Altar of Agriculture 先农坛
宣武门东经路往南坐
Quiet, often overlooked altar site near Temple of Heaven
Part of A Better Guide to Beijing’s coverage of South of Qián Mén
This is also the Běijīng Museum of Ancient Architecture (北京古代建筑博物馆, Běijīng Gǔdài Jiànzhù Bówùguǎn).
The outer enclosure has almost completely vanished, and all but a small portion of the site, which once had four altars and several sets of buildings for offerings to different gods, has been invaded by modern construction.
The current gate once merely provided passage through an internal wall, an attractively dilapidated section of which survives to its west. The site was the headquarters of the US military during the foreign occupation of Běijīng in 1900–1.
In a ceremony dating back to the Sòng, but formalised by the Míng and Qīng and carried out at this site from 1420, the emperor himself, in honour of the first agriculturalist and to encourage the peasants to be good farmers (although none of them would have been able to see these rites), would drive a plough to cut eight furrows, or later would merely dress up and get his officials to do it for him. Senior city officers carried whips, broadcast seed, and cut further furrows, while the emperor watched from a terrace which still exists in the southeast corner of the site, along with a hall he used for changing to special leather clothes for the ceremony, although the land used is now beneath a school basketball court. Grain harvested here was stored and later used as offerings in other temples around Běijīng.
The halls for sacrifices to Jupiter that took place at the end of each year still stand, and the main hall is particularly magnificent. It contains an excellent exhibition on traditional Chinese architecture that provides an introduction to what you’ll see in Běijīng and elsewhere.
The exhibition describes Chinese architectural methods from early earthworks to the construction of major halls. Detailed models show the interior workings of the complicated bracket sets (斗拱, dǒugǒng) that hold up the roofs of every ancient building you enter in China and are sometimes imitated in brick and stone in memorial archways and elsewhere. There are plenty of English explanations although these include outrageous claims that the Chinese were the first inventors or sole users of some techniques. Diagrams and explanations of social background include material on the role of geomancy (风水, fēngshuǐ) in traditional buildings, the use of mathematics in building construction, and discussions of the use of form, colour, decoration, and different jointing methods.
In the second hall, on your left as you proceed, there’s a reproduction of a Hàn dynasty tomb (see also Museum of the Western Hàn Tombs at Dàbǎotái), a table model of the Míng Tombs (Shísān Líng), and from the Qīng a model of Dowager Empress Cíxǐ’s tomb (Eastern Qīng Tombs). There are other displays on minority architecture, drum stones, sìhéyuàn courtyard houses, and more.
The rearmost hall, the Tàisuì Diàn (太岁殿, Hall of Jupiter the Year God) was built by the Jiājìng emperor in 1532, later than most of the rest of the site. He significantly revised Míng rites and added various altars both here and around the city. This magnificent building is exceeded in scale only by the main Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City. Keeping to a calendrical theme, halls to either side were for the gods of the four seasons and the 12 months.
The Hall of Jupiter has substantial models of significant buildings still surviving in China and fragments of ones now vanished. They include the caisson ceiling of the Lóngfú Sì, once famous for its temple fair and more recently the site of a large modern department store (now closed) with a token temple on top opposite the north end of Wángfǔ Jǐng Dàjiē. It also has sections on others never likely to be open to the public, such as the ‘double ring’ pavilion inside the Zhōng Nán Hǎi government compound (although two buildings removed from there can be seen at Táorán Tíng Park).
There’s a detailed survey of the religious buildings that are likely to occupy much of your time in China, including an introduction to the evolution of the Buddhist pagoda (see also Stupa, Dagoba, Chorten, or Pagoda?), and various altars and ancestral temples. An enormous table model shows the city’s plan in 1949, including the foreign-built railway line, the fortified Legation Quarter, and the locations of various long-disappeared temples and páilou.
Various store rooms for equipment used in the ceremonies (all yellow in the emperor’s case) and halls where the empress waited for the emperor to finish playing farmer are also now covered in factories, accommodation, and schools. But thanks to a US$225,000 World Monuments Fund project that began in 2002, the Divine Kitchen (where sacrifices were prepared), its gate, two well houses, and two other pavilions, all in a newly-opened compound to the west of the Hall of Jupiter, have been rescued from collapse. These now hold exhibitions about the legendary ancestors who taught the Chinese agriculture and saved them from starvation: Xiānnóng means ‘first farmer’.
Another newer-looking hall from the Jiājìng emperor’s time cannot be entered but traditionally contained tablets representing various meteorological gods as well as those of mountains and rivers, now represented by a recent monument in the form of stone markers. Perhaps the authorities were hoping for their help with the Olympic weather.
▶ Xiānnóng Tán, Dōng Jīng Lù 21, t 6304 5608, Tue–Sun, 9am–4pm. ¥15; free on Weds. nb free English guides at limited times. t 6317 2150 to reserve; audio guide ¥20 plus ¥100 deposit. b as for the Temple of Heaven west gate, or to 福长街: 15, 35.
It’s a short walk through the former entertainment district of Tiān Qiáo to the Temple of Heaven. Walk north back up Dōng Jīng Lù (东经路) then east along Nán Wěi Lù (南纬路).
Next in South of Qián Mén: Běijīng Natural History Museum
Previous: Altars for all Seasons (story)
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
