Notas del episodio
The Temple of Heaven in Beijing was built in 1420 by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty, the same ruler who built the Forbidden City, and renamed in 1534 by the Jiajing Emperor. It was the stage for a terrifying ritual: at the winter solstice the emperor, as the Son of Heaven, prayed for a good harvest, and a single stumble or dropped jade tablet was believed to doom the nation to famine. Before the ceremony he fasted and gave up meat, alcohol, and music, and commoners had to lock themselves indoors so their gaze would not pollute the procession. The 2.73 square kilometer complex, larger than the Forbidden City, maps Chinese cosmology with a circular north wall for heaven and a square south wall for earth.
Its centerpiece, the 38 meter Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, is built entirely of wood with no nails, held together by interlocking dougong brackets and mortise and tenon joints that let it flex in storms and earthquakes. It burned after a lightning strike in 1889 and was rebuilt. Later the site was occupied by the Anglo-French alliance during the Second Opium War, used as a military command post by the Eight Nation Alliance in 1900, and left to rot after the Qing fell in 1912. In 1914 Yuan Shikai performed the old Ming prayer to bolster his bid to become emperor, and rioters damaged the central altar during the Cultural Revolution. It opened as a public park in 1918 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.
- Pillars that work as a calendar: 4 for the seasons, 12 for the months, 12 for the two-hour periods of the day, and 24 for the solar terms
- The Circular Mound Altar, built in 1530 and enlarged in 1740, with the Heart of Heaven stone where the emperor's voice resonated off the marble
- The mortarless Echo Wall around the Imperial Vault of Heaven that carries a whisper across the courtyard
- An obsession with the number nine, from nine plates around the center stone out to 81 in the ninth ring
- Today's 267 hectares of parkland filled with tai chi, chess, choirs, and dancing, reached from the Temple of Heaven East Gate station on Line 5