Talk:Forbidden City
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[edit] Chief Architecture of Chinese Forbidden City is Nguyen An (Juan An), a Vietnamese
So don't say "Vietnam built a palace and fortress that was intended to be a smaller copy of the Chinese Forbidden City" You can find more on “The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7, page 241
[edit] Some Revision
I tried to add some sections and rearrange things slightly to make this article more accessible. It is still probably too long and some might need to be spun off into one or more other articles. I think the first paragraph or two should be easy to read and not cluttered with a lot of complicated information. I did not remove any information, I just reorganized it and made the first paragraph or two much simpler to read. I also made some of the sentences easier to read and shorter, and removed some of the very complicated constructions.--Filll 16:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I think there is no problem with describing all the various names for this facility in different languages and scripts, but I have collected them all in a special section, very early, and leaving the introductory paragraph to be mostly in English (since this is the English version of Wikipedia).--Filll 16:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Number of Rooms
I see there is a lot of confusion that exists about the number of rooms.
- Some sources say that legend had it that the F.C. has 9999 rooms
- some sources say that legend had it that the F.C. had 9999.5 rooms and the .5 room was a staircase
- our article said that the F.C. was reputed to have 9999.5 rooms and the .5 room was a small room off the Imperial library
- our article said that a survey by the palace museum found about 8600 rooms
- our article now says that a survey shows that there are 2,172 remaining intact rooms.
Which if any of these are correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Filll (talk • contribs). oops I didnt sign this--Filll 13:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
- The 8600+ count comes from the Palace Museum website, which seems to be down atm... It also depends on your definition of "room", I guess. Traditionally the big buildings could be subdivided at will because the internal walls were not permanent, so one space defined by four structural pillars would be a "room", which is where the 8600+ or 9999.5 counts come from. My guess is that the 2172 count actually refers to the bigger space, e.g. counting the whole Hall of Supreme Harmony as one "room". --Sumple (Talk) 22:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
- I think you may have a point regarding the definition of a "room." Many of the larger constructions in the palace don't contain fully divided areas, and the style of architecture used by the Chinese may have been part of the reason. Many buildings are not supported by the walls, as most European style buildings are, and having makeshift walls allowed for the ability to change the layout of a room rather quickly if necessary.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.171.106.232 (talk)
The exact numbers of rooms is not known. However Heaven has ten Thousand Rooms and the Forbidden City where the Son of Heaven lived has one room less so therefore it is said by the Chinese that the Forbidden City has 9999 rooms--Lie-Hap-Po--
[edit] Name
Is the name in Chinese Violet Prohibition Castle or Purple Forbidden City??--Filll 13:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
- "Purple forbidden city" is more correct, "Violet Prohibition Castle" sounds like a machine translation or a bad joke.--Niohe 13:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
It is the literal translation published in at least three character dictionaries. Logographic script produces many words that make no sense in literal English. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.171.106.232 (talk)
- And therefore it shouldn't be used here. Good translations make sense in the language into which they have been translated, this is simply a poor translation. Heimstern Läufer 02:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
What it is referred to is mentioned shortly after. It is explicity stated as a literal definition, therefore I restored the literal definition.
- [1]. Here, the organizers of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games refer to the palace as the "Purple Forbidden City". Note also that a Google search for "purple forbidden city" yields 11,600 hits, "Violet Prohibition Castle" returns 1. There's no reason to include such a nonstandard translation in this article, especially since it is incorrect in English. Heimstern Läufer 02:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- I have to agree about going with the more standard translation. That does not mean that the nonstandard translation might not be mentioned in a footnote for completeness, however. --Filll 03:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
-
- ... I'd like to see what dictionary would give that as a translation. My Chinese-English dictionary gives the definitions of the three characters, character by character, as
- zi - "purple; violet";
- jin - "1) prohibit; forbid; ban; 2)imprison; detain; 3)what is forbidden by law or custom; a taboo; 4) forbidden area";
- cheng - "1) city wall; wall; 2)city". [Source: A Chinese-English Dictionary", The Commercial Press, Beijing, 1986]
- For "Zijincheng" it gives: "the Forbidden City (in Beijing)". For "Gugong" (i.e. the Forbidden City) it gives: "the Imperial Palace".
