← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
The Forbidden City
01:15:12
Dan travels to Beijing to reveal the extraordinary story of one of the greatest architectural achievements in human history.
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- [00:00]
Darina
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- [01:14]
Jeremiah Jenny
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- [01:51]
Darina
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- [02:54]
Dan Snow
For centuries, this was the sound of Beijing. For the better part of 600 years. These mighty drums that surround me now in the upper story of the old Drum Tip Tower kept time and did so across multiple dynasties. The drums signaled the staff, the night watch, and the changing of the guard. And so it remained until well into the 20th century, when Western timekeeping took their place. Today, the drums can still be heard. They're less functional now and more for ceremony. An ancient rhythm beating at the heart of a very modern city. And I really mean at the heart, because if you've ever been to Beijing, you'll know that nestled in its center, surrounded by soaring skyscrapers and bright LED billboards and densely packed neighborhoods, lies the most extraordinary historic core, laid out along a grand central axis. The Drum Tower, where I am now, is at one end and the imposing Yong Dingmen Gate, flanked by its carved stone lions at the other. In between them, at the very heart of the city, stands the largest palace complex in the world, a place from which, for centuries, China's emperors ruled from behind impenetrable walls. This was a grand, mysterious court of ritual and ceremony, a place of political intrigue and brilliant ideas, of family rivalries, of love and death. This was a place where China's dynasties rose and fell, a place where modern China was forged. You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, and in today's episode, I'm in Beijing, to uncover the story of the Forbidden City, China's imperial pal. So I've come to the Jingsheng park now that sits between the Drum Tower and the Forbidden City on that monumental line of imperial buildings that runs north, south through the heart of old Beijing. We think there's been a garden here since the 12th century, but it was really built up from the 15th century by the Ming and then the Qing, who occupied the city. From then on, it was their backyard, literally until the 1920s. This is where they had imperial ceremonies, and they would have quite literally lifted themselves up above the common people of China. This vantage point, this artificial hill towering above the city, from the top of which they could see out across the old city and their palace today. I mean, you know, call me a revolutionary, but I think it's great that normal people have been allowed in, like me and my producer Marianne Desforges there's beautiful, lots of trees. There's old people doing their qigong and doing their stretches. There are young people babbling away into their phones. There are middle aged people babbling into their phones, sadly as well, me. And the reason I am babbling into my phone is because I've come here to meet Dr. Jeremiah Jenny. He called Beijing home for many years. He taught Chinese history here. You'll remember him from previous episodes, the podcast about terracotta warriors and the opium wars. And we must have given a taste for it because he now has his own podcast by their own compass. So please check that out. Jeremiah, great to see you, man. Tell me about the occupation of Beijing. How far back does it go as a settlement?
- [06:30]
Jeremiah Jenny
Beijing is the capital of China today, but it's a really unusual place to have a capital city in modern times, never mind in previous eras, because it's one of the few capitals that doesn't sit on a major body of water. So why even have a city here? A lot of it has to do with Beijing's position compared to the rest of Chinese civilization. We look at a map of China today, Beijing kind of looks like it's in the middle or the northern third. But in fact, for much of Chinese history, this was a frontier outpost. It was the last stop before you crossed these mountains just to the north of Beijing. If you've ever been driving down the highway and you see a sign saying last stop, stop for petrol. 150km. There really wasn't a sign outside of the cities in the spot that said last stop of civilization for as far as you can walk, but there might as well have been. And so for much of the city's history, for as long as there's been people here and there's been a city that we know of in the spot going back about 3,000 years, but for the first 2,000 or so of these years, it was maybe a regionally important city, but mostly it was a place where you'd gather your trade goods together and you would head out to the pass. If you went left, those were the Silk Roads, or in later dynasties, it was a place where you would gather your military together before you would head out these mountain passes, go right and try to invade Korea, which was a favorite pastime of several earlier emperors. So if we think about Beijing being this frontier city, it really is interesting that the people from outside this frontier are the ones who put Beijing on the map as a capital, beginning with a group called the Khitan in about the 11th century, and then they were replaced in the 12th century by another group from outside the frontier called the Jin. And both of these groups had come in, they had conquered progressively larger sections of North China. And for them, where we are right now and what's today Beijing, this wasn't the last stop out for civilization. It was the first step in. And so they established capitals in this spot. And of course, the Khitan and the Jin were replaced by an even more famous group, and that was, of course, the Mongols under first Genghis Khan and then his descendants and his descendant Kublai Khan. When he established himself as the ruler over a vast area, including what's today China, he decided to move his capital to this spot. He built his capital right here as well. And that's really the beginnings of Beijing, the city that we visit today.
- [08:52]
Dan Snow
The Mongols hadn't really been an urban civilization. How did they choose to build this new city? How did they lay it out?
- [08:57]
Jeremiah Jenny
So if you look at the footprint, you have the rectangular walls, you have the broad boulevards, the avenues, the gates, the palace in the middle, all very proper. But then also in the middle of that palace, you have large open courtyards where they set up giant felt tents and yurts, structures that they're a little bit more comfortable with than, say, drafty palaces and things like that.
- [09:19]
Dan Snow
The Mongols occupied Beijing for roughly 150 years, until the mid 14th century, when they were ousted by a Chinese group from south, the Ming, who sacked the Mongol capital then known as Dadu. But when the Ming took control of their first emperor, Hongwu didn't establish his dynastic capital in the Sacks ruins. Instead, he moved it south, back to his home, to where the modern day city of Nanjing now stands. Hongwu Emperor governed with an iron fist. He rebuilt the economy, he strengthened the military, he consolidated Ming authority after decades of foreign rule. But at the end of the 14th century, his successors quarreled between themselves. There was a vicious civil war within the family, and his southern capital was destroyed. His fourth son, Zhu Di, as a skillful general based on the northern frontier, well, he emerged victorious. He established himself on the throne in 1402 and took the name Yongle. It was a new century and a new era for the Ming.
- [10:26]
Jeremiah Jenny
And so this new emperor Yongle, decides, if I'm going to rebuild and I have to rebuild, why don't I rebuild where my power base has long been? And his power base had long been in the north. And so he chooses to rebuild his capital on top of the old Mongolian capital, what had been the city of Dadu, now Beijing and Nanjing was demoted to secondary capital.
- [10:48]
Dan Snow
And how does he change the city?
- [10:50]
Jeremiah Jenny
So the act of building a capital, it establishes, you hope, this idea that you've received the mandate of heaven. You're not just a usurper, but you're the emperor. And it's been recognized by heaven, earth and humanity. And so one of the first things you're going to have to do is to rebuild the palace.
- [11:10]
Dan Snow
The Yongle Emperor set his sights on something monumental, a vast imperial palace anchored at the heart of an 8 kilometer north south spine of royal landmarks, what we now call Beijing's central axis. In the 15th century, a project on that scale was staggering. To grasp the sheer ambition of it, Jeremiah is taking me to the Beijing Planning Exhibition hall, home to an extraordinary scale model of Beijing that stretches across the floor of a vast atrium. So, Jeremiah, you have brought me to this museum now, and you promised that as a fellow model and map fan, I was going to like this place, and I am freaking out now. Describe what we got here. It's about 20, 30 meters long.
- [11:51]
Jeremiah Jenny
That's right. So what we have here is a model of the central axis of Beijing to scale more or less. And you see all the major sites along the central axis, starting from the Yongding Gate at the far end, the southern end, through to what's today Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the hill just north of the Forbidden City, Jingshan, and then finally originally ending at the two towers, the drum and bell tower that you used to keep time in the imperial city.
