What's it like to sacrifice to the Temple of Heaven?

The Temple of Heaven, formerly known as the Heaven and Earth Temple, was built in the 18th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1420), located outside Zhengyangmen in the inner city of Beijing at that time, with a total area of 273 hectares. It was built and rebuilt in Jiajing and Qingganlong Dynasties in Ming Dynasty, with magnificent architecture and solemn environment. It is the place where emperors of Ming and Qing dynasties sacrificed to the gods of heaven and earth. In the ninth year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1530), an altar dedicated to the gods was built in the northern suburb of Beijing, and it was renamed "Temple of Heaven". During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, sacrifices were held three times a year, presided over by the emperor himself. On the first day of the first month, a prayer ceremony was held in the Hall of Prayer for the New Year, praying for God to bless the bumper harvest. On an auspicious day in April, I went to the ball altar to pray for rain from Cooper. That winter, I went to the ball altar on the solstice to tell people that there was a bumper harvest of grain. During the big sacrifice, the main sacrifice is God, the ancestors of the emperor, and the sun, moon, stars, clouds, rain and thunder.

The Temple of Heaven is a well-preserved temple complex. No matter in the overall layout or in the single building, it highlights the characteristics of sacrificial places, embodies the relationship with heaven and earth, the four seasons, and also embodies the imperial power thought of theocracy. Seen from the plane, the Temple of Heaven is round in the north and round in the south, symbolizing a round place. There are two altars on the north-south central axis, separated by a wall. The ancients thought that "the sky is a round place", so the southern part of the Temple of Heaven wall is square, symbolizing the image of the earth, and the northern part is round, symbolizing the image of the sky. This wall is commonly known as the wall of heaven and earth. The main buildings in the Temple of Heaven are concentrated on the north-south central axis, which are separated by walls and connected by a stone bridge 360 meters long and 30 meters wide. The two altars "Waqiu" and "Gucci" are also located on the central axis, separated by a wall. In the north, it is a place to pray for a bumper harvest, and in the south, it is a place to worship the gods.

The center of the altar for praying for the Valley is the Hall for Praying for the New Year, which was built in the 18th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1420). It is located on a round white marble pedestal, which is divided into three layers and is 6 meters high. Each floor has carved white marble railings. The Hall of Prayer for the New Year is a circular building with a gold-plated roof and three pavilions, with a diameter of 32 meters and a height of 38 meters. The roof of the main hall has three eaves, and the upper floor is blue, representing the sky. The middle layer is yellow, representing the monarch; The lower layer is green, representing the subjects. During the renovation of Qianlong period, all three eaves were replaced with blue glazed tiles. The Hall of Prayer for the New Year is "like heaven and earth" everywhere, which is the only remaining example of the ancient Tang Ming (a sacrificial building dedicated to the ancient emperors in China). The structure of the main hall is unique, without girders and long purlins. The eaves are supported by columns and castles. The four dragon pillars in the middle of the main hall are19.2m high, symbolizing the four seasons. Twelve gold pillars in the middle layer symbolize twelve months; There are twelve columns on the outer layer, symbolizing twelve hours a day. Add up to twenty-four, symbolizing twenty-four festivals; The three floors add up to 28, symbolizing 28 stars on Sunday; Add eight sub-columns at the top of the column, representing thirty-six days; The Leigong column under the top of the treasure represents the emperor's unification of the whole country. The Kowloon algae well in the temple is extremely exquisite and magnificent, and the plane round marble on the ground has a black texture, which naturally forms a dragon and phoenix pattern, commonly known as "the dragon and phoenix stone". In front of the Hall of Prayer for the New Year, there are nine halls in the east and nine halls in the west, which are called Dong Gai and Xi Gai, and are warehouses for collecting memorial tablets. In the 15th year of Guangxu reign in Qing Dynasty (1889), Daxiong Hall was destroyed by lightning and rebuilt the following year, but the basic architectural form and structure remained the same as that of Ming Dynasty.

