heart of the palace. The first thing the new republican government did was inventory what it had inherited. There was no shortage of workers for the audit. Many people were extremely curious about the contents of the palace. Special care was taken to ensure that the palace treasures didn't go missing during the inventory. People always worked in groups, never alone. But it was winter when the counting work began, which created some unique problems. The palace buildings were unheated. But in order to prevent stealing, strings were used to bind the cuffs of workers' sleeves. This meant that small treasures couldn't be pushed up the sleeves. But it also meant that the workers' hands... Even the points of the brush pens froze. The inventory was done with scrupulous attention to detail. Not the smallest item escaped auditors' notice. It became a kind of joke in China that, surrounded by objects of incalculable wealth and beauty, the first item they catalogued was a simple wooden stool. They even noted a half-eaten apple left behind by the emperor. But mostly, their audit listed precious artifacts. They found that the palace was a vast treasure house filled with thousands of works of art. The number of precious ceramics alone, from imperial tableware to extravagant works of art, numbered in hundreds of thousands. Jade artworks of all colors, shapes, and sizes numbered in tens of thousands. As did the paintings and calligraphies in the palace collection. There was a huge variety of other items. Statues, jewels, clocks, even scientific instruments. The list of palace treasures was almost endless. By the time the auditors were done, more than a million relics were recorded. The auditors were looking for treasure. They found it. But they made an even more important discovery. In the last emperor's own room, they found documents linking him to a plot to regain the throne. To stop his return, the government decided to turn the palace into a museum. By opening the Forbidden City's doors to the people, they closed them on the emperor. The Forbidden City officially opened as a museum on the anniversary of the revolution, October 10th, 1925. A sign proclaimed its new identity and its new name. No longer the Forbidden City, it was now called the Palace Museum. The opening of the museum was a momentous event. On that day, Chinese society was turned upside down. When the museum opened its doors to the public, it was the first time in 500 years that the ordinary Chinese people were able to enter the Forbidden City. The first time they could walk where formerly only emperors trod. Crowds of people came, eager to see how the emperors lived. But within three years, plans were underfoot to tear the buildings down. Incredible as it may seem today, a member of the government even suggested that the great halls be torn down and the modern western-style office building be put up in their place. Ironically, it was a warlord who stopped the madness. In a radio broadcast to the nation, he warned, If these halls are demolished, China will lose these great buildings forever and will be sneered at by all the other countries in the world. But just when the future of the building seemed secure, a new storm was brewing. This time, it would not be just the emperor who went into exile, but the entire contents of the palace. In 1931, the Forbidden City faced its greatest threat. The Japanese army attacked northeastern China and set up a puppet state called Manchukuo. To legitimize their rule, the Japanese installed Puyi, the last emperor of China, as the first emperor of Manchukuo. With little more than the Great Wall between Beijing and the Japanese, the palace museum was in danger. To save its treasures, the curators came up with an extraordinary plan. They would leave Beijing and take the entire contents of the museum with them. The evacuation of the palace museum treasures began on the night of February 5, 1933. Wooden hand carts were loaded with crates of relics and taken to the railway station. A staff member of the palace museum recalled what happened that night. It was very quiet. There was no sound except for the cards. No other sound. No one spoke. No one sang. Everybody felt cold and sad. No one knew when the treasures would be brought back or even where they were going. The evacuation was so hasty that they left even before the final destination had been decided. A staff member joked, It was like looking for a graveyard while carrying the coffin. But it was no laughing matter. It's not easy hiding the contents of the biggest palace complex on earth. There were too many relics to store them in one place, so they were split up. Documents were stored in Nanjing, the nationalist capital. The other treasures were sent to Shanghai. In 1937, all-out war began. The Japanese quickly occupied Beijing. As they threatened Nanjing, they forced a renewed flight of the treasures. This time, over 13,000 crates of artifacts were hastily sent west. They were divided into three groups. The convoys took different routes, often only a