Qi Zhu- In the Radiance of Fire Pearl - Rebirth via Ming Tang

Abstract Under the command of Wu Zhao, the only Chinese female emperor, Ming Tang as a materialization of ancient Chinese cosmology and ritual order was reimagined and built celebrating her political legitimation in the culturally pluralistic capital, Luoyang.

By examining the physical structure and symbolic geometry of the unprecedented administrative and ritual building, I will unfold how Ming Tang as an architectural and ideological archetype went through rebirth via the interaction of “three- teachings� in contemporary literary, political and cultural context.

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Introduction In the twelfth lunar month of AD 688, Dowager Empress Wu (later as Emperor Wu Zhao 武曌) witnessed the completion of her will to build the sacred ritual palace Ming Tang on the original site of the Heavenly Origin Hall (Qianyuan Dian 乾元殿) which was the central administrative court in Sui and Tang Eastern Capital, Luoyang (Figure 1). According to Sima Guang’s record, the Ming Tang was a 92-meter-tall wooden complex seated on the pounded-earth platform which combined the 86meter-tall main body and the 6-meter-tall decoration atop (2018, 3886). Harnessing five rings of “column forests” as the support to bracket arches (Dougong 斗拱) above, three levels of eaves atop with a palace apex-roof (Cuanjian ding 攒尖顶) were raised with increasing heights (Jianhua 2020). Prefabricated and completed in one year by professionals and thousands of corvée labor (Sima 2018, 3885-3886), the Ming Tang fused archetypes of the palace, the ancestor temple and the tower pavilion that had long been specialized vocabularies in Chinese architecture since Eastern Han Dynasty.

Figure 1 Plan of Luoyang Palace City and the change of Qianyuan Dian into the Ming Tang, the Palace city plan from “Henan Zhi”, as preserved in Yongle dadian, juan 9561. First Cited by Nancy Shatzman (1990). From “Chinese Imperial City Planning” (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). The plan of Ming Tang redrawn by Daiheng Guo (2010), Tsinghua University Design and Research Institute, accessed 08/03/2020, from www.thupdi.com/project.

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Five years after sixty-six-year-old Wu Zhao ascended the imperial throne in AD 690, one critical conflagration destroyed the Ming Tang (AD 695). The female emperor resumed the project and additionally commissioned nine bronze tripods (Ding 鼎) to be displayed in the ground-floor palace, as well as one six-meter-tall bronze fire pearl atop the roof instead of the previous feminine iron phoenix . With honorific tablets to Li-clan and Wu-clan ancestors who both assumed origins in Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC), the revival of the Zhou political sacred palace Ming Tang in a novel way was intended to resuscitate heavenly order of the past sagely dynasty for Emperor Wu Zhao’s power legitimation and the capital city’s sanctification1.

In this essay, I would start with the discussion on the Ming Tang’s wooden structure as a functional and symbolic resurrection of pre-Zhou public political space celebrated by Confucian ritual order; then inspired by Cui Shu’s poem on the fire pearl atop the Ming Tang, I would explore Luoyang’s political and religious context in Wu Zhao’s power transition, associated with the Ming Tang’s Daoist plan and Buddhist inspirations unified in the framework of Li (礼 ritual order). By examining the Ming Tang’s position in Li, I will conclude that Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang existed as a vessel encapsulating the ritual order which revived the past golden age with the zeitgeist of centralization and open-endedness.

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Li-clan refers to the royal family of Tang dynasty; while the Wu-clan is Wu Zhao’s genealogy which was attributed to the Zhou (c. 1046-256 BC) royal clan by her political propaganda.

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Wood Centerpiece – Ming Tang as the Focus As contemporary scholar Yizhi Shen researched, Ming Tang as a collective administrative space originated following the expansion of tribal clans under male power 2 (1995, 383). Controlling advanced knowledge and production resources, strengthened leadership bonded the extending society together by ordering agricultural cycles and ethical relationships in changing circumstances. “With increasing social hierarchies”, Zhongtian Yi suggested in his “History of China: The Founder” that “the ruling class endeavored to maintain the balance between open policies and centralized authority primarily to secure their patrilineal power sustainably” (2013, 7-8).

