The secret of Ci Ning Palace: Why does no one dare to live after Xiaozhuang?

People who travel to Beijing must go to several places, such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Today we will talk about the story in the Forbidden City. From a global perspective, a royal palace can remain so complete. The Forbidden City is the only one in the world. The Forbidden City has a history of more than 500 years.

For more than five hundred years, as the residence and office of the emperors of Ming and Qing dynasties, there must be too many stories in it. Today we will take a look at the story of Cining Palace. Cining Palace was the palace where the Queen Mother of Ming and Qing Dynasties lived. The original meaning of the character "ci" in the three characters of Ci Ning Palace means "kind mother", which represents the place where the emperor's biological mother lived.

慈宁宫

The grandmother of Emperor Kangxi, Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, who we are most familiar with in history, has always lived in Cining Palace, but as the same famous empress dowager Niuhu Lu Zhenhuan, the empress of Emperor Yongzheng, the birth mother of Emperor Qianlong had always lived in Shoukang Palace and never in Cining Palace. Not only that, none of the empress dowagers after the Qing Dynasty lived in Ci Ning Palace, so what is going on?

Later, it was rumored that because Xiaozhuang’s aura was too big, Cining Palace had been haunted, so no one dared to live it anymore. It is said that there is a well in the courtyard of the Ci Ning Palace. During the day, when people look inside, they are dry without water, only some rotten branches, but at night, there is water in it. With moonlight, people can still The shadow of is reflected inside, the key is not your own shadow. You say this is not scary. This is a rumor later, and now it seems that this is of course nonsense. But what is the reason why no one has lived in Cining Palace since then?

寿康宫

Today, let’s take a look. Why doesn’t anyone dare to live in Cining Palace, known as a blessed place? Before we figure this out, let's talk about what happened to Ci Ning Palace. First, let's understand when the Ci Ning Palace in the Forbidden City first came into existence. We know that the Forbidden City is a majestic palace built by Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty. After taking possession of his nephew, Emperor Jianwen, and moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, it cost a lot of manpower and material resources to build a majestic palace, and later rulers of the Qing Dynasty continued to use this Palace. So he is an ancient palace with a history of five hundred years.

Because when Zhu Di captured the country and began to build the Forbidden City, his biological mother, Queen Ma, had already passed away, so when the Forbidden City was built at that time, there was no queen mother at all, and Zhu Di’s own Queen Xu also died early. Therefore, after Zhu Di's successor Ming Renzong became the emperor, there was no such thing as a queen mother, so in this case, there is no need to spend manpower to build a place where the queen mother lives.

Xiaozhuang in the Kangxi Dynasty

So at the beginning, there was no Cining Palace in the Forbidden City. The Cining Palace was built after the eleventh emperor of the Ming Dynasty Jiajing ascended the throne. The Emperor Jiajing built Cining Palace in order to solve the contradiction between the two queen mothers. It turned out that Jiajing's throne did not come from his father. It was his cousin Ming Wuzong Zhu Houzhao. Because Zhu Houzhao's body was weak, he passed away at a young age and had no children, so it was Emperor Jiajing's turn to inherit the throne.

So there is Emperor Jiajing’s biological mother, and his cousin’s mother, two empress dowagers at a time, and the two empress dowagers are still not convinced with each other, fighting every day. Finally, in order to avoid conflicts, Emperor Jiajing built a palace to the west of the center of the palace for his biological mother to live in. This became a custom and gradually evolved into the residence of the emperor's mother, which was later Cining Palace.

Xiaozhuang and the young Kangxi

In the following years, Ci Ning Palace lived in many empress dowagers, among which the more famous is Empress Li, the mother of Emperor Wanli, she is a legend Character, a gorgeous transformation from a maid to a queen mother. But the most prestigious is the Queen Mother Xiaozhuang. He was the concubine of Huang Taiji and assisted the three emperors of the Qing Dynasty throughout his life, especially the emperor Kangxi. For this grandson, Xiaozhuang was carefully nurtured since childhood, and Kangxi, who was enthroned in his childhood, was only able to govern successfully with the support of Xiaozhuang. , In the childhood of Xuan Ye, who lost his father at the age of eight and his mother at the age of ten, aIt was his grandmother's company that allowed him to grow up safely.

Many years of life experience, Kangxi and his grandmother established a deep relationship, so after the death of Xiaozhuang, Kangxi also can not bear to separate from his grandmother, so Kangxi also ignored the opposition of the officials. The coffin of Xiaozhuang has been kept in Cining Palace, and gradually the Cining Palace has become a place to pay tribute to Xiaozhuang. It was not until Yongzheng ascended the throne that Xiaozhuang was put into the soil for security. Since then, the empress dowagers of the Qing Dynasty respected Xiaozhuang, and no one dared to stay in Cining Palace to offend this ancestor.

The Cixi in the film and television drama

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, there was another quite powerful empress, that is, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who has held the actual power of the Qing Dynasty for forty-eight years Or, why didn’t she move into Cining Palace? Those who know Cixi know that Cixi has lived in the Chuxiu Palace when she first lived as a Langui. That's because it was there that he gave birth to the only son of Emperor Xianfeng, who was later Emperor Tongzhi. She thinks it is her blessed place, so she has been reluctant to move away. There is another reason, in order to show the world that she was like Xiaozhuang, assisting the two emperors of Tongzhi and Guangxu, not for greed for power. Show your attitude to the world, set up an arch for yourself, not going to Cining Palace is the best expression.

So on the whole, it is not that Cining Palace is haunted and uninhabited. It's just that the posterity is out of awe. In order to say that we must not listen to the unofficial history, lead people to superstition. We also want to be a person who distinguishes right from wrong. The rumors stop at the wise...