Imagining Imperial Grandeur

The crowds at the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace were, as usual for China, overwhelming. A board at the Summer Palace (it was wise of them not to attempt to translate 颐和园 from the Chinese) estimated 42,000 visitors. It was not all that bad---for one thing, the tour groups that made up a large part of the 42,000 tended to congregate at certain spots and completely ignore others, leaving them as spacious and undisturbed as they were meant to be. Still it was quite a crowd.

Imagine when the gardens and the palace were still imperial property. When its serenity and grandeur were savoured only by a select few---and a large army of servants scurrying around, but it would have been part of their job descriptions to be unobtrusive. The halls of the 外朝 would still have seen plenty of court officials and their entourages, but they would be moving in an orderly, regimented way; the scene would have been vastly different from that presented by today's swarms of tourists, roaming around at will.

The Chamber of Petitions in the Topkapı would have been a very much more restricted, sanctified place, open only to the Sultan and his closest viziers, and only permitted to others with their express permission, instead of the general free-for-all it is today.

Thus Black, in Pamuk's My Name is Red, could be awestruck with wonder in the Second Courtyard, and be quaking with enthralled fear in the Third ... That atmosphere of forbidden rarefaction has probably been lost completely with the fall of emperors. But surely that isn't something we should be sad about, is it? It is utterly insignificant compared to the liberation of the masses.