With awareness of “balanced order” (Zhongyong 中庸), Confucian scholars from Eastern Zhou (771-256 BC) to Han (202 BC – AD 220) reviewed the history before “Three Sagely Dynasties” - Xia, Shang and Zhou, (a.c.2070 – 256 BC) and characterized two ideal rulers, Yao 尧 and Shun 舜, of tribal unions who demised the domination (shanrang 禅让) out of primary family clan3. The Han Dynasty scholar Liu An recorded in “Huainan Zi” that Yao and Shun marked their administrative space by “raising one wooden pole in front of the proper palace, for people to carve on their opinions about political success and failure … contemporary people admired the direction of the wooden pole and called it the ‘Critical Wood’ ” (2016, 22).

The so-called “Critical Wood” (Feibang Mu 诽 谤 木 ) was derived from past conventions with injection of timely spirit. Regarding its outstanding height compared to modest wattle-and-daub palace chambers, the wood served as a landmark orienting the political center in one tribal community. Instead of oral discussions, the act of “carving opinions on the wood” guaranteed the literary capacity of the political participants, also crediting more sense of responsibility. Together, the volunteers who commented on the wood (who turned into scholars and officers in imperial era), the 2

In this essay, I put contemporary figure’s first name before the family name, while for historical figures and scholars, I put the family name before the first name according to Chinese conventions.

3 The transition of power involving the “virtue” beyond genealogical constrains also inspired Wu Zhao to legitimate her own rule under the name of Zhou.

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judging leader (who was the predecessor of emperors) and the surrounding crowds (who became the loyally subordinating commoners) from all directions formed a ceremonial scene around the wood as the centerpiece. This scene demonstrated the origin of Li as ritualized social order, in which the “Critical Wood” played the role of a Li Qi referring to an object encapsulating the function and connotation of ritual order.

Establishing centralized social hierarchies with relatively open communication became the theoretical guidance for Emperor Wu Zhao to establish the Ming Tang as a Li Qi encapsulating imperial administrative function and sanctifying the capital Luoyang. Distinct from conventional flat palace configuration, the Ming Tang complex was centered by a 92-meter-tall wooden column with a perimeter of 15 meters4.

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The Height and width are re-imagined according to the section reconstructed by Daiheng Guo and Jinliang Xiao based on excavation data of the center pit on the pounded-earth foundation (in Luoyang, 1986) and historical records attributed to Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang. Zizhi Tongjian (The Comprehensive Mirror) by Sima Guang depicted the column as “a huge wooden centerpiece with a perimeter embraced by ten people communing through top to bottom”. Combined documentations with loading analysis, the redrawn center column had a 5-meter diameter. Its lower end is thought to be anchored into the pounded earth foundation for a depth of six meters. Although the speculation seems to contradict with the excavated center pit with a remaining width of 3.67 meters, the shrink in size may be caused by Tang Xuanzong’s commission of “removing the center wood and upper floor” of the Ming Tang in AD 739.

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Figure 2 Redrawn Ming Tang’s plan (Qi Zhu, 10*10 cm) and (Daiheng Guo 2008, accessed 08/03/2020, from www.thupdi.com/project/view?id=2119) section according to the excavation report (1986), First Cited by Jianhua Han (2020). From “Baic Explorations on Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang in the Eastern Capital Luoyang”, accessed 02/03/2020, from club.6parkbbs.com/chan. Upper middle showed the feudal order of Zhou Dynasty. First Cited by Tong Jin, The Aftertaste of Jing Tian, 2010, line drawing of Jing Tian to the scale of a state, 10cm*10cm, (Beijing: Shanxi People Publish), accessed 23/02/2020, from www.kongfz.com.

Surrounding the structural pivot, five rings of smaller columns (Figure 2, right) topped by bracket arches in 5-times-5-meter dimensions carried the truss-and-beam systems on both functional and symbolic cantilevers (Figure 3, right). All beams landed one of their ends on the 8-times-8-meter major brackets locked on the centerpiece which connected three levels of horizontal and vertical forces and bore the apex fire pearl atop ultimately (Figure 2, top left).

Figure 3 Details of one eave-supporting bracket-arches system and its loading paths in the section of Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang, bracket arches on the right redrawn by Qi Zhu from SiCheng Liang’s Chinese “Order” (1937). From “History of Chinese Architecture” (Beijing: Sanlian Books Press).

The combination of the center column and bracket arches formed a structural system resembling a growing wood. From the root to the top leaf, all elements are ordered in a vertical hierarchy but closely interacting with each other. The system also incarnated Li in its original feudal context topped by the Son of Heaven (tianzi 天子) communing with the great nature and ancestors, spreading the clan down to infinite commoners who were attracted around the central power and continued extending 6

the modular structure in space-and-time5.

