The
Palace of Earthly Tranquility
This
palace was the residence for the empresses during the Ming Dynasty. However, in the Qing
Dynasty, the Emperor and Empress only spent their wedding night in the Eastern Warm
Chamber of this palace.
 The next day or 2 days after the wedding night, they would move to
the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Ironically, only
three emperors (Kangxi, Tongzhi and Guangxu) out of the thirteen emperors in the Qing
Dynasty held their wedding ceremonies here.
But the wedding
for the representatives of Heaven was really very extravagant. When Emperor Guangxu had
his wedding, he spent 5.5 million taels of silver, which would have been enough to provide
food for 3.6 million peasants for a whole year. The Manchurians believed in a religion
that required the slaughter of four pigs a day as sacrifices, and the table and the big
vats to the left were used for sacrifices to the Kitchen God. In the late Qing Dynasty,
due to a shortage of funds, only one pig was killed each day as a sacrifice.
The Eastern Warm
Chamber was the wedding Chamber, entirely painted in red except the floor, and decorated
with "Double Xi" two Chinese characters, "Xi" , when put together,
means "joy", a symbol of happiness and fertility.
Like the Hall of Union, this palace was also built in
1420 and restored in 1655.
The Last Emperor
Puyi didn't like the wedding chamber and expressed his discontent in his famous
autobiography "From Emperor to Citizen".
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