Page 57 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

water
ENERGY FLOW of traffic
commerce
work
conversation
opinion
legitimacy
military readiness

stone
BEIJING = shi 勢 = DESTINY of trees
plants
birds
animals
humans

processions
rituals
SCANSION by festivals
markets
two-hourly drum
closing/opening of city gates
deployment of elephants
Plate 5.1

intangible, legitimacy. The second kind of movement has a the east side, and annexed the lake’s southern part for the
partly arbitrary character: destiny. Like ourselves, 15th- walled imperial city within which the palaces were situated.
century Chinese often associated destiny with human The lake-centred site on which Dadu was built had a long
beings, and one could certainly explore human destinies in history of prior imperial associations under the Liao
the Beijing context. My interest, however, is in non-human (907–1125) and Jin (1115–1234) dynasties, but Dadu was the
destinies, specifically the destinies of trees. Finally, first city to enclose the lake within its walls. When the Ming
balancing these first two unpredictable forms of movement dynasty was founded in 1368, it inherited this great city,
was the controlled regularity that I will call scansion. From which the Mongols had simply abandoned when they
an art-historical point of view, scansion is particularly retreated north. However, because the Ming dynasty
associated with monuments. I will focus here on one type of established its own principal capital in south China, in
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living monument, the elephant, in its relation to Nanjing, it downgraded the former Dadu and renamed it
architectural monuments. Beiping 北平. Beiping was far too big for its new function.
The new Ming administration redrew the city’s perimeter,
The 1450 moment therefore, so that the new northern wall excluded the
Before entering this strange world in which water, northern third of Dadu, and it also moved the southern wall
legitimacy, trees and elephants share something in common, slightly to the south. The result was a smaller, squarer walled
let me first introduce the city in question. In 1450, Beijing city that enclosed most but not all of the city’s population
had no paved roads. It was dusty when the weather was dry (Pl. 5.3). The area just outside the new southern wall was
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and muddy when it rained. Since there was no sewer system, somewhat populated, but was not walled in.
it stank. If one could afford it, one avoided walking as much Just after 1368 the Ming administration also refurbished
as possible and either rode a horse or took a palanquin. one section of the Yuan imperial palace for use as the palace
Because the privileged classes rarely walked along the main of the Prince of Yan. The prince, Zhu Di 朱棣 (1360–1424),
streets, there were no trees there to provide shade from the was at that point just a boy who was growing up near his
summer heat. The person who went out for the day, no father, the Hongwu 洪武 emperor (r. 1368–98), in Nanjing.
matter how he or she travelled, was liable to come home But in 1380, when he reached the age of 20, Zhu Di took
dirty. possession of his Beiping palace, which became his base for
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Before the Ming capital of Beijing was ever imagined, the next 20 years, until 1399. Not long after, in 1402, Zhu Di
there was the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) capital of seized the throne and became the Yongle emperor. Within a
Dadu 大都. Dadu (on whose site Beijing was later built) was year he decided that the imperial capital should no longer be
located at the northwestern edge of a vast flood basin Nanjing but instead Beiping, now renamed Beijing, meaning
extending all the way to the sea. To the west and north it was the Northern Capital. In 1406 the order went out to start
ringed by protective mountains (Pl. 5.2). The Mongols built gathering the necessary construction materials. That
their city around a large lake. They constructed their process, together with overcoming the opposition of
palaces either side of this lake, with the Forbidden City on southern officials, took 11 years. The serious work of

Green Beijing: Ecologies of Movement in the New Capital c. 1450 | 47