As recorded in the “Comprehensive Mirror” by Sima Guang, for nine days during the New Year Festival (AD 688-689), Emperor Wu Zhao feasted Luoyang citizens (fulao 父老, literally the elderly and females) in the ground floor center palace of the Ming Tang, inviting them to enter the core of the Palace City via three royal bridges across Luo River and through three layers of city walls allowing less and less people to pass through (2018, 3889-3890). Although the number of people who attended the feast remained unrecorded, the opening of the Ming Tang as the administrative palace to commoners remained the only case in Chinese imperial history, echoing the singularity of Wu Zhao being the female emperor. In AD 690, Wu Zhao originated the Palace Examination (Dian Shi 殿试), as the highest form of Keju officer selection 科举取士, in Ming Tang providing native and international highest-ranking intelligences a stage to compose ritual verses and proses arguing constructive political opinions.

Around the wooden column as the centerpiece, Emperor Wu Zhao assembled the commoners, scholars and officers of her empire to feast, to compose and to make political decisions, just like the Ming Tang assembling its foundation, elevation and the apex throughout the centripetal modular system made up from thousands of interdependent wooden pieces. Like the fire pearl atop the sanctified wood, Emperor Wu Zhao intended to revive the past sagely rule in an unprecedented manner according to the hierarchical ritual order, and to cast the influence of the Ming Tang, Luoyang and her revived Zhou dynasty over all social classes and terrestrial directions6.

Feudal order (Fengjian 封建) established in Western Zhou, China, consisted of the well-field land division policy (Jingtian 井 田, Figure 2 upper middle), patrilineal hierarchical code of inheritance (Zongfa 宗法), and ritual-music teaching (liyue 礼乐).

According to the record in “Rituals of Zhou” (“Zhou Li” 周礼) edited by Confucius, Ming Tang was the architectural demonstration of the feudal system in terms of form and functions.

6 The wood symbolized the column and the Ming Tang as a whole.

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Dual Radiance – Political Collage of Religions Fifty years after the initial completion of Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang in AD 688, her grandson Li Longji (李隆基 Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty) appointed Cui Shu (崔曙) as the Scholar Champion (Zhuangyuan 状元) in the Palace Examination after reading his poem7:

Though Wu Zhao’s emperorship only interrupted Li-clan’s Tang Dynasty (AD 618907) during AD 690-705, her architectural and political innovations - the Ming Tang and the associated ritual of Palace Examination, were still saluted by Tang authorities8.

Inheriting the silk-road global trade via west-facing Chang’an as the primary capital of Chinese empire, Wu Zhou also emphasized the cultural and economic Status of Luoyang in the Central Plain.

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“Examining the fire pearl atop the Ming Tang” (QTS Vol. 155, 1600) composed by Shu Cui (704-739 AD) in Palace Examination (Dianshi 殿试) hosted by Xuanzong in AD 738, Tang dynasty, China, translated by Qi Zhu, critically referenced to N. Harry Rothschild’s translation (Rothschild 2015, 218).

8 Outliving the physical Ming Tang, Palace Examination became the formalized final stage of Keju Selection taken place in the imperial administrative hall (even not in the form of Ming Tang) until the end of imperial China (abolished in AD 1905, Qing Dynasty ended in 1912).

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Figure 4 the relative position of Luoyang to Chang’an and to the Grand Canal in Wu Zhao’s Empire as well we the area of influence of the two capitals, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020).

With the convenience provided by the Grand Canal (constructed during AD 584610), Luoyang became the resource junction between the North and the South as well as the cultural center communicating the East and the West (Figure 4). Supported by rulers throughout Sui, Tang and Wu Zhou, the Mount Song (Song Shan 嵩山) in the East suburb of Luoyang celebrated Daoism and Zen Buddhism as nationwide religions.