- [12:18]
Dan Snow
So talk to me about the development of the axis. The younger emperor, is he building on something that's gone before? Is this a new idea?
- [12:25]
Jeremiah Jenny
In some ways, the shapes of the walls, not quite as large, but more or less in the same place, the palace, the Forbidden City more or less in the same place as Kublai Khan palace, as far as we know.
- [12:37]
Dan Snow
So he's very much renewing what was already there. And that includes presumably this idea of a central axis.
- [12:41]
Jeremiah Jenny
That's right. So the central axis could goes back to at least the idea of Kublai Khan's Dadu, or great capital. And we can see on models and maps of that an axis very similar to this one. Although almost all the buildings, if not all the buildings on the current central axis, do date from the Ming period or the slightly later Qing Dynasty. We're talking about the 16th, 17th, 18th century. So what you ultimately have is this palace at the heart of this new capital, situated on this north south axis, one of the guidelines they would use for sighting a palace siting an axis was of course, the North Star. Polaris ritual text would say you had to do a sight line at night about the North Star. And in the Chinese cosmology, the North Star, everything revolves around the North Star in the heavens. This is the terrestrial equivalent because all will order orbit around the power of the emperor here in his palace.
- [13:38]
Dan Snow
And this grand palace became known as the Forbidden city with its 9,999 rooms. Allegedly it is the largest palace complex in the world still today.
- [13:51]
Jeremiah Jenny
So between 1406 and 1421, it took about 16 years or so. Over 100,000 craftsmen and architects and, and over 1 million laborers participated in the construction of these palaces. And what I find most interesting about that thinking of modern logistics is the first 10 years or so there really wasn't any actual construction being done. It was all about bringing the materials here, the wood, the marble, everything that was needed, putting it in place and then putting it all together.
- [14:23]
Dan Snow
Are they deliberately bringing products in from all over the empire to symbolize the oneness of the empire here?
- [14:29]
Jeremiah Jenny
I think that might be some of it, but a lot of it is just they want the best of the best, and if they can source it locally, they will. But even though a lot of the best stone can be quarried in North China, where Beijing is located, it's still not in the immediate area around Beijing. So you still have this need to move impossibly heavy and impossibly large numbers of materials, great distances. If it's wood, one of the great things about it, you float it down the river. And so wood can be transported a little bit easier than say, stone. For stone, they had to get creative.
- [15:02]
Dan Snow
Did that involve dragging?
- [15:04]
Jeremiah Jenny
When I take students to the Forbidden City, I always put the problem to them. You're an engineer in the Ming Dynasty, you have to move a 200 ton block of stone intact to the Forbidden City or to the building site. How do you do it? And the students always have, well, you get. You have all these people just have them drag it. I'm like, they just can't do that. So you have to reduce friction. And so one of the things that they would do to bring the stones to the Forbidden City or any major building site, they would do it in the winter.
- [15:31]
Dan Snow
No way.
- [15:31]
Jeremiah Jenny
So either along frozen canals or where canals wouldn't work, you would flood the road, let it freeze and push it along these ice roads to move these incredible chunks of building material materials great distances. And this era, the Ming Dynasty, is famous for its building projects. We think, of course, of the modern day Great Wall. And one of the reasons why this is able to be done is because of the industrial production of materials Beginning in the Ming Dynasty. You also have a very developed system of, at least at first, corvette labor that allows you to put a lot of manpower, a lot of human power into these people projects.
- [16:10]
Dan Snow
It's like conscription, but not for the military, but for engineering projects.
- [16:13]
Jeremiah Jenny
Yeah, you pay your taxes through labor. And that was the way it was at least in the earliest days of the Ming Dynasty. It is true when you look at places like the Forbidden City and you think to yourself, it is amazing what you can do. If you have some of the best mines of the empire, some of the best materials in the empire, and an endless supply of inexpensive non union labor, it's amazing what you can accomplish.
- [16:36]
Dan Snow
And I suppose there was an ambition that would last a long time. And indeed it has.
- [16:40]
Jeremiah Jenny
There's an idea that the site would be eternal. But one of the interesting things about the Forbidden City, and this is true of a lot of sites in China, the site is meant to be eternal. The buildings themselves are replaceable. And the idea is that many of the buildings are built with wooden columns. They're supporting great wooden beams, but wood will eventually wear out, and that's okay.
- [17:02]
Dan Snow
How long did it take to build this astonishing place?
- [17:05]
Jeremiah Jenny
So the Forbidden City would have been constructed beginning around 1406. Construction ended around 1420, and it officially, if you will, opened in 1421, although the grand opening was marred somewhat when that same year a lightning bolt struck the main ritual. They say it was lightning bolt. It caught on fire.
- [17:27]
Matthew Hu
Fire.
- [17:27]
Jeremiah Jenny
The main ritual hall, what's today called the Call of Supreme Harmony, burned down. Which if you're into cosmologic omens, and let's just say that the Chinese emperors were. That's not a particularly auspicious beginning, but
- [17:42]
Dan Snow
it's very striking because 15 years isn't far off what a massive infrastructure build would take today. I mean, that wouldn't be unusual. So it's fascinating, isn't it, how we've. We might have replaced humans with machines, but similar sort of time frames and
- [17:55]
Jeremiah Jenny
the way it was built too, Dan, it's actually hard to replicate in the modern day because many, most in fact, of these wooden structures, they're put together without nails, screws, metal brackets. It's all perfectly cut. Beams, brackets, columns that are then put together, all made of wood, and they then all fit together perfectly.
- [18:20]
Dan Snow
When this enormous construction project was finally finished in 1420, one there was astonishing procession. You can just imagine, it swept the Yongle Emperor, alongside his family and his court, his government, all the way up to the Forbidden City to the Imperial palace. And they were installed inside. They took up residence. I'm just entering now, the first of these gigantic courtyards. And all around me I can see these, these beautiful yellow roofs. The color yellow was exclusively for use on imperial buildings. And if you look closely at the designs on these buildings, you can see the blue lapis lazuli and you can see dragons, lots of dragons everywhere. The symbol of the imperial family, the certain dragons with the right number of claws. They were reserved for the emperor himself. And as you go further into the Forbidden City, you get to the grand central halls, the throne room, for example, which is got something like 13,000 dragons inside and out. The scale of this place is unimaginable. 980 buildings, something like 10,000 rooms, 720,000 square meters. You can fit Buckingham palace into this site five times. It's said to be the most visited historic site in the world. Something like 40,000 people a day. That's twice the number of people that visit the Colosseum in Rome. And on this freezing cold November day, it is already absolutely rammed with people. Many of the women have obviously spent hours in wardrobe, hair and makeup because like a significant proportion of them dressed in Qing Dynasty outfits, hair, headgear and makeup perfectly set. The costumes rented nearby. Lots of stunning colors, lots of fur lined garments, lots of Instagram boyfriends trailing along beside them, loaded down with photographic equipment. There's some content going to get produced here today. I'm pleased to say that my superficial impression of this place is now going to be massively added onto by a conversation with Matthew Hu. He is a Chinese cultural heritage preservationist, an expert, and he's going to help me really understand what exactly is going on here. Matthew, how are you?
- [20:35]
Matthew Hu
Very good, thank you.
- [20:36]
Dan Snow
Very good to see you.
- [20:36]
Matthew Hu
Yeah, very good to see you too.
- [20:39]
Dan Snow
So it was originally called the purple Forbidden City, as I understand it. What's the significance of that?