step ahead of the Japanese. When the Japanese caught up with the place of temporary refuge, the relics would be moved even deeper into the interior. One convoy found refuge in this cave in Guizhou. The relics stayed hidden underground for six years. Eventually, all the convoys found sanctuary in remote Sichuan province. It was not only the cultural relics that were at stake, so too were the relics' escorts, and not just from bombs. It was not a nice job to be an escort. If the cultural relics were bombed, the escort would be held responsible. But could he stop the bombing? No, he could not. In the end, he wasn't injured. That was really lucky for him and for the cultural relics. The evacuation was a huge undertaking. For over five years, the national treasures were moved across more than half of China's territory, all the time dogged by the Japanese enemy. Yet according to museum staff, not one of the treasures was lost or damaged. It was a remarkable achievement. Miraculous, even. The war with Japan ended in 1945. China and its allies were victorious. The territory of Banchu Kuo was returned to China, and Puyi lost his country again. He began 15 years' imprisonment first in Russia, and later back in China. Japan's defeat meant that the cultural treasures could come out of hiding. But continuing civil war in China meant that it would take four more years and the communist victory before they could return to Beijing. Some relics never made it back to Beijing. More than a quarter of the total number of crates originally evacuated from the palace went astray. They weren't lost or destroyed. They were taken instead to Taiwan during the Nationalist retreat. Today, they still sit in a separate, parallel palace museum on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. Although Chiang Kai-shek took some of the cultural relics to Taiwan, the new government was determined to restore the palace museum as the greatest treasure house of art in China. The communist victory in 1949 ushered in a period of change in China and reversed the fortunes of the palace museum. With the artifacts safe, it was now time to save the buildings. In 1949, the Forbidden City was in a terrible state. Would time and neglect lead to its final destruction? The Forbidden City had stood for 500 years, the home of 24 emperors. It had been China's most glorious monument. Yet 50 years of war and neglect had taken their toll. In 1950, weeds grew in the courtyard. Roofs had caved in. Whole buildings had tumbled down. In places, the piles of rubbish were so high that they topped a palace wall. No longer revered as the mighty palace, local people now called it a dilapidated temple. Those piles of trash were like hills. They were so high that people could walk up them to reach the top of the palace wall. Many places were in ruins. Earth was piled up like hills beside the palace wall. And many buildings had collapsed. In 1954, Chairman Mao Zedong visited the Forbidden City. He climbed the wall to take a look around. He must have liked what he saw as he returned several times over the next few days. The pace of restoration of the dilapidated buildings picked up. There was a lot to do. At first, only the most urgent repairs could be undertaken. The slogan of the day was, A thousand and one things wait to be done. Although there were many items on the government's agenda, the repair of the Forbidden City remained a priority. In 1956, passersby noticed that one of the most visible buildings in the Forbidden City had disappeared from sight. A new crisis began to unfold. The Northwest Watchtower was covered by a wooden shed. A rumour swept the city that it had been damaged beyond repair. Although we didn't care about the rumour, we had told our workers before the project began about things they should pay attention to. Why had we built a shed to cover the watchtower? We wanted to protect the ancient decoration from the wind and the rain. The Northwest Watchtower is among the most complex buildings in the Forbidden City. It's a building of little historical significance. But standing on the palace wall, it is one of the most visible. Its restoration tested the skill of the modern builders. But so too did its creation. Legend has it that it took the intervention of the Chinese god of carpenters to build it. By the early 1960s, the Forbidden City had begun to look like its old self. At that time, a remarkable event took place. Two old foes met again. One is former Emperor Puyi. The other is Ru Zhongling, the commander of the troops who banished him from the Imperial Palace in 1924. Shortly after this meeting, Puyi visited the Forbidden City for the first time in almost 40 years. It was an emotional return. He wrote in his autobiography, To my surprise, the dilapidated scene at the time I left the Imperial Palace was nowhere to be found. Every place looks brand new. In the Imperial Garden, I saw some kids playing in the sun. I saw some old men sipping tea in the tea house. The Imperial Palace has gained a new life. Another 40 years have