by Chen Jack W
desire. Contrary to this, the tyrant Zhou, who delights in beautiful wom-
en ( se 色), music ( yin 音), wine and feasting ( wei 味), hunting, and rare goods, is an anti-sage—one who chooses desire over need. The palace, in
its degraded role as treasure hoard and hunting stable, is thus evacuated of
its political significance, becoming instead a symbol of tyranny.
Not coincidentally, Zhou is also one of the earliest figures—if not the
earliest—associated with the detached palace ( ligong 離宮). The art his-
torian Lei Congyun 雷從雲 has described the detached palace as a resi-
dential structure built “to provide a kind of palatial building for emperors
and kings to use when traveling and to avoid the hot and cold seasons.”43
While this may have been true, detached palaces served frequently as a
kind of shorthand in political rhetoric for sovereign extravagance and un-
productive leisure.44 The detached palace was defined by its spatial dis-
tance from the palace-city (that is, the li of the ligong), and it was precisely this distance that gave the sovereign freedom to enjoy his leisure. It would
seem that Zhou had several detached palaces, as the following fragment
from the Zhushu jinian 竹書紀年 ( Annals Written on Bamboo) states:
“During Zhou’s reign, he somewhat enlarged his capital. At a remove to
the south was Chaoge; located to the north was Handan and Shaqiu;
these were all used as detached palaces and separate residences” 紂時稍大
其邑，南距朝歌，北據邯鄲及沙丘，皆為離宮別館.45
—————
42. Laozi jiaoshi, 12.45–47.
43. Translated from Lei Congyun, Chen Shaodi, and Lin Xiuzhen, Zhongguo gongdian shi, p. 25.
44. On the problem of leisure in sovereign discourse, see Owen, “Difficulty of Pleasure,”
pp. 9–30.
45. Fang Shiming and Wang Xiuling, eds. and annots., Guben Zhushu jinian jizheng, p. 30.
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Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
Qin Shihuang and Palatial Ideology
The model of palatial despotism inaugurated by the tyrant Zhou was rad-
icalized by Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor of the Qin. While the two
rulers may be said to constitute a lineage of tyrannical sovereignty, the im-
agination of the First Emperor utterly outstripped that of King Zhou.
Even the hundreds of detached palaces built by the First Emperor within
the capital region were examples of simple extravagance compared to his
monumental conception of the capital and its palaces. The Shi ji describes
the construction of the Qin capital of Xianyang as follows:
[The emperor] moved the empire’s rich and powerful to Xianyang—one hun-
dred and twenty thousand households in all. The various ancestral temples, as
well as Zhang Terrace and the Imperial Park, were all located south of the Wei
River. Whenever the Qin vanquished a feudal lord, he had that lord’s palace
buildings replicated and erected upon the northern slope of Xianyang, facing
south across the Wei. From Yongmen eastward to the Jing and Wei Rivers, pala-
tial residences, elevated walkways, and encircled pavilions succeeded one another
as if linked. He took the beauties and bells and drums that he seized from the feudal lords and filled the palace buildings with them.
徙天下豪富於咸陽十二萬戶。諸廟及章臺、上林皆在渭南。秦每破諸
侯，寫放其宮室，作之咸陽北陂上，南臨渭。自雍門以東至涇、渭，
殿屋複道周閣相屬。所得諸侯美人鍾鼓，以充入之。46
The siting of the replica feudal palaces across from the imperial palace
complex served to represent the emperor’s dominion over the world. At
the same time, the feudal palaces spatialized the historical transition from
the tumult of the Warring States period to the new age of empire. The
north-south palatial axis represented the disjuncture between the past and
the future, between the memory of war and the promise of an everlasting
peace.
There was a further aspect to the building of the replica palaces, one
that transformed the sexual debauchery of Zhou into a sexual politics of
authority. By seizing the conquered feudal lords’ women and installing
—————
jinian. The architectural historian Liu Xujie interprets this passage as describing a single site, though the textual evidence does not seem to support this. See Liu, “Origins of Chinese Architecture,” p. 26.
46. Shi ji, 6.239. See also the discussion of this passage in Bodde, “State and Empire of Ch’in,” p. 55, 101.
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Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
285
them within the replica palaces for his own pleasure, the First Emperor
proclaimed the defeat of his rivals through a double-emasculation: not
only were the palaces rebuilt as trophies for the victor, but the women
who had inhabited the palaces were taken as spoils. Indeed, one might
consider other examples of the First Emperor’s monumental aesthetics in
terms of the representation of virility and power, not least of which was
his decision to build the Epang Palace 阿房宮 in 212 bc. The massive size
of this complex may be said to convey an air of Freudian triumph, since
the emperor had accomplished what no prior Qin ruler had accomplished.