By relating kinship to Li Er 李耳, who was author of “Dao De Ching” in Eastern Zhou, deified by Daoist religion as the celestial ruler, and legitimating the Mandate of Heaven through the name of Chakravartin, Tang emperors interwove Daoism and Buddhism in their political narratives while ruling the culturally pluralistic dynasty from two capitals9. By blending the geometry and symbolism of the two religions in the Ming Tang’s form and functions, Emperor Wu Zhao renovated her Tang predecessors’ 9

Chakravartin is the Buddhist King who arranges the incarnations of people in the North, South, East and West States all around the terrestrial Earth. In Buddhist art, Chakravartin is often depicted with Seven Treasures (qi bao 七宝): The golden wheel, the white elephant, the woman, the horse, the pearl, the military official and the literary official (Rothschild 2015, 200). In his letter (c. 620) to the chief monk of Shaolin Temple (on the Mount Song), Li Shimin (later Taizong of Tang dynasty AD 598-649) appreciated political and military support from the temple during the counter-insurgency to stabilize the newborn Tang Empire, and claimed the goal of the state as “protecting the sacred truth, turning the flying wheel, casting the radiance through great treasures” (Quan Tang Wen, V. 10, 350).

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approaches, to legitimate her heavenly favor beyond the genealogical and gender constrains set by Confucian conventions.

Back to Cui Shu’s Poem, the concept of combining the radiance of the sun (the Great Yang Star) and the moon (the Great Yin Star) atop the “proper place” was inspired by Daoist cosmology balancing the yin and yang. The Ming Tang drew out the atlas of Wu Zhao’s empire where terrestrial sovereignty was subjected to the heaven symbolized by the fire pearl. Under the unified radiance, chambers in the Ming Tang’s octagonal ground floor plan were located as directional units on a Daoist compassing mirror, symbolizing the eight hexagrams in “The Book of Changes”. The color coding of the five rooms along the central axes indicated four time-and-space phases in celestial calendar surrounding the central land (Figure 5, left).

Figure 5 Left: Ming Tang’s Daoist Plan, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020), Out-ring of eight hexagrams accessed 08/03/2020, from https://zh.wikisource.org. Center: color coding and symbolism of Ming Tang’s plan in Daoist cosmology. Right: Daoist mirror designed by Sima Chengzhen (AD 647-735) consisting of five peaks surrounded by eight hexagrams.

Accessed 02/03/2020, nicecassio.pixnet.net.

The Ming Tang’s spatial arrangement, consisting of four compacted annex halls centered by the three-story main palace, also corresponded to five highest mountains centered by the Mount Song depicted on the compass mirror (Figure 5, right). Locating 10

at the center of the Palace City (the City of Daoist Ziwei Star 紫微城) which was in the North West of Luoyang (Figure 6), the Ming Tang also occupied the proper position marked by hexagram ≡ (qian 乾 ), the north west element (Figure 6, top left) symbolizing the heaven.

Figure 6 Ming Tang’s Daoist configuration and position in Luoyang (Top middle by Qi Zhu) and Luoyang’s wardsystem and position in Wu Zhou Empire (left bottom by Qi Zhu). Top left: Ming Tang’s Daoist Plan, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020), Out-ring of eight hexagrams accessed 08/03/2020, from https://zh.wikisource.org. Center and Middle bottom: Tang Luoyang and historical locations of Luoyang as the imperial capital. First Cited by Nancy Shatzman (1990). From “Chinese Imperial City Planning” (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).

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Like pagodas served as a non-figurative monument of the Buddha, the Ming Tang with the fire pearl atop incarnated Emperor Wu Zhao’s political ego10. The “purifying radiance” and “tranquilizing clouds” in Cui Shu’s poem reviewed Wu Zhao’s Buddhist propaganda by translating the “Great Cloud Sutra” (Dayunjing 大 云 经 ) which prophesized the incarnation of Devi “Pure Radiance” (Jingguang 净 光 ) as the Chakravartin ruling over four terrestrial states. Maintaining the title “Chakravartin of the Golden Wheel” from AD 692 to 700, Wu Zhao operated the Ming Tang “like turning the Wheel of the Order” as suggested by Harry N. Rothchild (2015, 209, 218). Based on the octagon foundation, the Ming Tang’s plan evolved into twelve and twenty four sides on the first and second floor, which imitated the revolutions of twelve lunar months and twenty four solar terms in yearly cycles. The unusual geometry approximating the circle from rotating the square into polygons captures implied motion in a still form, which encapsulated the dualities in Buddhist Form-Void (SeKong 色 空 ) philosophy and Wu Zhao’s political wisdom to balance the conflicts between two genders, two royal clans and two capitals.

Figure 7 Left: Abstracting Ming Tang’s plan as Buddhist “four terrestrial states”, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020). Center: Engraved Seven Treasures in Beilin, Xi’an, in Tang Dynasty. Accessed 09/03/2020, zhuanlan.zhihu.com. Right: Buddhist Tower inherited Ming Tang’s plan and apex (constructed a.c.1056-1195). Accessed 09/03/2020, www.cqcb.com/wenshi2.

