There are wells inside the Forbidden City. The Ming records list them one by one: some "sweet and fit to drink", some written off as "a ruined well". The city was not short of water either — there is a moat just outside the wall. And yet the water the imperial kitchens and tea rooms used every day came in by cart from outside. Why? · The wells inside the palace: Liu Ruoyu's *Zhuozhongzhi* lists several; the Palace Museum's own researcher Zhou Qian calls the wells "the main source of domestic water" · Can you drink from them: the Great Kitchen Well at the Hall of Heart Cultivation — from Shunzhi 8 (1651) the Well God was sacrificed to there each tenth month; the museum's website describes its water as "clear, sweet and cold" · Why the city's water was bitter: Xu Chong's *Nuanshu Youbi* — "the wells of the capital are mostly brackish and undrinkable"; Li Shizhen's *Bencao Gangmu* explains the cause; Wang Yun, "of wells that yield a fine spring, not one or two in a hundred" · The water line outside the wall: in 1291 Guo Shoujing proposed tapping the Baifu Spring at Changping; the Ming let it fall into disuse — "the water runs west, past the ancestral tombs; it is unsuited to the geomancy" · A silver measure: Qianlong 16 (1751) and the emperor's own *Record of the Finest Spring Under Heaven* — the method is "compared by means of a silver measure"; one dou from Jade Spring Mountain weighed one liang · The water carts: loaded at Jade Spring Mountain, in through Xizhimen, then through the Gate of Divine Prowess into the palace · Who kept that water road: under the Qing, the Neiguangling Office of the Imperial Household Department; two accounts of how many men it kept, both set out · An allowance list with no "water": the *Guochao Gongshi* and the *Qinding Gongzhong Xianxing Zeli* list milk, tea, vessels and ice chests — but no water · Water's other form: ice. The *Collected Statutes of the Great Qing* record "within the Forbidden City, five icehouses, storing twenty-five thousand blocks"; four still stand · Ice on a ticket: the Board of Works issued ice tickets; fourteen official summer-soup stations stood outside the ten city gates and at the four archways; stopped in Kangxi 13, restored under Qianlong · Is it still there today: the Jade Spring springs stopped flowing completely in 1975; the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion began delivering water at the end of 2014; the stele still stands at the southern foot of the hill · ★ What we could not find, we say so: the number of full-time water carriers, the daily and yearly volume carried, and how the water was shared out once inside the palace — no primary record was found 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 (palace wells, water carriers and water carts, Jade Spring Mountain and its pagoda, Qing court documents, icehouses). 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: following the water further back — from Jade Spring Mountain up to the Baifu Spring, the Tonghui River, and the whole road that carried water into Beijing. #Shenzhou #Beijing #ForbiddenCity #ChineseHistory #AncientEngineering 00:00 Intro and cold open: there are wells inside the Forbidden City 00:38 Act One · The wells inside the palace 01:33 Act One (cont.) · Can you drink from them 02:53 Act Two · Why the city's water was bitter 03:59 Act Two (cont.) · The water line outside the wall 05:24 Act Two (cont.) · A silver measure 06:49 Act Three · The water carts 07:58 Act Three (cont.) · Who kept that water road 08:51 Act Three (cont.) · An allowance list with no "water" 10:00 Act Four · Water's other form: ice 11:07 Act Four (cont.) · Ice on a ticket 11:45 Act Five · Is it still there today 12:59 Act Five (cont.) · The stele and the pipe 14:12 Closing: where the palace's water actually came from 15:16 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.