Dynastic History|Dazheng Hall, Mukden Palace — Eight Banner Tents in Brick and Tile

In 1625 Nurhaci moved his capital to Shenyang, a walled Ming county town his forces had taken four years earlier along with Liaoyang. What went up on the new ground was not a Chinese palace. The 大政殿 Dazheng Hall is an octagon on a stone terrace, and in front of it stand two files of small pavilions, five to a side, arranged the way a khan's tent stood before the tents of his banner princes. UNESCO's citation calls the eight-banner plan unique among palace buildings, and it is: the Eight Banners were army, administration and aristocracy at once, and the courtyard states that before any document does.

The ground had been taken by force. Ming Liaodong's Chinese farming households were sorted — Nurhaci's early orders graded them by how much grain they held — then billeted with Manchu families or assigned into banner households as booi, a hereditary servile status usually translated "bondservant", though Mark Elliott has argued the English word carries more than the Manchu does. After a Han revolt in Liaodong in 1623 the administration ordered that they no longer be trusted, and turned to formal discrimination and killings. The hall and that record belong to the same few years.

Hong Taiji extended the complex from 1631; the Qianlong court added a west range with the 文溯閣 library in the 1780s. UNESCO counts 114 buildings raised between 1625–26 and 1783. After 1644 the court sat in Beijing and this became a travelling residence for emperors going east to sweep the graves. Museums have occupied it since 1926, it has been the Shenyang Palace Museum since 1955, and it was inscribed as World Heritage in 2004.

📸 Cover: 大政殿, the Dazheng Hall seen from the south, Gary Lee Todd, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons