Tiananmen Square
Beijing China
2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square


Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananmen located to its north, which separates it from the Forbidden City.

The lion is strong and powerful so it is often placed in front of the house or gate to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck and blessing. Lion statues are also common in the Forbidden City, with seven or eight pairs all together, which are generally a male and a female. The male's paw often presses a ball, symbolizing the unity of the world, while the female's paw presses a cub, symbolizing an endless offspring of the royal family.

The lion statues in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City are made of bronze, with fine workmanship. They are the largest pair of bronze lions in the Forbidden City and the only pair without golden gilt. Each lion has 45 buns on its head, representing the supreme dignity of the emperor in Chinese context. The ears were pricked up, which means that the emperor should listen more to the opinions of his ministers and the instruction of the god.

The lion statues in front of the Gate of Heavenly Purity (Qianqingmen), the main gate of the Inner Court where the royal families lived, have drooping ears, which warned the concubines in the inner court to listen less and discuss less about the state affairs. It also warned officials should bow and scrape to the emperor.

There is also a pair of gilt bronze lions in front of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity (Ningshougong), where the concubines of the previous emperor lived. Their ears droop and their eyebrows cover the eyes, implying that the concubines should not interfere in politics and not listen or see those affairs.

Guardian lions
The pair of giant guardian lions standing at the entrance to the Gate of Supreme Harmony is the largest pair of guardian lions that exist in China presently. There is no inscription on the lions. They may have been produced during the Ming Dynasty. The lions are finely cast in bronze with smooth surfaces and exquisite details.

Different from the guardian lions in front of the Gate of Heavenly Purity, the statues in front of the Gate of Supreme Harmony stand with ears upright, as if they are alert to their environment. The design that shapes the heads and bodies of the guardian lions into spheres while making the statues erect on square bases reflects a prevailing belief in ancient China that the Earth was flat and square while Heaven was round—an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century. Each lion is 2.4 meters high, sitting on a 0.6-meter-high bronze base, positioned on a xumi base (xumi bases were introduced from India and originally used as bases for statues of Buddha) made of white marble. On the huge xumi base, there are various carved patterns, including a xinglong pattern (dragon-shaped pattern), lotus petal pattern and a wan hua shou dai (a special pattern symbolizing an everlasting reign).

These guardian lions consist of a male standing on the left and a female on the right. The male leans his paw upon an embroidered ball, representing supremacy over the world, while the female plays with a cub, symbolizing nurture. The most notable feature of the lions is the lumps on their heads, representing their curly hair. The number of the lumps is not random. In fact, the Chinese used the number of lumps to indicate the ranks of the officials. Lions with 13 lumps, the highest number, belonged to the houses of first grade officials, and as the rank of the official went down each grade, the number of lumps decreased by one. The officials whose rank was below the seventh grade were not allowed to have guardian lions at the entrance of their houses. However, each of the guardian lions in the Forbidden City has 45 lumps on its head, because they guarded the house of the emperor, who was traditionally called jiu wu zhi zun (the supremacy over nine and five; in the I Ching, nine and five refer to the lines of hexagrams that represent the throne). The number of the lumps is derived from the product of nine and five.