- [20:45]
Matthew Hu
Well, because Asian Chinese would like to believe that the Asian emperors, they were bequested with this power to rule the world because they represent this master principle defined by the constellations in the sky. And there are three groups of constellations in the middle of the heaven, and the middle one of the three is called a purple constellation. So that's where the God of Heaven reside, as his heavenly palace. So the Chinese emperor, no matter which dynasty, they always consider themselves as the son of the heaven. So as the Son of Heaven, whenever they build their own palaces, they would like to build an earthly mirror reflection of that heavenly palace. So that's why they call it the purple Forbidden City.
- [21:45]
Dan Snow
You enter through a magnificent gate, you are greeted with the river that flows. And what's the importance of the water there?
- [21:52]
Matthew Hu
It's actually both symbolic and also functional. The functional side of the water canal was to provide very important sources of water in case of fire, because most of the buildings were made of wood. In fact, the whole Supreme Harmony has been burned down four or five times over history. So the one we saw today is the fifth or sixth version of it. But the symbolic aspect of that water canal is that if you look from above, it looks like a bowl the shape of an archery bowl. So you will see five bridges, these marble bridges symbolizing five arrows shooting to the earthly world that governed by this heavenly sun. And each arrow symbolizing one virtue that has been for many centuries embraced by Confucianism. So like benevolence, for example. So that's one of the five virtues. So you need to be good to your people so that the world will be in harmony. So that's the whole purpose of why they eventually named the main hall of the palace as the hall of Supreme Harmony. So that's really an art of keeping balance.
- [23:16]
Dan Snow
So you go across that canal. Would you say at the heart of the Forbidden City is the building that's raised highest of all, and that is what we call now the hall of Supreme Harmony? Yes. What happened in there?
- [23:26]
Matthew Hu
That's the place where the emperor had his court audience. Traditionally, that's supposed to be a throne hall. So there's a golden throne in the middle of the palace. It's paved with this kind of golden bricks. And it's very colorful, shining. And the Emperor would be the only one sitting. So all the other courtiers, ministers will be on both sides flanking the emperor. And each one of them will be bowing koto, and they will report to the emperor. So that would be the place where most of the important decisions, policies being made in the imperial time. And the morning audience in the past was very early. So basically the emperor would get up and got ready for this morning audience, maybe at about 3 or 4 o' clock in the morning. So they would have to get up, get dressed, had a little something to eat, maybe a dumpling. You can imagine that all the courtiers, they will get up even earlier because they have to come into the palace. So maybe two o' clock they have to get up it looks like a
- [24:36]
Dan Snow
fortress in some ways, doesn't it? Big moat, big walls. Are those ceremonial defenses? Do you think they were ever intended to withstand a siege?
- [24:44]
Matthew Hu
I think it's mainly ceremonial. And in fact, foreign envoy coming to Beijing, he would come through one gate after another following a very narrow but long procession. About 1km before he could actually reach the main gate of the Forbidden City. That's a statement that you are getting closer and closer to the Emperor. And eventually you see a grand building with this main gate. And once you go in, you see on such a big open plaza, you see the hall of Supreme Harmony. So that was terrifying. All the trade deals you came up with. You may be. Oh, forget about it.
- [25:27]
Dan Snow
Yeah, I was determined to give him a piece of my mind. Now I'm not so sure. Why did he get the name Forbidden City? Is that historic or is that.
- [25:37]
Matthew Hu
I think it was because that was forbidden. They were not allowed to go in without permission. Only certified personnel could enter. The Forbidden City was actually divided into two halves. So the front half is the outer court and the second half is the inner palaces. So one is a space dealing with state affairs. So it's more official. But the second half is more personal, so it's the family space. So family time would be the second half. Once you get to the living quarters, the size of the building is smaller. And behind the living quarters, of course, that's the garden area. That's even more fun because you have a lot more unique stuff. It's a lot less regulated in the Imperial Garden, in the living quarters, you see a lot more plants. You have to picture in your mind would be those animals that the Emperor raised as pets. So they raise cranes, for example. They do have cats and dogs. But some of the unique stuff would be cranes and deer. They are both symbolic animals for longevity and also related to immortals. But we consider the Forbidden Sea as the residence of the Imperial family. It hosted 24 emperors over the past six centuries.
- [27:12]
Dan Snow
I've been to lots of palaces in Europe and often there's very grand staterooms. But some of the kitchens and the back areas are a bit shabby. Even the domestic spaces. What's your sense of the thousands of rooms in this palace?
- [27:24]
Matthew Hu
It really depends on the financial status of the empire. I think in the peak area, I think it's relatively well furbished everywhere. But of course for the kitchen, for the servants area, for hierarchy reasons, they couldn't be over decorated. Basically every bit of the house has a regulated way of being decorated. One place that I love Most is the Imperial Library. That's a two story building covered with black colored glazed tiles. The reason that we used the black tiles was because black symbolizing water in the Chinese five element theory. So we have gold, wood, water, fire and earth. So the five elements, black symbolizing water. And as a library, of course made of paper. The building itself already very easy to be burned down. The paper books, very good burning materials. So they covered that with black towels. And inside was Chinese version of the encyclopedia created by Amber Qianlong. I believe the total number of characters for this encyclopedia piece was about 800 million Chinese characters. So it takes any scholar perhaps a lifetime really to read them. But it's very comprehensive. It covers almost every aspect of Chinese life. So we have three and a half sets. So that's one of the most interesting places I would suggest, because most people tend to just go through the central axis line. But skip this little courtyard which has this beautiful library. And of course, in front of the library there's a water pond to make sure that they have enough supply of water.
- [29:19]
Dan Snow
What a treasure.
- [29:21]
Matthew Hu
In the living quarters on each side of the Empress residence on the east side and on the west side, there were six palaces built for the concubines. One of the six on the east side was burned down in the late Qing dynasty. And in 1905, the Qing court was considering to create our own constitution. So we are trying to build up our constitutional monarchy. But how to do that? So they send a delegation to travel overseas to study from your experiences from the French, German, Japanese. They travel to many countries over maybe 14, 15 months. But they came back not only with their study of the political system, but also come back with some interesting findings about how the Western people entertain themselves. So they came back with an idea of Western aquarium. So they actually thought, you know, maybe we can entertain the Empress Dowager and the Emperor with two, this aquarium thing. Because I'm sure the ministers who represented the Chinese Emperor on this year long journey were quite impressed with some of the aquariums you had.
- [30:43]
Dan Snow
Very cool.
- [30:45]
Matthew Hu
So they actually hired a Western designer. But unfortunately it's a long decision making process and ordering this kind of places according to the size of this corner courtyard. Also very difficult. So by the time they come up with the skeleton pieces, it's 1911, so revolution broke out, so never were able to complete that project. Very sad. But that's a very interesting piece because when they designed the building, they designed it. It's a hybrid of both Western and the Chinese aesthetics. So it has a pavilion like building or your bell tower. Like go to church, you have a little bell tower. That top looks like doom. And so you have a staircase. It's like a building surrounded with a mini moat. But once you go in, you actually have take steps to go down one level down, go to basement level, and there's glasses on four sides. You can look out. And on this canal, in this canal, you have perhaps all kinds of weird fishes or turtles or maybe even crocodiles that you can raise. So the emperor can enjoy looking at all these different species. That's a lovely creation, but never been completed.
