Why is the Chinese Emperor's bed in the movie "Palace Fighting" only 1 meter wide?

Palace fighting is a genre that once took the Chinese television industry by storm. Many films of this genre were watched by Vietnamese audiences such as: Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace, Legend of Zhen Huan, Story of Yanxi Palace...

The content of these films revolves around the battle of concubines to win the king's favor. Therefore, these films often feature scenes of sexual intercourse.

And what makes fans of palace dramas wonder is why the Chinese Emperor lives in the Forbidden City, which is a large area of ​​up to 72 hectares with 800 large and small palaces, but only lies on an extremely narrow bed? It is only about 2m long and 1m wide.

Compared to today, this size is quite narrow, not even providing comfortable sleep, but strangely enough, in ancient times, not only the emperor but also the empress and concubines used a bed like this.

The beds of Chinese Emperors were often very small and narrow. (Photo: Story of Yanxi Palace).

Wish for longevity

The ancients placed great importance on longevity, and many emperors even longed for an "immortal" life. Therefore, in order to prolong their lives, many Chinese emperors sent people to find the elixir of life, and even blindly believed in the alchemist who could concoct the elixir, and lost their lives.

In addition to searching for the "elixir of life", they also have many rituals, concepts,... to express their desire for longevity. In Chinese, the word "bed" is similar to the word "long", the word "crocodile" with the narrow meaning is homophonous with the word "longevity". The word "narrow bed" when pronounced sounds similar to the word "longevity". Therefore, not only in the royal palace, kings used narrow beds with the desire to prolong their lives.

Suitable for room size

In feudal times, the ancients considered building a house a major event that directly affected the homeowner. Therefore, there were many taboos in building and arranging the space.

For the Chinese, a bedroom that is too large will easily lead to unexpected disasters. A narrower bedroom will bring good luck to the owner.

The bed is designed in a small size to fit the room area in the palace.

Therefore, in the royal palace, the rooms, especially the king's bedroom, are mostly designed to be low and narrow. The bedroom area never exceeds 10 square meters. To fit the space of this room, the beds will also be designed to be more compact.

In addition, the rooms in the palace are often built of wood. Normally, the weight-bearing capacity of wood is limited. Therefore, the smaller the crossbar, the more solid the room will be. The beds are therefore also designed with appropriate sizes to facilitate the arrangement and organization of the room.

Based on the number of concubines in the palace

The Chinese emperor had a harem of thousands of concubines. Most of the concubines had their own private palaces, so the number of rooms provided by the imperial court was not small. Moreover, there was only one emperor and it was impossible to visit all the concubines every day.

The court built rooms with small areas because the number of concubines in the palace was large.

According to court regulations, if the concubines were assigned to be bedchamber attendants, they would be taken to the emperor's bedroom. In the event that the emperor visited the concubine's bedroom, he would only be allowed to rest there for 2 hours before returning to his own palace. To save money, the court decided to build small rooms for the concubines.

That is why, despite their lavish lifestyle, Chinese emperors' beds were only about 1 meter wide.

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Source: https://vtc.vn/vi-sao-giuong-cua-hoang-de-trung-hoa-tren-phim-cung-dau-chi-rong-1m-ar783629.html