Tài Miào 太庙

东长安街
Substantial temple much older than most of the Forbidden City offers quieter means of approach to the palace

The Tiān’ān Mén is flanked by two parks that are almost always overlooked by visitors, particularly the one containing the Tài Miào or ‘Supreme Temple’. Its entrance is only a few metres to the east and provides a peaceful alternative route to the Forbidden City’s main entrance at the Wǔ Mén, avoiding the bedlam of vendors and pestering guides. The magnificent halls here are of the same period as the main Forbidden City palaces and are where the emperors came to kneel before wooden tablets representing their ancestors, to pay their respects and to report important events. Ceremonies were held here when a new emperor took the reins of government, came of age, or got married.

When in 1644 the Manchu Qīng replaced the Míng (whose third emperor built the whole complex), they consigned the Míng tablets to the flames and replaced them with their own.

To the emperors this was the most sacred temple in Běijīng, but under Máo Zédōng it was deliberately put to plebeian purposes as the Workers’ Cultural Palace (北京市劳动人民文化宫, Běijīng Shì Láodòng Rénmín Wénhuà Gōng). Běijīng’s citizens are now more interested in Hollywood blockbusters than the worthy and politically correct events once organized for them here. So it’s often almost deserted, and despite the closure of the heronry and the conversion of side halls to offices, there’s more atmosphere here than in all but the remoter corners of the palace complex itself.

Through the entrance lies a large open area of gnarled and twisted cypresses seemingly just as old as the buildings (originally constructed in 1420 and rebuilt in 1544), each helpfully labelled ‘old tree’ in Chinese, followed by their Latin names. One is said to have been planted by the third Míng emperor himself. Stalls sell snacks, dried fruit and seeds. Beyond, a large glazed gate building is one of the few fragments of the palace and its adjacent buidings to survive since its original construction in 1420 for Yǒnglè, its middle door for deity use only (the left for the emperor), and gives on to a vermilion-walled enclosure with five ornate marble bridges over a man-made stream in direct imitation of the entrance to the Forbidden City itself.

The three main halls, with their great sweeps of yellow roof, formerly held the thrones of dead emperors and their principal consorts, and are nearly as grand as the palace’s centrepiece halls of Harmony. The first, sitting on a triple-layer plinth to indicate its extreme importance, holds a modest exhibition of chimes and ceremonial vessels and would once have been used for sacrifices. The 1420 original burned down and was rebuilt in 1545 on its original scale, using up the last of the largest nánmù trees that were preferred for the most important ceremonial architecture, and this remains the only substantial hall of Míng origins to survive other than the sacrificial hall at the Yǒnglè emperor’s tomb, Cháng Líng, at the Míng Tombs.

The rear hall is used for social functions. Formerly it held the spirit tablets which still stood here in the 1930s, albeit dusty, neglected and no longer in receipt of sacrifices. From a distant corner may come the tinkling of a piano for a ballet class, reinforcing the church hall atmosphere, and outside perhaps a mother demonstrates dance steps to her daughter in the unforgiving stone-flagged courtyard. Boys may play football using the ancient marble balustrades as a goal-mouth and, despite the offence to his ancestors, perhaps the bicycling boy-emperor Pǔyí, the last of the Qīng, might have approved. Sometimes the sound of an èrhú (二胡, two-string fiddle) echoes around the courtyard.

This combination of domesticity and shabby splendour ends at the rear with open space and park benches on the edge of the moat. Exiting to the left brings you out in front of the Wǔ Mén, the main entrance to the Forbidden City to your right, and a rear entrance to the Zhōngshān Gōngyuán straight ahead. Turning left down the west side of the Tài Miào brings you to the ‘deer-shaped cypress’ in a long narrow park, also planted in the Míng, that was supposedly used as the route to ceremonies by the aging Qiánlóng emperor when the trip to the main entrance at the south became too much.

▶ Dōng Cháng’ān Jiē, just east of the Tiān’ān Mén, t 6511 6776, www.bjwhg.com.cn, 8.00am–8.00pm, Apr 1–Oct 30; else 6.30pm. ¥10 (more during special exhibitions). m Tiān’ān Mén East exit A (Line 1). b to 天安门东: 1, 专1, 2, 专2, 10, 52, 59, 82, 90电车外环, 90电车内环, 99, 120, 126, 728.

The northwest exit brings you to the main entrance of the Palace Museum or ‘Forbidden City’.

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