- [32:14]
Dan Snow
The Forbidden City served as China's Imperial palace for more than 500 years. As Matthew explains, it was home to 24 emperors, 14 from the Ming Dynasty, followed by 10 from the Qing. And those early Ming years marked something of a golden age, a period of prosperity and cultural blossoming as China reasserted itself after decades of foreign Mongol rule. This is Jeremiah Jenny again.
- [32:43]
Jeremiah Jenny
So the Ming Dynasty rules China officially from 1368 until 1644. I think a lot of what we see in the later imperial period, the Ming set the foundations of not just physically in Beijing and the Forbidden City, but also in terms of how they approach the organization of the bureaucracy, the role of the emperor. When we take a look at the era as a whole, what we do also see is an amazing era of literature, cultural flourishing, painting. It's when the economy of what we think of as today China becomes a lot more sophisticated, a lot more urbanized. There's a lot going on, apart from the fact that we have very often some very weak and ineffectual emperors sitting in the Forbidden City.
- [33:26]
Dan Snow
But like most royal courts throughout history, the Forbidden City was rife with scheming advisors and power hungry aides quietly trying to climb the greasy pole.
- [33:36]
Jeremiah Jenny
This was a dynasty that at one point misplaced an emperor. They went out to fight the Mongolians, and when they all rushed back to Beijing after being defeated, they looked around and were like, wait, I thought he was with you. They had left him behind on the battlefield. This was also a dynasty where they had an emperor who ruled for a long time, but spent the last 20 years of his rule in his bedroom because he just got tired of being an emperor and refused to come out. And here's the thing. Whether you're talking about ancient Rome or Ming Dynasty China, if emperors refuse to play, or if emperors are not very good at politics, there are plenty of powers in the palace who are more than willing to step in. In the case of the Ming Dynasty, you have unscrupulous officials, corrupt eunuchs, imperial in laws, all kinds of intrigue, which also makes the Ming Dynasty a very rich era for stories, novels, legends, and tales of people up to no good.
- [34:31]
Dan Snow
So it sounds to me like it's remarkable the Ming flourished for so long because actually they do have a pretty good run of it.
- [34:35]
Jeremiah Jenny
They do. A lot of that is due to a bureaucracy that's able to keep the government functioning even if you have a relatively weak emperor. Although the Ming Dynasty, unlike their successors, the Qing, there was a critical flaw in this system, and that was the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The Hongwu Emperor was an incredibly, if we will, effective ruler. Brutal at times, but he, as a young man, fought against the Mongolians, fought in the civil war, was one of the first commoners to become emperor in over 1500 years. So here's a guy who knows how to get things done. And when he installs himself as the emperor, one of the things he does, because he doesn't trust these elite, deep state officials, officials, he abolishes the office that we might think of as prime minister, the person who's kind of head of the government and decides to take on the job himself. Which is okay if you are a paranoid, doom freak workaholic like the Hongwu Emperor, or even a highly effective, if brutal despot like the Yongle Emperor. But as we go through history and we have emperors who wanted to be carpenters, or emperors who refused to come out of their bed, what you have then is a government that doesn't necessarily have that unifying executive figure, and that would often cause problems, allowing things like corruption, bureaucratic rot to set in.
- [35:55]
Dan Snow
Why eventually does the Ming project peter out?
- [35:59]
Jeremiah Jenny
Part of it is that a succession of weak emperors is only so long. The bureaucracy can hold things together. Having a weak emperor is okay when things are going fine, but when you start start to have major problems, then you need strong leadership to fix those problems. And by the early 17th century, two problems emerged that will really test the ability of the Ming dynasty to hold on to power. The first one is a change in the climate, if you will. There are famines happening. And this is part of a process that we see reflected in other places, other historical contexts of a little ice age, if you will. In the early 17th century, this causes crop failures. And now in an effective government in China, you could move grain around, you could open up the granaries. But by this point, because of problems in leadership, that kind of relief was not forthcoming. And when people are hungry, they're very susceptible to suggestions like hey, I'm a rebel leader, will you join my army? People will do a lot of things if it comes with the promise of food attached. And so not only do you have these problems of famine, but then you also have rising up very large, what the palace calls bandits. But again, we might call people who are so hungry they will do anything. And these armies start roaming across the territory and eventually one of these large armies makes its way all the way to Beijing, one of these rebel armies and takes the city in 1644.
- [37:24]
Dan Snow
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- [38:22]
Darina
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- [39:36]
Jeremiah Jenny
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- [40:13]
Darina
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- [41:21]
Dan Snow
Across the countryside, this famine and desperation sparked waves of rebellion. One man, Li Zhi Chung, a former postal worker, emerged from the chaos, promising fair taxes and land for the poor. He raised a rebel army that swept across China, and in 1644, they marched on Beijing itself. His forces entered the city, and the last Ming emperor, Chong Zhen, fled and took his own life to avoid the dishonor of surrender. But it would not be Li Zhicheng's rebels who took power to the northeast of Beijing. Beyond the wall, another army was waiting, the Manchus, poised to invade a weakened China. Caught between the rebels who controlled Beijing and an invasion force to the north, the Ming general Wu Sangui made a fateful choice. He opened the gates of The Great Wall. The Manchu army stormed through. They crushed Li Zhu Cheng's rebellion, seized Beijing. The Ming era was over. The Manchu now claimed the mandate of heaven and ushered in a new imperial age.
- [42:42]
Jeremiah Jenny
From 1644 until 1912, they rule this massive empire with modern day China as its core.
- [42:50]
Dan Snow
Strange that the first emperor of that dynasty was actually a kid. That seems a little unusual.
- [42:54]
Jeremiah Jenny
There's no dynamic family to get into the family history. His father, Hong Taiji, was the son of another talented, almost like a Genghis Khan figure called Nurhachi. And his son, Hong Taiji was an incredible military leader in his own right. But he dies just before all this happens. And so it's his young son who is officially on the throne. His brothers Dorgon, his widow, Sunjir's wife, mother, who is also playing a very strong role behind the scenes, often in league with Dorgon. The family dynamic is quite interesting, but it works.
- [43:28]
Dan Snow
And how are the Qing different? I mean, they're living in the same palace, so they're inhabiting that space. Do they try and present themselves as pretty Chinese from the off, or are they proud of their differences?
- [43:37]
Jeremiah Jenny
When you look at the documents written in Manchu, it is clear the Manchus see themselves as a distinct people, that their distinctiveness being different is what their power is. They look back at the Mongolians and they think, you know, what went wrong was when you all started thinking of yourselves as Chinese. We've got to keep our traditions, we got to keep our martial vigor, we keep our hairstyles. We're not going to necessarily impose our culture on the Chinese, but we're going to make sure that we are always Manchus, or People of the Banners, as they would call themselves. The one thing they did impress upon the Chinese was they made every male get a haircut. And so the idea was to make sure they always knew who was on Team Ching. They made all Han Chinese males get the Manchu haircut, which was to shave your heads in the front and braid your hair long the back, which when many Westerners started learning about China, they thought was the Chinese hairstyle, this was actually a hairstyle imposed on them. And for Chinese men, for whom long hair was a sign of masculinity and virility, this was an enormous humiliation. So the Manchus came up with a slogan. You can keep your hair, but you'll lose your head. Lose your hair, keep your head. And wasn't the easiest sell. But the thing about having this cue, as it was called, with that long braid was you couldn't Fake it. And so as a result, if you had the cue, you were loyal. If you didn't have it, you were a rebel.
- [45:05]
Dan Snow
Wow. Does life in the Imperial palace here, for example, in Beijing, would there have been continuities between the Ming and the Qing?