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Using the fire pearl to substitute the original iron phoenix (AD 695-696) was for structural stability of both the Ming Tang architecture and Wu Zhao’s sovereignty. The year 595 coincided the conflagration of the Ming Tang and the pacification of rebellions among the Tang royal clan. If the previous Ming Tang project maintained Wu Zhao’s inheritance to Tang ancestors and her motherly female identity (marked by the phoenix), the reconstructed Ming Tang blurred the gender and genealogical order by honoring Wu-clan ancestors and celebrating the fire pearl as the source of the incarnated Buddhist king’s “pure radiance”.

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Naming herself “曌” as the sun and the moon rising atop the void, Emperor Wu Zhao melted Daoist cosmology of balance and Buddhist incarnation of duality into the Ming Tang’s political geometry. By sanctifying the ritual architecture with Seven Treasures (AD 692), nine bronze Tripods (AD 696) and devotions to Li Er (as a blood and political ancestor of both Li-clan’s Tang and Wu Zhou), the ritual ceremonies happening inside the Ming Tang in nationwide attention also transformed the social ideology to respect the so-called “three-teachings” (Sanjiao 三教) from Rituals of Zhou, Daosim and Buddhism in an open-minded crossover unified under the imperial order11

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Tripods (Ding 鼎) as the most important form of ritual vessel was first made of clay in Neolithic ages as food containers. Then as the social hierarchies specialized with transforming productivity, tripods made of bronze became containers of sacred sacrifices to the heaven and the sagely ancestors, symbolizing the submission from all eight directions to the central state.

12 Wu Zhao’s political art pushed forward the co-evolution of “three teachings” (I translated the concept as three teachings rather than three religions) in the hierarchical framework of Chinese civilization through later history, which was reflected in literatures exampled by Cui Shu’s poem; and in architecture as the development of wooden pagodas in Song and Liao Dynasty, Tiantan and SuZhou Gardens in Ming and Qing Dynasties.

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Conclusion In the essay “The Confucian Origins of Chinese Urban Space” Jing Qiao argued that “the Ming-Tang was used for both religious and political functions ... as the physical representation of the entire system of belief, it expressed perfectly the binding role of religion in a society” (2016, 180). In my opinion, both religious and political functions of the Ming Tang were unified under the framework of Li, which established a centripetal ethical order without a deified faith.

Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang encapsulated Li as the teaching of hierarchical harmony tolerating different ideologies. As the top hierarchy in Li, the concept of heaven (tian 天), which suggested by Zhongtian Yi is not “ a being beyond the nature and secular life”, but “the great universe and the great ancestors” that configured the civilization as the Ming Tang - consisting of deep root, wide span and up-rising potential to revolve in the changes of the space-and-time (2013, Vol. 3, 21). No one could define the boundary of Li, just like no one could define Ming Tang as a fixed typology. As the environment for ritual activities unifying three teachings and the vessel for heavenly mandate beyond blood kinship, the Ming Tang incarnated as a Li Qi devoting to architectural, political and cultural “renaissance” of Wu Zhou in the era of human’s will.

From the second daughter of a wood supplier to the fifth-rank concubine of Tang Taizong; from a nun devoting to the husband’s death to the empress of Taizong’s son; from the mother of two Tang emperors to “the son of the heaven” reviving the Zhou Dynasty, Wu Zhao “incarnated” her life in different roles from the bottom to the top of the hierarchical order. Her personal, political and ritual experiences were converted into the art of the Ming Tang, interacting with people inside it, outside it, before it, and after it with the zeitgeist consisting of both centralization and open-endedness which belongs to the Ming Tang, Wu Zhao, Luoyang and their era.

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Glossary City The English word city is derived from Latin word “civis” which means citizens.

According to Hamed Khosravi, citizens enter into a “collective dimension of life” (citizenship) through a commitment which regulated people’s social, political and religious activities and “define the relationship between the individual, the territory and the lawgiver” (Khosravi, 2013). In China, the earliest word for “city”(cheng, 城) appeared on Bronze engravings in West Zhou dynasty. The left part of the word abstracted a typical city wall with two tower gates aligned with the vertical symmetrical line; while the right part depicted a weapon (its head made of bronze, and steel later) called “ge” (戈) holding by a hand (figure 1). Together, the highly symbolist character defined “city” at the early stage of Chinese civilization as a place fenced by walls and guarded by force; the high-rising gates and magnified weapon out of its real-life proportion enhance the purpose of cities to defense but also to open its end with a tension between security and freedom strictly regulated by the centralized power adopting to “the ritual propriety” (礼) and following the mandate of the heaven ( Tian Ming 天命).

