ABSTRACT
This shows the city as conventionally viewed from the south, in the ideal fengshui position with mountains behind to the north and a river owing around its south edge. City wall and gates could hardly be more prominent, and right at the centre bounded by its rectangular wall is the yamen, presented as a gate and a couple of halls straddling the centre line or axis,4 with a screen wall in front, and a connection to the south city gate. This depiction reveals not only the central axial position and hierarchical importance of the yamen in relation to other public buildings, but also the way it exists as a city within a city like the Forbidden City in Beijing, the grand model it imitates. The resemblance is not only spatial and architectural but political, since the magistrate was the agent of the Emperor, and in some crucial ways he was regarded as invested with the Emperor’s quasi-divine power.