- [45:12]
Jeremiah Jenny
The Forbidden City gets pretty well trashed in the transition, both from this rebel army that took over initially and when the Manchus come in. But they do rebuild it, and they rebuild it more or less the way the Ming Dynasty had it, because they do understand, as distinctive as they are, the important importance of being part of this political tradition. It's one of the things that the Qing emperors do very well. They've learned, they know that they have to keep their distinctiveness, but they also know they have to be part of this political tradition. One of the things they did in the Forbidden City was in the very back halls, in the inner court, there's a palace called Kunning Gong, and it's in the very back of the Forbidden City. In. In Ming times, it had a variety of uses, but in Qing times, they set up an altar for their own rituals because the Manchus had their own religion, which was kind of a shamanistic religion with totems. In fact, there's no connection as far as we know. But it wouldn't be completely unfamiliar to Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of animal spirits. But it was something they didn't want the Chinese to always get wind of, because the Chinese would see this as being somewhat barbaric. So they would have their rituals in the back of the Forbidden City, where they would eat sacraments of semi cooked pork and things that they just didn't want the Chinese to be aware of. And it made the palace quite filthy a lot of the time. So there were things that they were doing that were different than the Ming dynasty would have done them for sure. And they become very good, particularly as we get to some of the later emperors, like the Kangxi emperor who rules from 1661, they become very good at what we think of in the modern day as code switching, which means when there are Chinese officials, Han Chinese officials are in the room. They can be the Confucian emperor, they can quote Confucius, they can write the poetry. In fact, they have to be better at this than maybe their Ming Dynasty predecessors, because Chinese officials are judgy. But when the Chinese officials leave the room and their Mongolian allies or their Central Asian envoys can come in, well, then they don't talk about poetry, they don't wear the robes of Memphis, they Wear their furs and they talk about, hey, bogota, when we're going tiger hunting. Because I'm the better shot, remember that on horseback, I'm always the better shot, because that's what matters. If you want to rule Central Asia, you got to be a khan. If you want to rule China, you have to be an emperor. The Mongolians knew how to be cons. The Ming knew how to be emperors. The Qing Xing emperors, at their best, knew how to be both. And that was one of the things that made them so successful. Despite the fact they were a conquest
- [47:45]
Dan Snow
dynasty, they're presenting two different faces to the world in a way. Well, there's their public face and their private face in the palace.
- [47:51]
Jeremiah Jenny
They knew how to be what the room needed them to be, like all skillful rulers and statesmen often do. And they could do it in many languages. The Qianlong emperor could speak Manchu Chinese. He was pretty good in Tibetan as well. And so you had these rulers who were able to interact with many different people from all over Asia, sometimes in their own languages. That's pretty special skill. And I think that's one reason why they were so successful life in the palace. For the Manchus. They adapted to palace life as best they could, given they were a semi nomadic people, but they never totally grooved on the Forbidden City. There was always this feeling is that we inherited this enclosed space. They weren't wild about Beijing. One of the ways they changed the city was they moved most of the Han Chinese out of the northern city, around the Forbidden City to the southern city, and moved the Manchus into the neighborhoods around the Forbidden City. So all these different neighbors belong to the different banners of the Qing army. And the Chinese city south of where Tiananmen Square is, was also where most of the markets, the brothels, the theaters and all of the fun went. And so it has effect even on the cityscape. One of the other reason they did this, not just because they wanted a certain segregation for political reasons, but also the Manchus had no experience with smallpox, and smallpox decimated the earliest generations of the Qing rulers. In fact, that first young emperor, emperor, who was the young boy who was in 1644 brought down here, died rather young of smallpox. His son, the Kangxi Emperor, who would go on to become one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history, was chosen at 8 years old to be the heir because he was one of the only sons to get smallpox and survive. It was lottery, and yet he turned out to be a great emperor. And so they wanted that kind of Segregation for health reasons, too. But the mansion also knew how to enjoy life in the palace. And one of the things they would do is, first of all, they would go on these long rides, and they established in the outskirts of Beijing these gardens for themselves to use, the ones that became the summer palaces. They would go out there, they would ride around, they would have banquets and feasts and tea parties and all kinds of games and activities. They loved a good competition of horseback archery, which. Which I don't know if you have ever tried. It is really hard. I tried to do it once when I was out in Inner Mongolia, and it was lucky that neither I nor the horse was shot and they could do it at full gallop. Some of their banquets was a little bit different than what the Chinese might have enjoyed. They were very big on game meat. And, of course, if you were the emperor, as much as you might like your, you know, venison sword stew, the rules about eating could really take a lot of the fun out of the table, because you would be presented with an enormous table of all these dishes, but you were only allowed one bite of any particular dish, lest you reveal a favorite food. And the idea was, once the emperor was finished with his one bite of any particular dish, the food would then be distributed to the rest of the household. Down the line, down the pecking order of the princes, the concubines, and down and down it goes. The leftovers would travel. You can order a full man Han Manchu, Han feast in some restaurants in Beijing.
- [51:17]
Dan Snow
Well, the shadow is definitely lengthening here in Beijing. And I'll tell you what, Mariana Desforges and I have been on our feet all day, and we're looking forward to a meal in a cozy restaurant. Restaurant. Because you will never go anywhere in the world where you will eat better than you do in China. The cuisine is absolutely out of control. Last time we were here, I put on a stone in weight. Every day we went to a different place, ate different food. We had Peking duck from Beijing. We had spicy dandan noodles from Sichuan with what they call Chinese hamburgers, little flatbreads with shredded meat from Xian. And today, well, we're going for another banquet. We're going to enjoy the dishes that the Qing emperors would have enjoyed in the banqueting hall at the Forbidden City. Because the thing about the Ching is that they are reasonably close to us in time. So we can look back in. In recipes that have been preserved, and we can really find out what they ate. This obviously very important historical work here, research. Because how People eat, what they eat, when they eat. All that tells us a huge amount about people and their customs, their belief systems, trade networks and rituals. I'm going to be joined by a very special guest at this dinner. His name is Thomas Dubois. He's a culinary historian and professor of Chinese at the Beijing Normal University. His newest book is China in Seven Banquets, A Flavorful History.
- [52:40]
Thomas Dubois
Cheers. Great to see you, Thomas.
- [52:41]
Jeremiah Jenny
Lovely to meet you.
- [52:42]
Thomas Dubois
Lovely to meet you.
- [52:43]
Dan Snow
Very excited about this.
- [52:45]
Thomas Dubois
I'm extremely excited. And you test it the right way.
- [52:49]
Dan Snow
So we'll just start off by cheersing. And I don't want to get that bit wrong because I understand that there's even some ritual and protocol around how you do that.
- [52:55]
Thomas Dubois
The first thing is that you want to be lower than the glass of the person that you're clinking glasses with. And I've seen that turn into some, some real acrobatics. I have more than once seen it end with people on the floor.
- [53:10]
Dan Snow
This is quite a special feast, I must say.
- [53:14]
Thomas Dubois
And you'll notice that these fried meatballs are not oily. That's why they serve them on paper like this. So you can see it's almost like tempura. Oh, I see that they're not leaving an oil stain. So this is pork with bean flour. That gives it a really beautiful texture.
- [53:33]
Dan Snow
While I'm asking you another question, I'm going to just be eating here and listening to all your wonderful answers. It's heaven. What form do these would have feast taken? People in the west might be familiar with different courses which are served and then cleared. Is that something that's recognizable in 9th century China or is it just a different concept of serving food?
