Taiye Lake
| Taiye Lake | |||||||||
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Zhongnanhai during the Qing Dynasty
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| Chinese | |||||||||
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| Literal meaning | Great Liquid Pond | ||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Tàiyèchí |
| Wade–Giles | T'ai-yeh Ch'ih |
Taiye Lake or Pond was an artificial lake in imperial City, Beijing during the Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties of China. The beauty and utility of the lake was responsible for the siting of Kublai Khan's palace and the position of modern Beijing. It continues to exist but it is now known separately as the "North", "Central", and "South Sea"s, the three interconnected lakes just west of the Forbidden City in downtown Beijing. The northern lake makes up the public Beihai Park while the southern two are grouped together as Zhongnanhai, the headquarters for the Communist leadership of the People's Republic of China.
Taiye Lake was immortalized in the early 1410s when the Yongle Emperor commissioned The Eight Views of Beijing (北京八景圖), recording the capital's chief sites in poetry and painting in order to legitimize his removal of the imperial capital away from Nanjing. It is best remembered in China today from the scene of "Clear Waves at Taiye Lake" (太液清柭, Taiye Qingbo).
The literal meaning of the Chinese characters 太液池 is "Great Liquid Pool" or "Pond".
The name honors two separate lakes Taiye constructed in the early imperial capital of Chang'an (modern Xi'an). The first was excavated by the Han emperor Wu in the 1st century BC as part of his Jianzhang Palace (建章宫, Jiànzhānggōng). It and Kunming Lake were both necessary additions to the city's water supply after Wu's expansion of his capital.
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