Forbidden City offers up its secrets

TV show gives audiences a glimpse into the hidden gems of a cultural masterpiece, Wang Kaihao reports.

The Forbidden City in Beijing stands like a sentinel to culture and history. Its commanding presence evokes long-gone eras. Not surprisingly, the ravages of time have played a key role in its appearance and finding original work existing since it was built 599 years ago is no easy task.

Indeed, a TV show is challenging celebrity guests to be "detectives" of architecture and look for evidence and remnants of its past.

Since construction of this 720,000-square-meter compound was completed in 1420, almost every building in the imperial palace of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, now officially known as the Palace Museum, has been renovated, several times.

When the first episode of the second season of the variety show on Beijing TV, New Arrival of the Palace Museum was piloted on Nov 8, celebrity guests were seen trying to, literally, unearth the past and find anything they can dating back six centuries.

But the past does not offer up its secrets so readily. After all, the grandiose Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihe Dian), the main ceremonial venue, was first swallowed up by a blaze and burned to the ground only three months after it was built. A litany of other fires from lightning and wars, and subsequent renovation work, makes it difficult to discover what went before.

But the celebrities are up for the challenge and as any good detective can confirm, perseverance pays off. Colorful paintings on the beam within the roof of the Palace of Accumulated Purity (Zhongcui Gong) have shown a surprising resilience.

"The colors and patterns are almost intact," Cao Zhenwei, a researcher of ancient architecture at the Palace Museum, says. "They are the best-preserved paintings from the early Ming Dynasty in the Forbidden City, and are rare survivors that have remained for 600 years."

Despite numerous TV programs, documentaries and research projects, the Forbidden City still has a few surprises in store for those willing to explore. When the first season of the show was aired last year, the former royal yard full of old buildings provided a highlight.

In each episode, two celebrity guest hosts, appointed as "Palace Museum's development ambassadors of creative cultural products", tour the palace with experts to learn about the craftsmanship, cultural connotations and history. Meanwhile, they collected elements during the tour and turned them into inspirations to design derivative cultural products.

Zhang Luyi, actor and a celebrity guest in the show, says: "I grew up in Beijing, and the Palace Museum feels familiar yet sort of mysterious for me. Within the walls, there is a city, and a trove of cultural treasures."

"Talking with experts and scholars in the museum, I can feel people's devotion to preserve this place that has lasted for generations. There's been so much to learn, and I'm sure, even if I had been here 100 times, it would still surprise me on the 101st time."

Visualizing the old glamour

The devil, they say, is in the detail. The show's director Mao Jia says her team has visited the museum over 230 times this year alone.

"Our duty is to visualize those findings that quietly lie in academic papers," Mao says. "If we didn't explore the place thoroughly and deeply, we couldn't figure out clues left in the grand span of history."

The Forbidden City will celebrate its 600th birthday next year and Mao is adamant that recent findings need to be illustrated and presented to the public.

She cites as an example foundations that may unravel the origins of the Forbidden City. They were unearthed in recent years at the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility (Cining Gong), where the timbers that lay soaked in water from around 1420 still gleam. "Archaeological discoveries need to be 'newly' explained and get wider public acknowledgment," she says.

Wang Zilin, a veteran researcher at the Palace Museum who participated in the production of the show, also says that the program has found a new way for academic work to be better understood by the public.

"The crew members are young, in their 20s and 30s, but are rigorous in making sure every academic detail in the program is accurate," Wang says, adding that this program proves that fine arts and academics can complement each other.

"Experts have the power to awaken sleeping relics, and their dialogue with celebrity guest hosts draws in the general public," says Wang.

An eye on new things

The show's first season won the best variety award at the Shanghai TV Festival. And it gained a rating of 8.1 points out of 10 on the film and TV review site Douban, testament that it addressed a deep public vein of cultural pride and inquisitiveness.

The second season, Mao says, still has something new for the viewers, and features an amazing range of royal collections.

"Discussions of the Palace Museum's treasure trove should not be restricted to just 600 years," she explains. "The 1.86 million cultural relics housed in the museum can lead us to objects of China's thousands of years of civilization, and trace back the origins of our nation."

Some typical examples are shown and explained in the show, including a 10th-century painting, The Night Ravel of Han Xizai, which is housed in the museum and generally hailed as one of the most important Chinese artistic milestones.

Another aspect is an insight into how people dressed, something that the painting hints at. Chu Yan, an associate professor at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, leads a team in the show to develop 30 costumes based on the figures in The Night Ravel of Han Xizai.

"The clothes in the painting partially inherited the regal style from the previous Tang Dynasty (618-907)," Chu explains. "But it also shows early signs of a later trend that was to sweep the Song Dynasty (960-1279), which emphasized an elegant and simple style.

"And following the revival of traditional clothes among young people, I believe the painting will be of special interest to a wider audience."

Indeed, the first season also delved into fashion. Sales of pajamas, which were inspired by auspicious cranes, a decorative pattern in the Forbidden City, passed 40 million yuan ($5.7 million), according to Liu Bing, head of Hwachain Culture, which co-produced the show.

"Traditional Chinese culture is becoming part of the everyday lives of the younger generations," Liu says. "Someone even had their wedding costume designed in this style."

Liu believes this example not only reflects the popularity of the show, but also heralds a comeback of Chinese-style fashion and aesthetics. "We are looking at our past and displaying our cultural confidence by giving this legacy a new form," he says.

Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, says: "Thanks to better education, young Chinese people's cultural tastes are becoming more refined, and popular entertainment on TV cannot satisfy them fully. This show fills a gap in their needs."

A third season is also being planned, but Mao says the current second season is holding nothing back. "What I can do for the audience is show everything we have seen," she says with a smile.

Contact the writer at wangkaihao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 11/20/2019 page14)