- [53:53]
Thomas Dubois
You would have sort of what you would call a jal pai thai, the big beautiful dish that sits in the middle of the table. Any kind of rock roasted meat would take that place. The meal doesn't revolve around that one dish in the way it would in the West. So the order that the food comes in, this is dictated by custom. It's also dictated by health, sort of what is going to be digested in what order. So you wouldn't get the very heavy food at the beginning. You would open up your appetite like what we've got coming in right now. The cold dishes come in first, but generally they would all be on the table at the same time.
- [54:31]
Dan Snow
Did the Qing, when would they have an imperial feast?
- [54:35]
Thomas Dubois
So any guest who would come, particularly a foreign guest, but that would also mean guests from the regions of China and Central Asia, like Tibet, like Mongolia. Any guest arriving would get a state banquet, and the emperor may or may not be there. And the rank of the guest would determine the rank of the banquet. Anywhere from 1, 2, 3 or 4 would determine what is on the menu first. The thing to note is that there are two banquets. There is a Manchu banquet and there is a Chinese banquet. So the Chinese banquet is the one that we're going to be talking about that would have a few dozen dishes. Overwhelmingly, the main ingredient of this banquet was pork. The flavor came from dried seafood, overwhelmingly.
- [55:26]
Dan Snow
So I've noticed this feast that you've laid out before us here, it's not what you might describe as spicy, which I would have thought would be pretty common in this part of the world. Are we too far in the north of China for that to be true?
- [55:37]
Thomas Dubois
North China is not a spicy kind of place. Not in terms of the cuisine anyway. The main taste you want to have is a balance of taste. But if there is one main taste that drives through all of this, it's savory. So in Japanese, it's called umami is how you know it in English for a meat heavy cuisine, that's really the taste that comes out in soy sauce and all of the sauces and all of the meat preparations. That's the main taste that that is driving this banquet. So if you look at the food we've got on the table, one of the main spices that you would get, or one of the main flavors you would get in North China is this sesame paste. And sesame is particularly in the province just to the south of us in Shandong. It's one of the main tastes that you would have in sweet and savory dishes. A lot of the spices that we have would be things like star anise, which is main taste of. Of five spice powder. The Sichuan peppercorn is what we have in this dish of green beans, and it's that numbing peppercorn. So the ones that are really important to Chinese cuisine that are native to China, star anise, ginger. Ginger was supposed to be a great favorite of Confucius and sesame additions like chilies like white pepper. These come in over the course of hundreds of years, some from Central Asia, some from Southeast Asia. But that's why you don't see them in all Chinese cuisines like you do, for example, with soy sauce or, you know, fermented beans.
- [57:14]
Dan Snow
In general, where are the banquets taking place and how far away is the sort of emperor's private dining where the
- [57:23]
Thomas Dubois
banquets are taking place? They would often, if you have a lot of guests being invited, if you're in the city, if you're in Beijing, you might set up inside the palace walls, but outside of the buildings, you might set up a special dining venue because you might have hundreds of people showing up. So essentially a very lavish tent. And the Qing emperors, if you're going out of Beijing to entertain guests, say in the Manchurian homeland, then you absolutely would be doing this in a tent.
- [57:56]
Dan Snow
Oh, interesting.
- [57:56]
Thomas Dubois
Or you would be doing it partially outside. There's a long tradition of extremely fancy
- [58:02]
Dan Snow
picnics, which is, I suppose, a little bit more in keeping with their step ancestry.
- [58:07]
Thomas Dubois
Yes, absolutely. And a good deal of what would be served, particularly if you go further north, would be very similar to traditional Manchurian, Mongol, Mongolian steppe cuisine. So a lot of lamb. One thing that would not be on the menu would be beef. The Qing royal family did not eat beef. A lot of people in China don't. The same reason that a lot of the Qing court didn't eat beef was because of Buddhist reasons mixed with Confucian ethics. And behind that whole story is the fact that cattle help people on the farm. So this is an animal that helps people. You should treat it essentially as a family pet and mourn it when it dies. In reality, most people would eat the animal when it dies, but the discourse is still there and it did reach all the way to the palace.
- [59:00]
Dan Snow
So I'm helping myself to a large bit of this cabbage named after the Qing emperor. What's he actually eating day to day?
- [59:08]
Thomas Dubois
A lot of the emperors had very simple tastes, particularly the early emperors. Remember that a dynasty is usually started by a military figure, by a soldier. Soldiers tend to have very Spartan habits. So the first few emperors of any dynasty in the Ming and Qing were certainly not exceptional. So one of the examples that I can think of is the Yongzhong Emperor, who was the early 18th century Qing emperor, and he was famous for making friends with Buddhist monks for eating vegetarian when he could, just very Spartan, from the way he dressed, from the way he just lived his daily life. And you think about it, if you're eating this every night, this is delicious to have tonight. Do you want to have it tomorrow?
- [59:54]
Dan Snow
Yeah. Yes, I do. I get your point. It would be be good for me.
- [60:00]
Thomas Dubois
When you can you eat simple, you prize the fact that you can control what you eat. This is something that I think people don't appreciate about the emperors is they weren't sort of Louis style monarchs. They were, in a sense, they were very much prisoners of Custom. So they didn't have a lot of choice in what they ate. A lot of what they ate was decided by court dietitians.
- [60:24]
Jeremiah Jenny
Wow.
- [60:25]
Thomas Dubois
If you are not in a formal dining, this kind of atmosphere, it wasn't lavish. Every meal, lavish for the sake of being lavish.
- [60:33]
Dan Snow
Can I just ask a quick question? What on earth was this strip, like, rather cartilaginous material here?
- [60:41]
Thomas Dubois
That's some part of our duck.
- [60:43]
Dan Snow
It's a piece of duck?
- [60:44]
Thomas Dubois
Yeah. This is the skeleton of our duck that's been cut up and fried.
- [60:48]
Dan Snow
Okay.
- [60:49]
Thomas Dubois
So after. After you get the duck, you. You get to decide what happens to the carcass, and you can make it into a soup. You can serve them as noodles. Those are the two main choices. But the soup is lovely. It's a white, milky soup, and that's from the marrow in the bones.
- [61:04]
Dan Snow
So nothing at all goes to waste.
- [61:05]
Thomas Dubois
Nothing goes to waste.
- [61:06]
Dan Snow
And would that be true of these great feasts?
- [61:08]
Thomas Dubois
It was absolutely shared out. The idea of wasting food, even in an ostentatious occasion like this, is absolute inefficiency. There are records, so historical records of how these feasts actually worked. An example would be not the ones that happened in the palace, but ones that were probably very similar to them. You would come as a very important person with a giant revenue in tow, maybe dozens of people, maybe hundreds of people. So when Macartney showed up in 1793, he brought his own. Own parade with him of porters, of assistants and whatnot. And this is part of the prestige of the visitors. How many people come in tow? So one of the big questions you have with these historical banquets, how many people were invited? Because we know how much food there was, but we don't know how many people were eating. The main historical record that talks about these banquets would describe them again in rank of 1 to 4, Manchu or Han, whatever. Any permutation of these is going to have at least 20 pounds of pork. A ridiculous amount of pork. And that is not a table. My theory about this is that this is per person.
- [62:30]
Dan Snow
Whoa.