passed since Puyi's last visit. The Forbidden City has now entered the 21st century. In 2004, almost exactly 600 years since construction on the Forbidden City began, a huge new project is underway. Today, an army of workers has been assembled to carry out the task. Although rather fewer than the million workers who originally built the Forbidden City, they are armed with modern power tools. Even so, the job is scheduled to take longer than the original construction of the city. The repair work is scheduled to take 19 years and cost almost $250 million. Ancient techniques and modern technology come together for the total restoration of the palace. The first phase races to be completed in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. By then, all the main buildings will look as good as new. The goal is to restore the rest of the buildings by 2020, the 600th anniversary of the completion of the original Forbidden City. When all the repair work is done, the palace will look as it did in the Golden Age of Imperial China. The restoration has led to some remarkable discoveries. While dismantling the roof of the Gate of Promoting Virtue, workers discovered a metal box. It was hidden under a towel in the center of the roof ridge. It was taken for scientific study. Inside the box, there were 24 gold coins, each inscribed with the legend, All is at Peace. There were also five silk threads in different colors, five kinds of traditional Chinese medicine, five kinds of aromatics, five shoe-shaped ingots of metal, and five colorful gems. Groups of five suggest the Chinese theory of the five elements. Research continues as experts try to unlock the riddle of the treasure box. They had an even bigger surprise when they dismantled the roof ornament of a Taoist temple. Don't move, don't move, don't move. The mystery deepened as more surprises quickly followed. Surprise number one was the discovery of 3,000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures secreted in the roof pummel. Surprise number two was that Buddhist manuscripts were hidden in the roof ornament of a Taoist temple. And surprise number three was that the Buddhist texts were written not in Chinese, but in Tibetan. The Buddhist texts were found in three places in the roof pummel. It's an unprecedented discovery and a mystery that confounds experts. All the texts found in the roof ornament were Buddhist. The puzzle is, why were they in the roof of a Taoist shrine? The resurgence of Tibetan Buddhism during the last dynasty may have been a sign of the rise of Buddhism. From the 17th century, the Tibetan style of Buddhism became the official religion of the country. The placement of Tibetan texts over the heads of Taoist worshipers may have been ordered by the emperor himself. It takes a year to restore the roof ornament. When it is put back on the roof, so too are the Buddhist manuscripts. Two key principles underlie the forbidden city restoration. Respect for history and fidelity to the original state. Even after 600 years, the palace continues to surprise. No one knows how many more secrets will be uncovered. Bringing the palace back to its original condition requires new gold and old techniques. When the restoration is done, the forbidden city will positively glister with gold. Gold leaf is applied liberally to designs on surfaces both inside and out. The gold foil used in this part of the restoration project was made by the Nanjing Gold Foil Factory, which itself has a history of several hundred years. Gold bullion is beaten more than 20,000 times to produce gold foil. The gold foil is thinner than a butterfly's wing, as soft as silk and as light as a goose feather. The foil is equal to 1,500th of the diameter of a hair. 10 million sheets of gold foil have been ordered for the repair project, gilding the forbidden city inside and out. Traditional materials and techniques are used in order to retain the original appearance of the buildings in the forbidden city. The wood pillars require a kind of preservative paste on their surface. The traditional paste is a mixture that includes pig's blood, wheat flour, and wood oil. Only a few people know how to make it. The recipe is hundreds of years old and has been handed down orally from one generation to the next. The precise formula is kept strictly secret. Pig's blood is not the only unusual ingredient. Plant fiber is worked into the paste to keep it from cracking. On large surfaces like gates, at least six layers of paste and two layers of fiber are applied. The techniques used in the repair of the forbidden city carry on the history of traditional Chinese architecture, a history that goes back hundreds of years. New gold and ancient techniques combine to make the palace shine. The building that uses the most gold in the forbidden city is the Hall of Supreme Harmony. It is on the pillars, walls, and ceilings. The bricks used to pave the floor are called golden bricks, but they have nothing to do with precious metal. The bricks on the floor of the Hall of Supreme Harmony are