Page 61 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 5.6 Twelfth-century cypresses at
the former Altar of Heaven and Earth
(today the Temple of Heaven)

legitimacy that was at once spiritual and political. The Heaven dating from the Jurchen Jin dynasty, and took
emperor, as the Son of Heaven and the possessor of Heaven’s advantage of the cypresses that had been planted in the 12th
Mandate, exercised authority through the sword, the century, some of which also survive (Pl. 5.6). The trees are
eunuch-led security services and the courts, but he derived at some distance from one another, forming a natural hall,
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his authority from a realm beyond the human. He had to be with a tree canopy forming the roof. To keep the battery
very careful not to allow his reserve of legitimacy to be charger metaphor, ancient trees functioned as attractors of
depleted. It had to be regularly topped up, a little bit like spiritual energy. At all the major ritual sites, the ritual
modern electric batteries. The battery chargers for political specialists planted many more trees. There were veritable
legitimacy were the ritual sites at which the emperor on a forests at the sites of the Altars, and the Imperial Ancestral
regular schedule solemnly plugged himself in to the forces of Temple was surrounded by junipers on all four sides: one
the beyond. Because they were so important, the Yongle surviving example is said to have been planted by the Yongle
emperor made sure that these sites were all in place at the emperor himself. 20
end of his initial four-year building campaign (see Pl. 5.3). The fact that some temples were decommissioned does
The Altar of Heaven and Earth (Tianditan 天地壇) was the not mean that temples in general were seen as unimportant.
most important: the circular stone altar itself was located Within Dadu’s city walls in the 14th century, and
within a building at the centre of a site that covered some subsequently within Beijing’s city walls in the 15th, many of
500 acres in the southern outskirts of the city, just east of the these temples survived along with their ancient trees. In the
central axis (on the other side of the axis was the Altar of case of decommissioned temples, their trees sometimes
Mountains and Rivers, Shanchuantan 山川壇). It had inner became part of the gardens of residential mansions, such as
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and outer precincts; the outer precinct was used to raise the the mansion of the chief architect of Yongle’s Beijing, the
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animals used in the sacrifices. Much closer to the palace Vietnamese eunuch, Ruan An 阮安 (d. 1453). However, the
were two other ritual sites that were almost as important. 1420s, 1430s and 1440s also saw the repair and refurbishment
The first was the Altar of the Spirits of the Soil and the Five of the majority of the 193 pre-Ming-dynasty temples,
Grains (Shejitan 社稷壇), which had a small precinct of some monasteries and shrines that stood within the Beijing city
60 acres located just south of the Forbidden City, to the west walls, and the construction of many new ones at imperial
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of the central axis (see Pl. 5.3). The second was the Imperial and private initiative. Much the same thing happened
Ancestral Temple (Taimiao 太廟), which stood across from it outside the city walls, in the near outskirts and more distant
on the other side of the axis (see Pl. 5.3). The Ming suburbs, on all four sides: to the northwest, for example,
conducted these various sacrifices annually and, as in earlier there were 97 temples by 1470. Here we have to view Beijing
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times, the processions were huge, choreographed affairs. 18 in its role as capital of the empire. In early Ming political
The locations of the major ritual sites were carefully thought, the equilibrium of the empire depended in part on
chosen to take advantage of existing resources. Long before the harmony of the centre. The sponsorship of religious
the Mongols built a city around the lakes, the entire area had establishments by eunuchs, imperial bodyguards and the
been a magnet for Buddhist temples. Some temples were court itself had many purposes, but one was to promote this
decommissioned so that their trees could be integrated into harmony – not just by creating a peaceful ambience, or
ritual complexes. The Altar of the Spirits of the Soil and the symbolising civic values, but magically as it were, by
Five Grains occupied the former location of a Buddhist concentrating spiritual energy in the place where it mattered
temple, Xingguosi 興國寺 (Temple Revitalising the State), most. As the centre of the empire, therefore, Beijing was
that dated to the Liao dynasty, and inherited trees that had expected to have the densest concentration of religious
been planted there more than three centuries before. A few establishments of any city. Equally, it was expected that the
of those trees – all junipers –are still growing there today. most important of these religious establishments, both inside
The Altar of Heaven and Earth was on the site of an Altar of and outside the city walls, would be imperially sponsored.

Green Beijing: Ecologies of Movement in the New Capital c. 1450 | 51