- [62:30]
Thomas Dubois
And the reason it's per person is, is because you were expected to take the leftovers to your retinue that came with you in tow. There are even records from the very early Qing Dynasty. So the emperors that just first sat on the throne, so the ones who were really sort of connected to society and armies and battles and weren't cloistered in the palace, that they would invite their Mongol and men allies to have these giant feasts. And these giant feasts were all meat, 100% meat. And there are visitor descriptions of people taking meat away from the banquet, taking it home in whatever they had. So, you know, people didn't bring Tupperware with them, but they would take off. They're wearing these furs. They would take off their furs and wrap as much meat as they could inside. And so the southern observers, you know, more elite, more cultured people who are viewing these and who are writing it all down, what in the world is happening? They're wrapping this giant chunk of roast lamb in a fur coat and taking it home. So that's the economy of feasting. You are not feasting, for one.
- [63:47]
Dan Snow
Just imagine General Wu sitting there at a big feast. The what did I do? I've let these barbarians in. Now we're all doing takeout. Then should we pass the beer over to you guys?
- [63:58]
Thomas Dubois
This is becoming only relatively recently becoming common. You would drink something cold with dinner. Oh, interesting, because this is just considered to be bad for your digestion.
- [64:07]
Dan Snow
Speaking of alcohol, what role did that play at a banquet?
- [64:11]
Thomas Dubois
Huge, Immense. Is interesting because alcohol and drinking culture is one of the earliest things we see in China. China developed it at about the same time that ancient Egypt developed it. But drinking culture in the Confucian texts and in China revolves around drinking but not getting drunk. So this is the statement that is always said about Confucius and if. If it's good enough for Confucius, it's good enough for anyone. That's one of the best basic rules, is that Confucius liked to drink, so he wasn't a puritan, but he never got drunk, didn't drink to excess. And that's the social ideal of drinking in China. This is how we toast.
- [64:56]
Dan Snow
Before you do, can I just check that you're not committing some? Because as the higher status male here, should I be toasting you first?
- [65:03]
Thomas Dubois
I should go first local.
- [65:05]
Dan Snow
In that case, have asked.
- [65:07]
Thomas Dubois
Okay, so first, how you hold your glass? So if this is a baijiu glass, it would be the same shape, but it would be a lot smaller. You hold it by the bottom like this. The left hand goes under the bottom. So this is again, a sign of respect, just like how we clink glasses. I would hold it up like this. I would say a few words to welcome our guest. So simply, welcome to Beijing. It is extremely nice to meet you and thank you for letting me be part of this program. And I would hold it up like this. You would do exactly the same with your left hand on the bottom. And as the person who offers the toast. I am required to drink the whole thing. Oh, not so much with beer, but with hard alcohol. And I would say to you, you don't have to drink the whole thing. Just drink as much as you can. Just have a sit. But me, as a show of respect, I drain mine. So welcome to Beijing.
- [66:05]
Dan Snow
Thank you very much. And then I would. Would I reply? Now is a good time to reply.
- [66:09]
Thomas Dubois
Now is a nice time to reply.
- [66:10]
Dan Snow
So I will hold my glass by the stem with my right hand. I will place my three fingers, my left hand underneath the bottom. I'll say thank you so much for coming on this episode of the podcast. I cannot think of a more enjoyable meal that I have ever had, both in terms of the food that's consumed and the conversation that was had. Thank you so much. Unforgettable.
- [66:29]
Thomas Dubois
And then I would respond with Gambi.
- [66:31]
Dan Snow
Okay, Gamb.
- [66:32]
Matthew Hu
Gamb.
- [66:35]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up.
- [66:47]
Jeremiah Jenny
Activecampaign is the marketing automation platform built for big swings and big dreams. Generate ideas in seconds, import your brand, and create full campaigns with simple prompts. Get started for free@activecampaign.com It's 2026 and
- [67:04]
Darina
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- [68:26]
Dan Snow
By the late 18th century, the Qing court was part of a booming global trade network, as Thomas said, receiving visitors from as far as Britain. The British weren't even allowed inside the Forbidden City. The Emperor issued a high handed edict. Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce. Instead of ships arriving from Europe full of manufactures, they arrived laden with silver. The Chinese would sell European merchants silk and porcelain and tea of course, which had become an obsession in England. But this would become a problem. China's trade was one sided. By the late 18th century, silver was leaving Britain faster than it could be replaced. The British desperately looked for other ways to pay their bills. And eventually the British gaze fell on opium. This addictive substance was sent to China in enormous volumes to address the balance of trade. It was devastating for the Chinese. This is Jeremiah again. The Qing dynasty just have the longest death rattle in history.
- [69:45]
Jeremiah Jenny
It was a bit of a perfect storm. You get to the 19th century, the Qing Empire is facing a threat, an existential threat that it really could not have anticipated. I mean, how do you foresee an industrial revolution in one part of the world and policy in that part of the world that then see the rest of the planet as potential colonies and markets? And so you have increasingly aggressive imperial powers. Britain, France, eventually the United States, Germany, Russia, Japan, all wanting their piece of China. The people who were in charge in this era, children and then regents, often their mother or their great aunt children, just could not keep things together.
- [70:29]
Dan Snow
People will have heard you talk on this podcast about the opium wars and people might be familiar with the broad term, but roughly speaking, what happens in those wars and importantly, what is their legacy? What's their effect on China?
- [70:40]
Jeremiah Jenny
Sure. So beginning in 1840, you actually have a series of wars between different foreign powers and China. The first ones are wars over the opium trade. But then you have un other wars involving for example, the Qing Empire's involvement in Vietnam, which brings them into a war with the French. You have the Boxer War, in which groups from within China rise up against the foreigners. And this then causes the foreign powers to send eight different countries to send armies into China. And after each of these wars, you have treaties that are signed that are in some cases literally, other cases figuratively signed at the point of a gun. And these treaties greatly favor the foreign powers. So they're stripping the sovereignty of the Qing Empire away piece by piece, even as the corruption in the court becomes worse. And worse, it's impossible to imagine any state surviving this kind of situation.
- [71:35]
Dan Snow
I think, in a way, it is amazing that China still exists, given how many other states were partitioned, conquered, and whose history were radically changed by this
- [71:44]
Jeremiah Jenny
period of European imperialism in the early 20th century. There were reformers and revolutionaries who would use the term to be Poland did, where they would refer to the erasure of Poland from the map of Europe with the idea that this could very well happen to China. It could be carved up like a melon. They knew it was happening in the scramble for Africa, they knew it was happening the rest of the world, and they had no reason to believe that they would not be next. And one of the things that would inspire some of these revolutionaries, that would ultimately topple the Qing, was this belief that they might be the last generation of Chinese civilization. If we don't do something, that's it, 5,000 years, we'll be the ones to turn off the lights. So we better act and we better act soon, and we better act radically.
- [72:27]
Dan Snow
So, of all the wonderful things you've told me about Chinese history, and I don't want to be too derivative here, but the Qing, you've got got corruption at court, poor leadership, succession of emperors out of touch, you've got groups within China rising up for all sorts of reasons, and you've got a massive external threat now that in the past has spelled the end of a dynasty. Is that what we see at the end of the Qing?
- [72:49]
Jeremiah Jenny
Right. And I think what happens too, is that people will pick and choose the real cause based upon where they're standing. So many historians outside of China have said, well, you know, the Qing government, government fell because of all the corruption and the mismanagement. So the foreign imperialism, that was a problem, but it was really kind of a surface issue. It was the rot from within. It would not have stood in any case. And of course, the Chinese would say, well, it's only due to the foreign powers coming in. But of course, like most things in history, it's not that neat. It's a lot of different factors, and it's hard to think of any dynasty that faced the that kind of threat all at the same time.
- [73:28]
Dan Snow
What happened the last few years of the Qing, we are in early 20th century now.
