Excavations at the site of the former Imperial Workshops reveal a treasure trove of artifacts, showcasing the craftsmanship that once flourished there and the grand picture of Beijing as the capital city, Wang Kaihao reports.

After the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Imperial Workshops, located in the western part of the Forbidden City in Beijing, also known as Zaobanchu, fell into disrepair and were a mere shadow of their former glory. Until 1924, the last emperor, Puyi, was allowed to reside in the inner court of the Forbidden City, but even then the abandoned workshop complex was used to grow vegetables.

The following year, though, the Palace Museum was established in the former imperial palace. Zaobanchu gradually became a mesmerizing place, documenting the numerous royal artifacts found in the palace and telling the stories of imperial times and legends.

The Imperial Workshops were first relocated to the site in 1691 on the orders of Emperor Kangxi of Qing, who had them built southeast of the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility (Cining Gong). In the 200-plus years that followed, more than 60 workshops were set up for the production and restoration of a huge range of royal objects, including mechanical clocks, wood pieces, paintings, porcelain, sculptures and enamels.

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People today can hardly imagine the prosperity and industriousness of these facilities from above ground. But thanks to archaeological excavations that began in October 2020, researchers can not only picture the past of the workshop, but also gain a rare glimpse into the centuries-long lineage of the Forbidden City from the artifacts that have been unearthed.

A three-month-long exhibition, Beneath the Nine-Fold Walls: Archaeological Discoveries From the Imperial Workshops Site in the Forbidden City, opened last week in the Yongshou Gong (Palace of Eternal Longevity) Gallery at the Palace Museum and showcases the items that have been uncovered.

The 166 exhibits, most of which come from archaeological work undertaken in the past five years, jointly tell of a timeline full of stories.

"Top-tier artisans from home and abroad gathered in the Forbidden City and the Imperial Workshops became a key place for them to exchange skills and display their outstanding craftsmanship," says Lou Wei, deputy director of the Palace Museum.

"Every ceramic shard, brick or rammed earth piece that was unearthed from the site is a crucial testimony to the splendor of the Forbidden City," he says.

The production

Emperor Kangxi and his successors Yongzheng and Qianlong, for example, particularly favored Western-style mechanical clocks. Between them, they left about 1,500 antique timepieces that are now in the collection of the Palace Museum and are among the finest of their kind in the world.

The emperors were not satisfied with ordering such clocks from Europe. They also wanted to make their own. Clock components unearthed from the site of the Imperial Workshops — including some with decorations in the shape of European figures and dials with Roman numerals — remind people that this was an exceptional era of cultural exchange.

"The workshops operated a nationwide production network," explains Xu Haifeng, a leading archaeologist working on the site and a curator of the exhibition. "In addition to the main site in the Forbidden City, subsidiary workshops were also located in places such as Jingshan, to the north of the Forbidden City, and the Old Summer Palace.

For certain specialized crafts, designs and models created by the Imperial Workshops were sent to weaving and clock-making facilities across the country, like Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

"The workshops thus served as a dynamic platform for the integration of different techniques and artistic traditions," Xu adds.

Though Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province was the major production base for imperial-use ceramics, some porcelain pieces were sent to the Forbidden City for further decoration. At the exhibition, some recently unearthed broken porcelain is juxtaposed with artifacts with the same patterns that have remained intact and are in the Palace Museum's collection.

However, according to Wang Guangyao, a veteran porcelain researcher at the Palace Museum, finding these broken pieces is uncommon, because the rigid management system of Qing imperial porcelains demanded that once a royal porcelain vessel was broken in use, its shards would be sent back to the warehouse. Experts therefore speculate that the porcelain fragments found during the excavations were accidentally broken during the manufacturing process and so left in the workshop.

"Due to the archaeological work, you can also learn about the artisans' everyday life," says Xu. "Unearthed porcelain pieces from folk kilns from across the country, stone artifacts, animal bones and other relics can tell us how they lived and what they ate."

An unearthed tool made from an animal bone and used in a drinking game shows how artisans spent their leisure time. The processing of other bones reveals that the imperial craftsmen used the same techniques on items for their own use as they did for objects used by the royal family. Alternatively, they may have just wanted to practice and refine their skills, even when not working.

"We get a vivid view of everyday life within the Qing imperial palace," says Dong Xinlin, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Thanks to these findings from the craftsmen, we see more than cold archaeological ruins. The artifacts become lively storytellers, and the Forbidden City demonstrates its other face as a vibrant society."

A layered city

Nonetheless, excavations at the site are concerned with much more than just the Qing workshops.

"Beijing is a typical example of a historically layered city," Xu says. "Centuries of structures and remains overlap from the past to the present, particularly densely within the palace walls."

Guided by the principle of "minimal intervention", Xu and his fellow archaeologists seize rare opportunities like the Imperial Workshops site to examine the traces of evolution and thus reconstruct the historical layers long before the place became a complex of Qing workshops.

A Buddhist sanctuary, Dashan Dian (Hall of Great Virtue), once stood on the current spot of Cining Gong in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). However, like people today who redecorate and renovate their homes, the emperors who lived in the Forbidden City also changed the layout of the imperial palace.

Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty was one such active renovator and during his reign, the layout of Beijing's imperial city was dramatically altered. As a pious believer in Taoism, he eventually demolished Dashan Dian and instead built Cining Gong for his mother, although studies show that warehouses existed in the later Ming period on the current Imperial Workshops site.

The past few years' research deep underground at the site has also yielded valuable evidence about the building techniques employed at the Forbidden City during the early years following its completion in 1420.

Remains of three early Ming structures and a wall within the site have been identified.

"The findings provide a compelling glimpse into the grand and sophisticated underground engineering that supported the construction of the Forbidden City," says Xu.

The exhibited bricks, tiles and other constructional components act like jigsaw puzzles, helping people imagine the splendor of these palaces.

Yet, more surprises have been uncovered; components of imperial architecture from the earlier Yuan (1271-1368) and even Jin (1115-1234) dynasties have been unearthed at the site. These new findings are also on show at the Imperial Workshops exhibition.

Xu explains that the concentrated presence of this early architecture on the Imperial Workshops site also reflects a systematic process during the construction of the Forbidden City — bricks and tiles from earlier dynasties were gathered and buried as foundational fill, over which new palaces were built.

"Subsequent reigns continued to build atop these early foundations, gradually raising the ground level to what we see today," he says.

"However, compared with the answers it provides, the excavation raises more questions. Five years of research is only the beginning."

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Dong says that the new round of excavation not only increases the timeline of the Forbidden City studies, but also provides pivotal, archaeological evidence for Beijing's status as a national capital city.

"Such an exhibition is also a meaningful move to share academic achievements with the public," he says. "People will thus deepen their understanding of the Forbidden City."

In the gallery, an 18th-century antique clock from the Palace Museum's collection may remind people of the golden age of the Imperial Workshops, but more importantly, it reminds people of the flow of time.

However much time passes though, the brilliance of the civilization unearthed from the Forbidden City site will remain undimmed for centuries to come.

Contact the writer at wangkaihao@chinadaily.com.cn