ABSTRACT
In the past two chapters, we have studied two modes of representation in Beijing: religious practice of the court across the city, and a formal composition of the whole city. Religious practice involves terrestrial rituals at the centre and celestial sacrifices at locations on the periphery. The emperor speaks down to the subjects in the first, asserting his position as a ruler of all humans, and speaks up to ‘heaven’ in the second, confirming his position as a recipient of the mandate from heaven to rule. An ideal emperor, a central image of imperial ideology, is produced as a synthesis of the two: he who speaks to both at the two levels assumes the mediating and pivotal position of the Son of Heaven, who receives a decree from heaven to rule all humans. As an institutionalized discourse, it constructs a total spatial disposition onto the city, emphasizing the cardinal points, the centre and the critical peripheral positions, especially that of the Altar of Heaven. It inscribes symbolic meanings onto the plan. It symbolizes a noble centrality of the emperor and a heavenly sanction and support from above. In the end, it renders the whole city with a sacred and heavenly aura.