Here is the account as recorded in the Shi ji:
It was thus that the First Emperor considered the population of Xianyang to be
large and the palaces of the ancestral kings to be small.47 [He said,] “I have heard that King Wen of Zhou had his capital at Feng, and that King Wu had his capital
at Hao.48 The area between Feng and Hao is a fit site for an emperor’s capital.”
Thereupon, he had construction begin upon an audience hall and palace south of
the Wei River and within the land of the Imperial Park. First, he had constructed
the front hall at Epang; it measured five hundred bu from east to west and fifty zhang from south to north.49 Above, it could seat ten thousand people; below, one could plant a flag measuring five zhang high. Running all around it were colonnades, from the front hall straight down to the Southern Mountains.50 He
marked the summit of the Southern Mountains, designating it as the palace’s
front watchtower.51 He had elevated walkways built, running from Epang across
the Wei River and connecting it to Xianyang [Palace]—this was modeled upon
—————
47. The “former kings” ( xianwang 先王) may refer to the “ancestral kings of Qin” or to the kings of the past in general.
48. This is clearly direct speech, though the character yue 曰 seems to be missing.
49. William H. Nienhauser, Jr. and his scholarly team read the name “Epang” differently, taking it as the description of the palatial architecture (“hipped roof”) instead of as a place name. See Nienhauser, ed., The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, p. 148, n250.
50. For gedao 閣道 (“elevated walkway”) as “colonnade,” I follow the translation in Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, p. 148.
/>
51. It is unclear whether the marking ( biao 表) of the summit refers to a deictic gesture or to an actual stone marker ( biao in the sense of a shibei 石碑 or stele). It is worth noting that, in the same year, the First Emperor placed a stone (in this case, simply shi 石) atop a mountain overlooking the Eastern Sea, calling it the “Eastern Gate of Qin” 秦東門. See
Shi ji, 6.256.
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286
Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
how the constellation “Colonnade” leads from the star Tianji, crossing the Milky
Way, and ends at the star “Yingshi.”52
於是始皇以為咸陽人多，先王之宮廷小。吾聞周文王都豐，武王都
鎬，豐鎬之閒，帝王之都也。乃營作朝宮渭南上林苑中。先作前殿阿
房，東西五百步，南北五十丈，上可以坐萬人，下可以建五丈旗。周
馳為閣道，自殿下直抵南山。表南山之顛以為闕。為複道，自阿房渡
渭，屬之咸陽，以象天極閣道絕漢抵營室也。53
There is a curious transference of sovereign genealogies here. The em-
peror dismisses the ancestral palaces of Qin as too small for his newly
exalted status (and, on the face of it, the greatly increased size of Xian-
yang’s population) and then cites the Zhou dynastic founders in an-
nouncing his decision to enlarge his capital. That is, the First Emperor
would henceforth displace his ancestors, who were mere feudal lords, and
claim filiation to the lineage of past dynasts.
The First Emperor’s ambitions reached far beyond those of the Zhou
rulers, as seen in the extension of Epang Palace into the spatial orders of
Heaven and Earth. The emperor did not view the palace as delimited by
its architectural layout, by the boundaries of manmade, constructed space,
but instead incorporated the terrestrial landscape and celestial sphere
within the space of the palace. On the face of it, the designation of the
Southern Mountains’ summit as the front watchtower was as absurd as
the emperor’s enfeoffing of the tree that had sheltered him during a storm
following his performance of the Feng sacrifice.54 Yet the emperor will-
fully obscured the difference between metaphorical gestures and incon-
testable facts, attempting to erase the difference between the map of em-
pire and the very earth itself. Similarly, his correlation of the palace to the
astrological order above it attempted to turn correlation into identity. By
modeling the colonnade that connected the new palace to Xianyang after
the constellation of the same name, the First Emperor claimed the equa-
tion of the palace with Tianji, one of the circumpolar stars. He himself
—————
52. The star Tianji was the brightest star of the constellation “Palace” (Gong 宮) and the regular dwelling of the supreme divinity, Taiyi, according to Shi ji, 27.1289. The constellation “Colonnade” was a grouping of six stars that stretched across the Milky Way, reaching the star Yingshi; see Shi ji, 27.1290.
53. Shi ji, 6.256. See also the discussion in Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, pp.
52–53; and Lei Congyun, Chen Shaodi, and Lin Xiuzhen, Zhongguo gongdian shi, pp. 61–62.
54. Shi ji, 6.242.
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Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
287
would then take on the identity of the supreme power Taiyi 太一, who
resided in the star and whose very name echoed the absolute unification
sought by the emperor.
