ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the Hall of Supreme Harmony as just one link in a long chain of reconstructions extending back over the course of almost the entire Ming dynasty. Although no government construction manual was ever sponsored in the Ming, both the Song and Qing courts published exhaustive studies that addressed structural issues in an effort to economize labor and materials and to regulate construction practices. When the Yongle emperor first built his great Hall of Revering Heaven, it represented the epitome of Ming imperial construction. The columns that support the main roof frames are all approximately 13 meters in height and a little over one meter in diameter, including the composite columns in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In the case of the Kangxi-era reconstruction of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the “original” hall was probably actually the Jiajing era hall.