- [73:32]
Jeremiah Jenny
So in the early 20th century, what you have is a succession of child emperors. Beginning in 1861, there's a young emperor that comes to the throne, but the real power is the boy's mother. When this young emperor conveniently dies before taking the throne on his own. His mother appoints her nephew, the boy's cousin, to be another boy emperor. And when this one grows up and starts to get ideas of his own, she locks him in a palace. And then just before she dies, to make sure he doesn't do anything that she wouldn't like, after she is gone, just before she dies, she has him poisoned. And then as her last act, installs yet another child emperor on the throne. And this is of course the last emperor, Puyi, the subject of a very famous movie that the last emperor. And so when these rebellions and these revolutions break out in the early 20th century, who's in charge? This woman, the Empress Dowager who controlled the power behind all these children for all those years. She's gone. There's a boy emperor on the throne. There's really no one that could withstand the immense popular and elite forces that were arrayed against it. And so in 1911, when a relative relatively minor uprising breaks out in the city of Wuhan, well, there's no one to stand up against it. And it spreads because everyone thinks, well, it's no point saving this dynasty. And by February 1912, the court has negotiated abdication. And not only has the Qing Dynasty, which has been ruling China since 1644, gone, but you could argue 2,000 years going back to the first emperor of Qin or so of a dynasty system has just blown away.
- [75:11]
Dan Snow
On 1 January 1912, China became a republic. Nanjing in the south was designated the provisional capital. You get a weird phase where Puyi, the Emperor is still living in the Forbidden City, but he's restricted certain parts of it.
- [75:28]
Jeremiah Jenny
Puyi was allowed to live in the Forbidden City under certain restrictions because he was still a young boy. And he lived there for the next 12 years, until 1924. But by that point, China had changed politically. It had been divided up. It became a failed state with warlords competing over everything. And the idea of having a growing emperor rattling around the Forbidden City makes too tempting a target. In 1917, there had been an attempt by a warlord to restore Puyi to power. Even though Puyi wasn't involved in it, he quickly backtracked after they bombed the Forbidden City from the air, one of the first aerial bombings in Beijing. And then in 1924, when another warlord came in, he finally said, listen, you guys gotta go. And they kicked Puyi and his family out of the palace once and for all.
- [76:14]
Dan Snow
The 18 year old Puyi took refuge at the Japanese embassy and then settled in the port city of Tianjin to the southeast of Beijing. And we've got to finish his story because it really is extraordinary. He was later made Emperor of the puppet state of Manchuko in Manchuria by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Following the Japanese surrender, he was captured by Soviet forces as he attempted to flee to Japan. He was taken to the Soviet Union as a prisoner of war. In 1950, they handed him over to the new communist government in China, who imprisoned him in a re education camp for nearly a decade. When he was finally released in 1959, he essentially lived the rest of his life as a commoner in Beijing, working as a gardener. It's a wild story. The Forbidden City, meanwhile, was turned into a public institution. And in 1925 the Palace Museum was opened. This was the first chance ordinary people had to see behind the great walls into the once mysterious and hidden halls of imperial power that had ruled theirs and their ancestors lives for centuries.
- [77:29]
Matthew Hu
People flooded into the palace to have a pic. They never had a chance to really get a sense of what the emperor, his residence would look like. So they would like to see that. So that was quite a historical moment.
- [77:44]
Dan Snow
Did it make people think, this is ridiculous, what we even thinking here, or did it make them almost nostalgic for that scale and grandeur and order of the empire? Do you have any sense?
- [77:56]
Matthew Hu
The most popular thinking in people's mind in early 1920s, that was right after the revolution, was perhaps that you know what corrupted life. You know, this Manchu imperial family had lived because one very popular slogan proposed by Dr. Sun during the revolution was Dalu, referring to the Manchu barbarians. Kick out the Manchu barbarians. Let's restore the Chinese civilization. So that was a popular slogan in 1910, 1911, 1912.
- [78:43]
Dan Snow
When I'm walking around the Forbidden City of the Imperial Palace, I'm so aware that you could only be in Beijing, you could only be in China. It's so special because so many cities now, so many places are so homogenous. There's coffee shops, there's steel, there's glass and concrete. I know today the importance of preserving that heritage and how special it is to have something so unique.
- [79:05]
Matthew Hu
I think that Chinese people of course appreciate that we had such an important piece of built heritage preserved and managed so well today. That's why getting into the Forbidden City, getting into the Palace Museum was on the priority list of almost all tourists. And that's also why getting a ticket was so difficult in the past 10 years. That shows two things. One is that people's interest in culture are becoming greater. For the first half of the Chinese reform era. After 1978, people's main focus, almost everybody, was on developing our economy. But for the past 20 years, two decades, I think this shift was very obvious that people from all walks of life started to focus on going back to the tradition to understand the root of our culture.
- [80:14]
Dan Snow
The Imperial palace of the Forbidden City was declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1987, recognized obviously for its astonishing cultural historical importance. But as of the summer of 2024, the whole Central axis of Beijing is a world territory site. It's not hard to see why. On this chilly November evening, that low sun is now flashing off the curved roofs of the towers that surround me. I'm standing between the bell tower and the drum tower now on the central axis. It's a pedestrianized area, so it's a bit like, like a. It's bit like a square, really, a village square. Except I'm right in the heart of one of the world's busiest cities. There's some concession stands, lots of families out enjoying the last of the the sunlight. Kids have just been picked up from school, by the looks of it, by their grandparents. There's a few people playing hockey on rollerblades. We got a man dancing with long scarlet silks. I could only now be in Beijing. I couldn't be anywhere else in the world. And in a country where so much has changed so rapidly, you feel when you're standing here like you're transported to the imperial age of China. They call me nostalgia, but it does feel so much more harmonious with the natural landscape, more so than the skyscrapers that surround the rest of the city and every other city in the world today. And that is why I'm such a massive believer in preserving these monuments, these heritage spaces. They're spaces that tell the story of civilizations through the ages. They remind us that we have customs, traditions that make us different from each other and make each one of those traditions special. And just judging by the people around me, they're places where we want to congregate, we want to flock to. We find them stimulating and comforting and enriching. It's one of my favourite things to, as you'll know, take you along to these extraordinary places to have the adventures there and learn more about how our world was made from the most historic sites, from the places where history happened. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review so that other people can find it and enjoy it too. I'll be making a few other podcasts while I'm here in Beijing over the coming weeks. You can hear me talking about the rise and fall of the Ming Dynasty. We're going to go into that a lot more detail when you skirted over the period in the this episode. And if you want more on the central axis of Beijing, please check out our film on our video subscription service. Our history hit TV channel. The link is in the show notes to sign up. I highly recommend it. Thanks for listening everyone. Bye bye. AI is transforming customer service.
- [83:20]
Jeremiah Jenny
It's real and it works.
- [83:21]
Dan Snow
And with fin, we've built the number
- [83:23]
Jeremiah Jenny
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- [83:25]
Dan Snow
We're seeing lots of cases where it's
- [83:26]
Jeremiah Jenny
solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real world complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order. And we also see it when FIN goes up against competitors. It's top of all the performance benchmarks,
- [83:40]
Thomas Dubois
top of the G2 leaderboard.
- [83:41]
Jeremiah Jenny
And if you're not happy, we'll refund
- [83:43]
Matthew Hu
you up to a million dollars.
- [83:44]
Jeremiah Jenny
Which I think says it all. Check it out for yourself@fin AI podcast
- [83:48]
Thomas Dubois
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