In the imagination of the First Emperor, the palace was not simply a
map of the stars, or a symbolic figure for the empire, or some other sec-
ond-order representation. The First Emperor’s desires were often ex-
pressed through palatial architecture, as if to construct the reality he
wished to inhabit. We may recall how, in Chapter 2, when the First Em-
peror decided to be known as a “True Man,” he ordered the renovation of
his Xianyang palaces on a massive scale. The First Emperor had all the
hundreds of palatial structures in the capital region connected by covered
walkways, forming a single massive palatial complex that would conceal his
presence. As I discussed earlier, this was not simply about concealment:
the architecture that shielded the sovereign’s body from sight was to be
indistinguishable from the body of the sovereign.
The Question of the Palace during the Han
The memory of the First Emperor would weigh heavily upon the discur-
sive history of the palace, in no small part because the First Emperor was
the first sovereign to consider the full potential of the palace for imperial
self-representation. Unlike the Shang tyrant Zhou who simply used his
palaces for orgies, the First Emperor possessed real insight into the uses of
palatial architecture and had the imagination needed to make of it an in-
strument of sovereign power. While this fact would not be lost on the
founder of the Han dynasty, Han Gaozu, neither would the lesson of the
Qin’s collapse. Not long after the Han victory, Gaozu returned to the
capital of Chang’an and caught sight of the construction of Weiyang
Palace 未央宮. The account from the Shi ji reads:
Chancellor Xiao He oversaw the construction of Weiyang Palace and had
erected the eastern watchtower, the western watchtower, the front audience hall,
the armory, and the great storehouse. When Gaozu returned, he saw the extrava-
gant splendor of the palaces and halls and became angry, saying to Xiao He, “The
empire has been in turmoil with bitter war for many years. Whether I will succeed
or fail cannot yet be known. Things being as they are, why have you had the pal-
ace structures built with such extravagance?” Xiao He said, “The world at present
has not yet been settled; it is for this reason that we ought to build such palace
structures. Indeed, the Son of Heaven considers all within the Four Seas as his
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Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
family, and if he has not splendor and beauty, then he has no way to show his
majesty and leaves nothing upon which later generations can build.” Gaozu, on
hearing this, was delighted.
蕭丞相營作未央宮，立東闕、北闕、前殿、武庫、太倉。高祖還，見
宮闕壯甚，怒，謂蕭何曰：“天下匈匈苦戰數歲，成敗未可知，是何
治宮室過度也？”蕭何曰：“天下方未定，故可因遂就宮室。且夫天
子以四海為家，非壯麗無以重威，且無令後世有以加也。”高祖
乃說。55
Weiyang Palace was the first entirely new palace built under the Han.
Prior to the Weiyang Palace’s construction, Gaozu had taken as his offi-
cial residence the Changle Palace 長樂宮, which was built on the remains
of a Qin detached palace.56 The decision to shift the Han imperial center
to another building was not simply a matter of Gaozu’s perso
nal prefer-
ence; it was necessitated by considerations for his image. The use of a Qin
detached palace site both recalled the Qin empire and suggested that the
new emperor could not separate duty from pleasure.
The response by Xiao He 蕭何 (d. 193 bc) is perhaps the best-known
defense of palace building in Chinese history.57 Xiao He’s basic argument is
that without the grandeur of the palace, there can be no representation of
sovereign power—and indeed, no power at all. The minister articulates
power as if in terms of a semiotic system, a process in which meaning is
produced through the circulation of signs. In essence, Xiao He points out
that sovereignty exists only by means of its representations. What the em-
peror requires is a symbol to signal the end of the Qin and the beginning of
a new, legitimate dynasty. The palace would not simply be a sign among
other signs; it would be the originary sign of a new order of meaning.
Within Xiao He’s argument, palaces are foundational in the construction
of political and cultural ideology, identifying the seat of sovereign power,
the location of the capital, and the very moment that one semiotic order
has been replaced by a new semiotic order.58
—————
55. Shi ji, 8.385–86.
56. See Xiong, Sui-Tang Chang’an, p. 10.
57. Also see the entry on Xiao He in Loewe, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 603–605.
58. Xiao He’s innovative defense of palace building would become conventionalized by later writers. For example, in the early Tang, the poet Luo Binwang 駱賓王 (ca. 619–
ca. 687) composed a rhapsody-like poem, “The Imperial Capital, Presented to the Vice Minister of the Bureau of Appointments” 上吏部侍郎帝京篇, whose opening lines read:
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Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination
289
While Gaozu accepted the argument that palatial grandeur was neces-
sary to inaugurate a new dynastic age, he did not make allowances for the
construction of detached palaces or otherwise support widespread palace
