Chinese Vernacular Architecture

Certainly Zhu Xie also included some photographs in his book, but it was the maps that were equally important, if not more so, than the textual verifications of the palace buildings, since he regarded the lack of maps thereof to be a common problem in early sources of palatial architecture. He based his maps on two primary textual sources: one major and one minor. The major source was Xiao Xun’s text, because as Zhu reasoned, “it was a record of field investigations,” [25] providing an experiential framework for his work; the minor source was Chuo Geng Lu, a late Yuan dynasty compilation of essays on various aspects of the Yuan society, with a section on its palatial buildings, which would provide, according to Zhu, “a contemporaneous framework of reference.” [26] Therefore Zhu’s method of working through Xiao’s text was very similar to that adopted by the authors of Clarifications of the Old Stories; in his own words, his maps “were based on primary materials, compromising various sources to create detailed [visual] verifications [of the Yuan palaces].” [27]

Zhu Xie also acknowledged the occasional inaccuracy of Xiao’s account. Here he copied, word for word, the text from the earlier Clarifications on Xiao’s mistakes, although without acknowledgement. He went further; when he copied also the reasons for Xiao’s inaccuracy, he did not entertain the speculative nature of the earlier editors. For Zhu Xie, it was simply a matter of fact that “When Xiao was dismantling the Yuan palaces, what he saw was only from a quick glance at thousands of doors and gates inside the compound. It is only natural that he would have been mistaken at times.” [28]

Other than the textual sources on which Zhu Xie based the creation of his maps, he also relied on earlier visual materials. One of these was a map from 1908 called Detailed Map of Beijing. He superimposed his map of the Yuan palaces on that map depicting Beijing of a much later time (Fig. 1). Another base for his visual work was one of Zhu Qiqian’s maps, although not without corrections to it. Although Zhu Xie criticized Zhu Qiqian for constructing his maps from descriptions of Chuo Geng Lu, whose account of the palaces “provided only individual dimensions, and not spatial distances,” and thus coming up with maps that were largely results of “estimation,” [29] Zhu Xie’s maps themselves were plagued and compromised in the same way. One of the most palpable examples is his map of the palaces western of the lakes, namely, the Xingsheng, Longfu Palaces and the Western Imperial Resort. He encountered the same problem here: “[These] three places have only individual dimensions, without spatial distances [between buildings]. And since there are 172 bays of the wu around the Yanchun Pavilion as there are around the Longfu Palace, I am taking it tentatively as that these two palaces are of equal size, and the rest of the palaces are estimated and mapped accordingly.” [30] (Fig. 2)

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Inside the southern Lizhengmen Gate is called A Thousand Steps Corridor, which is about 700 steps. [1] [There is] a Lingxingmen Gate with screen walls. [The walls are] about 20 li in circumference. The locals call them the Hongmen Lanma Wall. About dozens of (another version says twenty) steps inside the gate is a river. Three white stone bridges, called Zhouqiao Bridges, are built on the river, with carvings of dragons and phoenixes and auspicious clouds, as bright as jade. Underneath the bridges are four white stone dragons projecting from the water, quite a splendid scene.

This is how a brief text, merely four to five pages long, on the palace complex of the fallen Yuan dynasty (1271 – 1368) was started by its author Xiao Xun, an official from the succeeding Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644), at the end of the fourteenth century. Entitled (Yuan) Gugong Yi Lu [Relics of the Former (Yuan) Palace], [2] this text would be considered by subsequent scholars of palatial buildings, or more generally, historic architecture from the Yuan period, and other related aspects of the Yuan dynasty, as one of the most valuable and reliable primary sources on their specific subject. Although during the long five to six centuries after the text first appeared in print,[3] there has been continuous suspicion expressed about the accuracy of it, the text nevertheless has – even to this day – been quoted and referenced over and over again, with the few occasional deviations seeming to buttress its relevance and validity just the same. My essay thus examines the process and means through which this particular text, Relics of the Yuan Palace, has been constructed into a reliable and valuable historic source on the Yuan palaces. I will pay close attention not only to the original text itself, but also, and more importantly, to subsequent citing and referencing, sometimes straight-forward copying (although not always with acknowledgment), more often editing and rewriting of the original. I intend to trace the development of the narrative as it goes through various interpretations, particularly in the more influential discourse. Through this peculiar example, I will argue that historic narratives, however ambiguous their origins and value might have been, gradually but steadily gain validity and credibility in time through the simple act of narrating, repeating and rewriting.

Xiao Xun’s account was presumed to have been written (though there was no exact indication of the time when it was written or first published in his own text) during the very first years of the Ming dynasty. One particularly curious aspect surrounding this account is the situation under which Xiao’s visit to or writing of the Yuan palace compound occurred. Just as shown at the beginning of this essay, Xiao Xun himself did not leave any note about the occasion, time, length or purpose of his visit to the Yuan palace. In fact, he never stated explicitly that he did in fact visit the palace. The only information we have on the circumstance of his “visit” comes from two prefaces which were added subsequently to the original text, one from the later period of the first Ming emperor Hongwu’s reign (1368 – 1398), in the year 1396; the other from much later, in 1616. Both prefaces stated that Xiao was able to visit the Yuan palace because he was an official of the Ministry of Works (Gong Bu) and was involved in the “destruction” of the Yuan capital/ palace.

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