A heavy rain falls on the square in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and one thousand one hundred and forty-two carved stone dragon heads start spouting water at the same time. The rain stops. The water keeps moving — southward, along the lie of the ground, through drains buried under the paving, into a river at the southeast corner of the city. How does a city make water leave, and keep wood from burning? · Water, from the roof to the river: glazed tiles laid in ridges, the tilt of the ground, open stone channels, the channel eye, covered drains — no pumps anywhere along the way · Who dredged the channel: the Fuel Office under the Ming, the Palace Works Office under the Qing; the last big clearing, from 1885, lifted silt from about 2,100 metres of the Inner Golden Water River · The vats in the courtyard: the Collected Statutes of the Great Qing record 308 vats; 231 remain today; one vat holds roughly 3,000 litres · The charcoal fire in winter: from the first day of the eleventh month to the thirtieth of the first month, servants burned charcoal under the vats, one man to three vats · How often fire came: the three great halls burned and were rebuilt under Yongle, Jiajing, Wanli and Kangxi — and what was changed afterwards · Is it still there today: more than ninety per cent of the rainwater still runs through the old channels, cleared by hand every spring, summer and autumn · One rain, two accounts: the museum's own public explanation, and its monitoring department's records of water standing in the palace — both set out, you decide Full transcript, bibliography and further reading: https://sylogs.com/media Our own tools (not part of the film): new users get 7 days of full access https://sylogs.com/tools ⚠️ The narration in this film is synthetic speech; the on-screen cards are made by this series. ⚠️ Background photographs and paintings are public domain or CC-licensed (the Forbidden City, the Inner Golden Water River, the gilt bronze water vats, Qing court paintings). Source and licence are printed at the bottom left of every card. —— Shenzhou: China's Living Heritage China is often called a mysterious country. That is half true — and half our own doing. Outsiders see us through a layer of distance; we, just as often, fail to explain ourselves clearly. So the first thing this series does is not add another layer of mystery. It clears the gauze from both sides. Not a travel film, and not a history film. We go place to place, looking at where each name came from, what the place produced, what trade it did, who came out of it, and what it left behind. Next episode: where the water itself comes from — every drop inside the walls was carried in from outside them. #Shenzhou #Beijing #ForbiddenCity #ChineseHistory #AncientEngineering 00:00 Intro and cold open: a heavy rain falls on the square in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony 00:42 Two things this city does 01:15 Act One: water, from the roof to the river 02:50 Act One (cont.): the dragons on the terrace 03:26 Act Two: who dredged the channel 05:10 Act Two (cont.): one river, three jobs 06:22 Act Three: the vats in the courtyard 07:23 Act Three (cont.): the charcoal fire in winter 08:23 Act Four: how often fire came 09:28 Act Four (cont.): four things in place at once 11:21 Act Five: is it still there today 12:31 Act Five (cont.): one rain, two accounts 13:54 Closing: where the water comes from 14:36 About sylogs.com ▶ Subscribe to the YouTube channel: one month of the paid tools on sylogs.com, free Log in at sylogs.com and comment "Subscribed on YouTube" on the video page to claim it.