After the fire in Jianfu Palace in the Forbidden City, the relevant personnel cleaned up the fire
At about 9 o'clock in the evening of June 26, 1923, the Jianfu Palace in the Forbidden City suddenly caught fire.
The first place where the fire started was Tokuri Shinsai in the garden of Kenfukugu Palace inside the Jinmu Gate. It used to be a place of peace and tranquility, but now it has become a battlefield where fire demons are raging. The fire swept like a raging wind, mercilessly engulfing every building in the garden. The roof of Tori Shinsai was first engulfed in flames, followed by the surrounding walls, and the entire building crumbled in a sea of fire.
Old photos of the burned Jianfu Palace
Pu Yi urgently called Wang Huaiqing, commander-in-chief of the Gyeonggi garrison, Xue Zhiheng, chief of police, and Nie Xianfan, commander of the infantry army, and asked them to send a fire brigade to rescue people immediately.
Wang Huaiqing and others led many military and police officers to the palace, and brought in almost all the firefighters and firefighting equipment in the city. However, due to the lack of running water in the palace and the lack of wells, the firefighters had no place to be heroes and had to watch the fire spread everywhere. Someone suggested that the water of the imperial river outside the Forbidden City should be sucked to extinguish, so all the water dragons were quickly connected together, although the water was attracted over, but there was only one water dragon, which was a drop in the bucket for the ferocious fire, and it was useless.
The fire burned from Jing Yi Xuan to Yanshou Pavilion. The Enjukaku was magnificent and tall, and the rafter beams that were burning when it collapsed fell on other palaces, and the surrounding palaces burned together and turned into a sea of fire. The hundreds of years of towering pines and cypresses in the court also turned into fire trees, and the fire continued to burn until about 2 o'clock in the morning of the 28th, when the Italian Legation heard that there was a fire in the palace and sent more than 30 soldiers to help fight the fire.
These soldiers were more skilled in firefighting, and they instructed everyone to demolish the houses, cut off the fire path, and gradually extinguish the fire by about 7 o'clock. But because the embers were still there, the fire brigade guarded it for another two or three days before withdrawing.
In this fire, a total of three or four hundred houses were burned, and the lost items were not only all the antiquities collected in the Yanshou Pavilion, but also all the Tibetan Tripitaka in Guangsheng Building, and thousands of large and small golden Buddhas and gold ritual utensils in Jiyun Building and Ninghui Building. Among them, the most precious are the four Golden Pavilions, all of which are diamond tops and cloisonné seats; There are also thousands of Tripitaka plates engraved during the Ming Jingtai period in Jingshenzhai's collection, a Shwedagon Pagoda made in the Yongzheng period of the Zhongzheng Palace, a collection of the true scriptures and calligraphy and paintings of celebrities in the past dynasties and so on.
At that time, the official cause of the fire was caused by a short circuit in the wires. However, Pu Yi was skeptical about this statement. Despite the insistence of the electrician and the guard eunuch, and the prevarication and statement made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on this ground, the true cause of the fire remains mysterious. Pu Yi suspected that because he planned to inventory the treasures of Jianfu Palace, the eunuchs deliberately set fire to cover up the theft. Later, Pu Yi heard that the Italian fire brigade had smelled a strong smell of kerosene when fighting fires in the palace, which further confirmed his suspicion.
This fire not only made the treasures of Jianfu Palace come to naught, but also made Pu Yi have deep doubts about the humanity in the palace. In order to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents, on July 16, 1923, Pu Yi ordered that all eunuchs should be expelled from the Forbidden City, except for 20 eunuchs from each concubine. The promulgation of this order marked the official end of the eunuch system in feudal society, and this event was undoubtedly of epoch-making significance.