Figure 1 Chinese character for city, “Cheng”. From “500 Examples on the Morphosis of Chinese Characters” (Li, 1992).

Accessed 08/02/2020, from http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/etymology-3918.html.

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Archetype Derived from the Greek words “arkhe” (primitive) and “tupos” (model), the word archetype generally means a typological origin. In architectural context, I define archetype as “a formal generator” from which a genealogy of specific iterations are developed and transformed in the flow of space-and-time. Architectural geometries are not isolated formal aesthetics, but a field of reaction where cultural inheritance and revolution interact with each other. Demonstrated by Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang and its historical counterparts (figure 2), all their plans combined the circle and the square as a unity of heavenly order and terrestrial rule; but with an evolved elevation and dominant polygonal geometries, Wu Zhao enriched the Ming Tang archetype with ritual monumentality and religious ideology while serving her political legitimation in the culturally pluralistic capital, Luoyang.

Figure 2 Ming Tang’s archetypal sequence from its earliest excavated example in Western Han dynasty (AD 4) to Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 56) and Wu Zhao’s politico-formal revolution (AD 689-705). Drawn by Qi Zhu (2020).

Grid As an archetype in land subdivision, grid system typically take the form of a rectilinear matrix consisting identical squares (Aureli 2018, 1). In Chinese, the origin of grids is closely related to agriculture. The Chinese word for farmland is tian (田), which directly take the form of four square grids. Another character linked with tian is jing (井) depicting the irrigating well in the center of the farmland. “Jing tian” together 16

refers to a crucial farmland and feudal sovereignty subdivision law formalized in Zhou dynasty which divide one piece of land as a three-times-three frame of grids, placing the public field in the center with eight “private� parcels

on a smaller scale, one

individual parcel is divided in the same manner with the well in the center, while the same law also applied to the whole country (figure 3), where smaller city-states belonging to feudal lords surrounded the central state of Zhou in the middle place beneath the heaven.

Figure 3 Tong Jin, The Aftertaste of Jing Tian, 2010, line drawing of Jing Tian to the scale of a state, 10cm*10cm, (Beijing: Shanxi People Publish), accessed 23/02/2020, from www.kongfz.com.

Li The character of Li in oracles and bronze engravings imitated the devotion of agricultural surplus to ancestors on the site of a collective ritual space. As the productivity and social culture developed over time, the patrilineal ruling class bonded the society together via a hierarchical order based on genealogical inheritance and agricultural economy. In Zhou Dynasty, Li was established as a political system which was physicalized as the land division methodology, architectural and planning 17

typologies. Meanwhile, Li was practiced in all social classes and political circumstances in different manners– it was encapsulated in devotion ceremonies, when aristocrats hang rings of jade imitating the form of rice ears above the high-heel drums recalling the shapes of food containers; it was also realized when family members had dinner following the order of age in a peasant household; even during the war, the armies would obey military rituals to commence the attack by hitting the warring drum.

Figure 4 The graphic explanation of Li’s etymology, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020), redrawn the bronze engraving of the warring drum from “The Kingdom of Chinese Characters” by Xili Lin (Beijing: Sanlian Book Press).

Ming Tang The earliest records of Ming Tang was found in “Zhou Li”, a Zhou dynasty ritual classic fixed its content in Han dynasty. It was defined as the highest form of architectural typology for royal devotion to the heaven, administrative gathering, and political education calling for social harmony. However, besides the documentations on the ritual events happening in the Ming Tang, little formal rules were fixed as a paradigm. Literally, Ming Tang is a hall in the radiance of the sun and the moon. This connotation was captured by the fire pearl in Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang (figure 5).

As a multifunctional palace complex, all Ming Tangs built in Chinese imperial era broke with the rectangular configuration “of the terrestrial order” according to cosmological and political philosophy of ancient China. Instead, the circular form symbolizing the heaven were widely adopted in Ming Tangs’ floor plans and roof structures.

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Figure 5 Emperor Wu Zhao’s Ming Tang with the fire pearl atop, drawn by Qi Zhu (2020).

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