The importance of door nails:

Door nails were also called \”floating retting nails\” and \”floating retting nails\” in ancient times. Bubbles on the water are a unique decoration on the doors of traditional Chinese buildings. They are usually found on palace gates, palace gates and temple gates. Rows of huge golden door nails on the thick and flat solid panel doors make the door tightly closed. The gate not only looks strong and majestic, but also presents a brilliant atmosphere, doubling the magnificence of the building.

Door nails evolved from functional components in history. The original design was specifically for practicality. It originated from the fact that one of the measures to prevent fire attack on the ancient city gate door leaves was to fix the door leaves with paint.of soil. The use of door nails on city gates first appeared in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Initially, for structural reasons, iron nails were driven into the wooden boards and strapping parts to prevent the door panels from loosening. However, since the iron nail caps were exposed on the door surface and were unsightly, for the sake of appearance, people made the nail caps into bubble head shapes, so they also had a decorative function. The door nails are all vertical and horizontal, and the protrusions of the round body are in perfect proportion with the thick door leaves, which is spectacular enough.

The Forbidden City used to be called the Forbidden City. There are golden doornails on the south (Meridian Gate), north (Shenwu Gate), west (Xihua Gate), and east (Donghua Gate) gates. There were no explicit regulations on the number of door nails before the Ming Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, there were hierarchical regulations. Only palace gates can use the most \”nine rows and nine columns\”. The nine-way door nails reflect the highest level of door nail arrangement. For princes\’ palaces, county princes\’ palaces, temples, etc., the number and arrangement of doornails are different depending on the status and level. Generally, the prince\’s palace has nine vertical and seven horizontal ones; the crown prince\’s palace has seven vertical and five horizontal ones; the duke\’s palace has seven vertical and horizontal gates, and from marquis to baron, it has five vertical and horizontal gates. Except for palace doors, other doors can only use iron doornails, not copper; civilian homes cannot use doornails at all.

The door nails of the Forbidden City are still there today There is a mystery to be solved. There are nine doornails on the south, north, and west gates, but the east gate has eight rows and nine columns. Why are even numbers used here instead of odd numbers? It is said that the owner of the Donghua Gate was in mourning, so the door nails were numbered in negative numbers. The reason is that when the late emperor\’s funeral palace was parked in Jingshan Shouhuang Hall, he walked through Donghua Gate. However, there is also research that coffins were also carried at Xihua Gate, and it is said that the emperor also used Donghua Gate when he was on tour. Perhaps it will take time to solve this mystery.