Why is the South Gate of the Forbidden City called the Meridian Gate?

Why is the south gate of the Forbidden City called Wumen Wumen? It means the south gate of the Forbidden City. In ancient times, it was noon in the south and noon in the north, and the central axis was also called meridian. The Shenwumen in the north gate of the Forbidden City was originally named Xuanwu Gate, but it was later changed to avoid the name of Kangxi Michelle Ye. Xuanwu is the reflection of Xuanwu in the north of the sky for seven nights, representing the north. In ancient times, there has always been a tradition of naming city gates with directions. For example, there were Xuanwu Gate and Zhuque Gate in the Tang Dynasty. The Forbidden City in Beijing has the shadow of Nanjing Palace in Ming Dynasty, and the Wumen Gate and Fengtian Hall are all built according to Nanjing Palace.

In ancient times, the meridian was called meridian, with noon in the south and children in the north. The meridian gate is the main entrance to the south of the Forbidden City, so it is called the meridian gate. Similarly, the north gate of the Forbidden City was originally called Xuanwu Gate, and later it was renamed Shenwumen to avoid the name of Kangxi. Xuanwu also represents the north: East Qinglong, West White Tiger, South Suzaku and North Xuanwu.

From the end of Yuan Dynasty to the twenty-seventh year (1367), Zhu Yuanzhang summoned the king of Wu in Nanjing and began to build a palace. He named the south gate of the Imperial City as "Wumen Gate", which was the first time that this name appeared, but it was the gate of the Imperial City rather than the gate of Miyagi. "Ming Hui Dian" records: "In the first year of Wu, it was the new inner main hall, named Fengtian Dian, with Fengtian Gate in front ... and the imperial city of Zhou Dynasty.

The south of the city gate is called Wumen, the east is called Donghua, the west is called Xihua, and the north is called Yuan Wu. In the tenth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1377), Zhu Yuanzhang rebuilt the Tainei Palace in Nanjing and decided to call the valve "Wumen Gate", which was the beginning of naming the main entrance of the palace as "Wumen Gate". Later, in the fifteenth year of Yongle (14 17), Judy officially built a palace in Beijing, and everything was modeled after the Nanjing Palace, but the scale was too large. The main entrance of its palace gate is also known as the meridian gate, also known as the Five Peaks Pagoda.

From then on until the Qing Dynasty, it remained unchanged. The "meridian gate" in the theory of "pushing out the meridian gate to behead" should be the south gate of the palace, which is the main gate of the Forbidden City. Therefore, since the name of the meridian gate only existed in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, the theory of "pushing out the meridian gate to behead" related to the meridian gate can only be produced after that. This can be demonstrated not only from the historical aspects of China palace architecture, but also from many ancient literary and artistic works.