You are the april day of the world

Chapter 46 Speech at the Concorde Auditorium, November 1931, 11
ladies and gentlemen!Architecture is the language of the world. When you set foot on a strange land, perhaps the first thing you talk to is the architecture on this land.It will tell you the history of this nation and the spirit of beauty unique to this country in a unique style of a nation. It is more real than the image written in history books, and has more cultural connotations. into your soul.The long course of human civilization, many tragic historical scenes, have disappeared like a dream, but in the time-space evolution of nature and society, architectural culture has tenaciously retained the spiritual temperament and connotation of history, its unified space combination, proportion The beautiful form of scale, color and texture reveals the political, philosophical, religious, ethical, folklore and other ideological connotations of the era, society, country and nation.We might as well look at the palace buildings in Peking first.

The city of Beiping is almost entirely based on the "craftsman camp country, square nine miles, three gates by the side, nine longitudes and nine latitudes, nine tracks of longitude, left ancestor and right society, facing the future market" in "Book of Zhou" and "Kao Gong Ji". Planning thought built up.Seen from the map, Beiping City is a neat "convex" shape, and the Forbidden City is its center.Except for a small corner in the northwest corner of the city wall, the layout of the whole city is basically symmetrical.From north to south, there is a central axis running through the whole city.Starting from the Bell and Drum Tower in the north, passing through Jingshan Mountain, passing through the Shenwu Gate to the three main halls in the center of the Forbidden City.Then go out from the Meridian Gate, Tiananmen, Zhengyangmen to Yongdingmen, with a total length of 8000 meters.This sense of integrity and stability in the layout of the city has aroused the infinite admiration of Western architects and scholars, calling it one of the wonders of the world.

China's feudal society is obviously different from that of the West.The concept of feudalism in China is basically centralization, complete and unified at different levels.In such a feudal social structure, its social characteristics must be reflected in culture. One is to establish a unified feudal order based on "rituals", which is cultural ethics; As an artistic feature, it reflects the demeanor of a great feudal country. Imagine how you would feel when you stood in front of the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City?Maybe it's the aggressive sublime!From fright to wonder to sublime, this is the feeling psychology of the architectural image of the palace.

"Zuo Zu You She" refers to the imperial palace, "Zuo Zu" refers to the Taimiao on the left, and "You She" refers to the Sheji Altar on the right. "Pang Sanmen" refers to the east, west and north gates respectively.The Temple of Sun and the Temple of Moon are located in the east and west of the city respectively, the Temple of Heaven is in the south and the Temple of Earth is in the north. "Nine longitudes and nine latitudes" means that there are nine main streets in the north-south direction and east-west direction in the city.

However, the main streets in the north and south can be paralleled by nine vehicles and horses at the same time, that is, "nine tracks of passing through".So you can imagine that when Marco Polo arrived in Beiping, he was as frightened as a bumpkin entering the city. Europeans have never seen such a great city!
What attracted Marco Polo was the incomparably close relationship between man and nature shown in Chinese architecture.Traditional Chinese architectural groups show a clear and rational spirit, and nothing can best reflect this than the square, square, group, and round architectural forms.

Square is the Fangjiuli I just mentioned, the square city with three gates next to it, and the square buildings with square layout; Zheng means neat, orderly, central axis, and symmetrical; group means simple individuals, along the horizontal direction, Spread out complex and rich groups; circles represent celestial bodies, the universe, sun, moon and stars such as the Temple of Heaven, the Temple of Earth, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Moon.However, Chinese architectural art has always carried out the humanistic consciousness that man is the spirit of all things, and pursues the realistic ideal of life and artistic taste in the world. The state of fusion of "Yu" moved Marco Polo. "Facing the market outlook" also refers to the imperial palace. In front of the imperial palace is the administrative agency of the imperial court, so the emperor faces the imperial court. "City" refers to the commercial area. The feudal society despised industry and commerce, so the commercial area was placed behind the palace.The current Wangfujing Street prospered only after the Republic of China.In the past, Di'anmen Street and Gulou Street were the most prosperous business districts serving nobles in Beiping.The commercial area outside Qianmen was originally in the southwest of Beiping City. Most of the Yuan Dynasty buildings were built in today's Beiping City, and of course they have connections with Jin and Jiu.

This kind of chessboard-style layout with left ancestors and right communities facing the future market, the overall urban composition is uniform, and the embedding of three groups of natural environments, namely Zhongnanhai, Jingshan and Beihai, enlivens the urban atmosphere and adds vividness to the urban landscape. It uses the combination of planning beauty and natural beauty to achieve diversity and unity, just like the walls of the ancient Roman arena, which continuously extend along the elliptical equal trajectory, and the circular body of the building appears complete and unified. The column-style composition is used to form a strong contrast between straight lines and arcs, horizontal and vertical, imaginary and real surfaces. This is the use of geometric means to achieve the diversity and unity of architectural beauty.But this kind of beauty is not image, but structure.Its artistic charm is produced by epiphany, but the result is ethical, which is also an important feature in ancient Chinese culture and art.

Ladies and gentlemen!Today we talked about the architecture of the imperial city in China. In the next lecture, I will talk about the religious architecture in China. Before that, I would like to read a poem written by my friend to you: "Changzhou Tianning Temple Wenli Confession", the religious emotion reflected in this poem is in harmony with the beauty of religious architecture:

I listened to the ritual repentance of Tianning Temple!

Where did this god come from?There is no such realm in the world!
There is a sound of a drum, a sound of a bell, a sound of a pan, a sound of a wooden fish, and a sound of a Buddha's horn... The music echoes slowly and long in the hall, countless conflicting waves are harmonized, countless opposite colors are purified, and countless worldly The high and low disappear... This sound of the Buddha's horn, a sound of a bell, a sound of a drum, a sound of wooden fish, and a sound of a rock, the homophonic sound is resonant in the universe-unraveling a small dust of time and closing the cause and effect of countless centuries; this is Where does the great harmony come from—the brilliance in the sea of ​​stars, the sound of the world, the torrent of true life:

At the ends of heaven and earth, between the golden rafters, between the brows of Buddha statues, in my sleeves, in my ears, in my senses, in my heart, in my heart In the dream... In the dream, this glimpse shows the blue sky, white water, green grass, and the gentle heart of a loving mother, is it the hometown?Is it your hometown?

Bright wings, flying in the infinite!

The joy that flowed from the bottom of the Great Perfection Realized in the great, solemn, silent, boundless, and harmonious stillness!
Praise, Nirvana, praise, Nirvana!

(End of this chapter)