- I think it's pretty clear, that only a deliberate misreading of the dictionary would produce "violet prohibition castle". --Sumple (Talk) 04:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- ... I'd like to see what dictionary would give that as a translation. My Chinese-English dictionary gives the definitions of the three characters, character by character, as
If it is a bad translation then we can remove it from the footnote. I am just trying to be complete and strike a compromise.--Filll 04:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
紫禁城 Zijincheng must be translated in English as Forbidden City, but the Forbidden City is known by the Chinese and must be translated in Chinese as Old Palace Museum Gugong Bowuyuan 故宮博物院 for short Gugong 故宮--Lie-Hap-Po--
The Chinese Language has never been the official language of China before 1958. China has known only two official languages in its entire history The first is 满语 Manyu the Manchu Language from 1644 till 1912. The Second is 普通话 Putongua Mandarin Chinese from 1958 till now. The reason that Chinese wasn't the official language of China, was because all dynasties were Chinese except for the Yuan and Qing so there wasn't a reason to state that the Chinese language was the official language of China.--Lie-Hap-Po--
[edit] Comments
- It appears to me that a lot of people want to shove as much information as possible into the front of the article. I think that this makes the article much less accessible.
- Is it really credible that The Forbidden City is in the exact center of modern Beijing? I do not believe this. And is it necessary to shove this kind of stuff as far up front in the article as possible? --Filll 19:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
--The Palace is no longer in the exact center of Beijing proper, as the developments of the city has not been perfectly balanced in all directions. It was designed to be in the exact center for ritualistic reasons, and remains fairly close to it now.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.171.106.232 (talk)
[edit] Some revisions
- Deleted unencyclopaedic "tourism" section. The important part of that section was the disambiguation statement about the Palace Museum, Peking, vs the National Palace Museum, Taipei. I have moved that to the front because it deals with one of the principal terms of this article, the Palace Museum. The other thing about the Palace Museum being a "major tourist attraction" should not be in this section. If anywhere, it should be in the lead as a part of the notability statement, cf Louvre. However, without concrete numbers it is pretty uselss, so I've deleted it.
- In History, combined single-paragraph subsections. Subheadings serve no purpose if they only delineate paragraphs.
- Retitled the "references in popular culture", because it is patently no longer about popualr culture. Some of these statements need to be removed also, such as the one about "A fictional city called Ba Sing Se in the cartoon series Avatar the Last Airbender is based upon the Forbidden City", which is pretty much unverifiable and probably untrue.
I agree with most of those, although I still favor a more streamlined introduction. --Filll 23:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Opened to Tourism... when?
There should be some little trivia bit on when this was opened to the public for tourisim.
WiiWillieWiki 14:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- I agree that this is somewhat interesting. It has been closed sometimes for renovations too I think. I would also be interested to know the volume of tourists it gets. I am also interested to know what sort of preservation efforts are ongoing and what sort of restoration efforts were undertaken.--Filll 15:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why is this important to have in the first few paragraphs?
The following paragraph people seem to want frantically to have very early in the text:
- The Forbidden City is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 as the "Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties."
Why is it important to have this in the introduction????
I guess I do not understand the seemingly desperate need in this and many other articles to try to shove a huge amount of material as close as possible to the start of the article. At least in my opinion, the introduction should be brief and just a very short summary. Readers should not be overwhelmed by a lot of details in the introduction, but just be able to learn a minimal definition of the subject. In other words, the introduction should answer the question, "What is the article about?". Readers can then continue if they are interested, or move on to something else if they have learned enough in the first few sentences. I will not bother to try to impose my views again, but I am curious as to the reasoning that drives people to want to front load these articles with 20 different translations and etymology and many many dates and caveats and extraneous information and details, to the extent that the introduction tells the reader NOTHING about the subect of the article, since it is so buried in minutae.--Filll 16:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