hundreds of years old. But even after so many years, they still shine like new. These golden bricks are unique to the forbidden city. They cannot be found anywhere else in the world. They come from an imperial brick factory near Nanjing. Special techniques were used to make the bricks. It is an elaborate and time-consuming process. Good earth is mixed with water and filtered several times. Then the clay is left in open air for a year to rid it of its earthy quality. After brick bases are made, they are dried in the shade for another seven months. Finally, the bricks are fired in the kiln for another two months. Each load of bricks consumes 50,000 kilograms of fuel. The entire process of producing a golden brick takes two years. Why are they called gold bricks when they're made of mud? One explanation has it that these bricks were so expensive to make that they cost as much as gold. The gold bricks paving the interior halls have stood the test of time. Even after several hundred years, they are in such good condition that they do not need replacing. The regular bricks in the courtyards have not fared as well. Some are in very bad condition. And with 20 million paving bricks, there are a lot to replace. Ancient skills are used in the restoration, but it wouldn't be complete without the injection of modern technology. These new skills are coming from an international team, all aiming to secure for future generations this palace of treasures. Modern technology has a part to play in the restoration of the Forbidden City. Foreign experts also play a part. It's a big project that calls on many skills. Specialists from Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage arrive at the Hall of Supreme Harmony to help restore its walls. They employ a method used in Italy to restore priceless frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci. Resin is injected into the walls to stabilize them. Besides experts from Italy, specialists from the United States, Japan and Hong Kong also help. It's a global effort. The preservation of the Imperial Palace is not a task just for the palace museum staff. It's not the task just of the Chinese people. It's the task of all the people of the world. The international effort comes together in one of the most secret places in the Forbidden City. It's not often that an emperor retires. But one of China's greatest emperors did just that. In 1795, after 59 years on the throne, he handed the reins of power to his son. But he kept the Forbidden City's most luxurious palace, the Lodge of Retirement, for himself. It has never been open to the public. Today, an international effort reverses years of neglect to bring it back to life. The painting on the ceiling is a special challenge. It is a rare example of the fusion between Eastern and Western painting styles. And it takes Eastern and Western collaboration to restore it. It's not a fresco or a mural, but it's painted on fabric. Taking it down is the first challenge. Cleaning it is the second. Although it will be glued to the ceiling, the painting is as precious as any 200-year-old picture hung on the wall. The restoration takes a hundred stages. To finish the job, they need to find backing paper made as it was 200 years ago. But where can it be found? American experts suggested using South Korean paper, but the museum curators vetoed that idea, insisting that Chinese paper be found. Work on the painting went on even while they searched for the right kind of paper. Seven expert restorers worked on the painting. It looks great, but can't be rehung until the right paper is found. It took more than a year to restore the painting and to source the paper. But at last, the right kind of paper is found. And it's from a small Chinese village. Perseverance pays. It's not only the buildings that are being whipped into shape. Great things are also happening inside the buildings. More of the palace's treasures are being taken out of the vaults and put on display. And new objects are being added to the collection. The Palace Museum now has almost one and a half million artifacts in its collection. Sometimes they even make the television news. The collection continues to grow as the Chinese government and patriotic individuals buy back treasures that had disappeared from the Forbidden City. In 2004, a project was started to catalog them all. It will take seven years. All cultural relics, including the art collections, court utensils, and historical documents, will be sorted and recorded using the most advanced information technologies. These treasures represent the essence of thousands of years of Chinese art, long hidden from mortal sight. They are now being brought into the light. Like the palace itself, they are forbidden no longer. The Forbidden City is the best-preserved imperial palace complex in China and the largest ancient palatial structure in the world. It was built by an egotistical emperor to humble and awe all who saw it. Almost 600 years later, it continues to awe. But now it draws visitors from around the world.