Ball altar, also known as altar, roof altar and altar, is an open-air circular stone altar. The ball court was built in the 9th year of Jiajing in Ming Dynasty (1530). The original altar surface and guardrail were all made of blue glazed bricks. In the 14th year of Qingganlong (1749), the fence column was changed to white marble, and the altar surface was changed to mugwort bluestone. The altar is 534 meters in circumference and 5.2 meters in height, which is divided into three layers: upper, middle and lower. In ancient times, odd numbers in the imperial vault of the Temple of Heaven, such as one, three, five, seven and nine, were called yang numbers, also called days. Nine is the pole of yang number, indicating the highest to the maximum, and the emperor is the son of heaven, which is also the highest to the maximum. Therefore, all the stone slabs, stone fences and railings in the ball altar. The design of the four terraces all uses nine or multiples of nine to express the authority of the son of heaven. In the center of the altar is a round marble called "Tianxin Stone". From the center to the outside, there are three layers of countertops, and each layer is covered with nine circles of fan-shaped slate. The 1 cycle above is nine, the second 18, the third 27 … and so on, and the ninth cycle is 8 1. Standing on the Tianxin stone, even if the voice is very low, it is very loud, as if hundreds of millions of people are responding. The emperor regarded this as the return and response of the people in the world to the court. In fact, this is because the altar surface is smooth, and the sound wave can quickly spread in all directions, hitting the surrounding stone fence, reflecting back, blending with the original sound and doubling the volume.

The ancillary buildings of the ball altar include imperial vault and its accessories, sacred vault, sacred kitchen, sacrificial platform and three vaults (sacrificial vault, musical instrument vault and Brown's recommended vault). The Imperial Dome is located in the north of the ball altar. This is where the sacrifices are stored. The main hall is round and symbolizes the sky. The hall was painted with gold paint and gold powder, which was magnificent and unique in the architecture at that time. The imperial vault was built in the 9th year of Jiajing in Ming Dynasty (1530), formerly known as the ancestral temple. In the seventeenth year of Jiajing (1538), it was renamed the Imperial Treasury. Originally a double-eave pyramid roof building, it was rebuilt in the 17th year of Qing Qianlong (1752) and changed to a single-eave pyramid roof with a gold-plated blue tile. There are five temples in the east and west, which are used to store the sacred tablets of the holy mountain. The main hall and the east and west walls are surrounded by smooth circular walls, with a height of 3.72m, a thickness of 0.9m, a diameter of 61.5m and a circumference of193.2m, which are called echo walls. If two people stand on the east and west walls respectively, and one person speaks to the wall, the sound will continue to refract along the wall and reach the other end of 100 meter. No matter how small the voice is, the other party can hear clearly. There is a stone tunnel between the Royal Dome and the glass door to the south of the fence. In front of the south step of the Imperial Palace, there are the first, second and third slates from north to south, which are called the Sanyinshi, or Echo Stone. When you stand on the first slate near the terrace, you can hear one echo, when you stand on the second slate, you can hear two echoes, and when you stand on the third slate, you can hear three echoes. This is because the three stone slabs are located in the middle of the fence, so no matter which one you stand on, you can hear an echo; Also, because sound waves refract from the fence at different distances, they will hear echoes at different times.

The three main buildings on the central axis are the altar, the yellow altar and the altar. The road connecting these three main buildings is a 360-meter-long and nearly 30-meter-wide avenue, which is called "single-pen bridge" because there is a three-dimensional intersection between the tunnel and the avenue, also known as Shinto or Haiyuan Avenue. The southern end of Danbi Bridge is 1 m high, and gradually rises to 3 meters from south to north, symbolizing that this road is connected with the Heavenly Palace, and the emperor ascended to heaven step by step from south to north. In the middle of the bridge deck is Shinto, on the left is Imperial Road, and on the right is King Road. The emperor takes the imperial way, the ministers take the kingly way, and the immortals take the Shinto way. Cattle, sheep, pigs, deer and other livestock used for worship to the sky pass through the sacrificial road under the bridge from west to east and are sent to the sacrificial pavilion for slaughter.

In addition to the main building of the Temple of Heaven, there is a large area of green space. There are more than 1 10,000 pines and cypresses in the Temple of Heaven, of which about 2,600 are over 300-600 years old. According to legend, the cypress planted 1420 years ago is 10 m in height and 1.2 m in DBH. The concave and convex patterns on the surface of the trunk are like dragons around columns.

Now, the Temple of Heaven is still one of the landmark buildings in China. It is famous for its rigorous architectural layout, peculiar architectural structure and magnificent architectural decoration. In 2003, the unveiling ceremony of the Olympic emblem was held here.