Forbidden City in the context of "Ming dynasty"

The House of Aisin-Gioro is a Manchu clan that ruled the Later Jin dynasty (1616–1636), the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), and Manchukuo (1932–1945) in the history of China. Under the Ming dynasty, members of the Aisin Gioro clan served as chiefs of the Jianzhou Jurchens, one of the three major Jurchen tribes at this time. Qing bannermen passed through the gates of the Great Wall in 1644, and eventually conquered the short-lived Shun dynasty, Xi dynasty and Southern Ming dynasty. After gaining total control of China proper, the Qing dynasty later expanded into other adjacent regions, including Xinjiang, Tibet, Outer Mongolia, and Taiwan. The dynasty reached its zenith during the High Qing era and under the Qianlong Emperor, who reigned from 1735 to 1796. This reign was followed by a century of gradual decline.

The house lost power in 1912 following the Xinhai Revolution. Puyi, the last Aisin-Gioro emperor, nominally maintained his imperial title in the Forbidden City until the Articles of Favourable Treatment were revoked by Feng Yuxiang in 1924. The Qing was China's last orthodox imperial dynasty.

The Shun dynasty, officially the Great Shun, also known as Li Shun, was a short-lived dynasty of China that existed during the Ming–Qing transition. The dynasty was founded in Xi'an on 8 February 1644, the first day of the lunar year, by Li Zicheng, the leader of a large peasant rebellion, by proclaiming himself "emperor" (皇帝) instead of the title "king" (王) before founding the dynasty.

The capture of Beijing by the Shun forces in April 1644 marked the end of the Ming dynasty, but Li Zicheng failed to solidify his political and military control, and in late May 1644 he was defeated at the Battle of Shanhai Pass by the joint forces of Ming general Wu Sangui (who had defected to the Qing dynasty), with Manchu prince Dorgon. When he fled back to Beijing in early June, Li finally proclaimed himself the Yongchang Emperor of the Great Shun and left the capital the next day after setting the palace ablaze and ransacking the government offices. He may have intended to resume his Imperial claims later on by proclaiming his accession in the Forbidden City. After the death of the emperor, Shun remnants joined with the Southern Ming in Nanjing, while continuing to refer to Li as their "deceased emperor". The Shun dynasty weakened dramatically after the death of Li Zicheng in 1645. The successors, his brother Li Zijing and nephew Li Guo, could not fight back and the dynasty ended in 1649 when Li Guo died in Nanning, Guangxi.

The transition from Ming to Qing, also known as the Manchu conquest of China or Ming-Qing transition, was a decades-long period of conflict between the Qing dynasty, established by the Manchu Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, and the Ming dynasty in China proper and later in South China. Various other regional or temporary powers were also involved in this conflict, such as the short-lived Shun dynasty. In 1618, before the start of the Qing conquest, Nurhaci, the leader of the Aisin Gioro clan, commissioned a document titled the Seven Grievances, in which he listed seven complaints against the Ming, before launching a rebellion against them. Many of the grievances concerned conflicts with the Yehe, a major Manchu clan, and the Ming's favoritism toward the Yehe at the expense of other Manchu clans. Nurhaci's demand that the Ming pay tribute to address the Seven Grievances was effectively a declaration of war, as the Ming were unwilling to pay money to a former vassal. Shortly thereafter, Nurhaci began to rebel against the Ming in Liaoning, a region in southern Manchuria.

At the same time, the Ming dynasty was struggling to survive amid increasing fiscal troubles and peasant rebellions. On April 24, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt. Zicheng then proclaimed the Shun dynasty. At the time of the city's fall, the last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City. As Li Zicheng advanced toward him with his army, the general Wu Sangui, tasked by the Ming with guarding one of the gates of the Great Wall, swore allegiance to the Manchus and allowed them to enter China. Li Zicheng was defeated at the battle of Shanhai Pass by the combined forces of Wu Sangui and the Manchu prince Dorgon. On June 6, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor as the new Emperor of China.

Matteo Ricci SJ (Italian: [matˈtɛːo ˈrittʃi]; Latin: Matthaeus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci's heroic virtues, thereby bestowing upon him the honorific of Venerable.

Ricci arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China. He mastered the Chinese language and writing system. He became the first European to enter the Forbidden City of Beijing in 1601 when invited by the Wanli Emperor, who sought his services in matters such as court astronomy and calendrical science. He emphasized parallels between Catholicism and Confucianism but opposed Buddhism. He converted several prominent Chinese officials to Catholicism. He also worked with several Chinese elites, such as Xu Guangqi, in translating Euclid's Elements into Chinese as well as the Confucian classics into Latin for the first time in history.

The Admonitions Scroll is a Chinese narrative painting on silk that is traditionally ascribed to Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345 – ca. 406), but which modern scholarship regards as a 5th to 8th century work that may or may not be a copy of an original Jin dynasty (266–420) court painting by Gu. The full title of the painting is Admonitions of the Court Instructress (Chinese: 女史箴圖; pinyin: Nǚshǐ zhēn tú). It was painted to illustrate a poetic text written in 292 by the poet-official Zhang Hua (232–300). The text itself was composed to reprimand Empress Jia (257–300) and to provide advice to the women in the imperial court. The painting illustrates this text with scenes depicting anecdotes about exemplary behaviour of historical palace ladies, as well as with more general scenes showing aspects of life as a palace lady.

The painting, which is now held at the British Museum in London, England, is one of the earliest extant examples of a Chinese handscroll painting, and is renowned as one of the most famous Chinese paintings in the world. The painting is first recorded during the latter part of the Northern Song (960–1127), when it was in the collection of Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100–1126). It passed through the hands of many collectors over the centuries, many of whom left their seals of ownership on the painting, and it eventually became a treasured possession of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735–1796). In 1899, during the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, the painting was acquired by an officer in the British Indian Army who sold it to the British Museum. The scroll is incomplete, lacking the first three of the twelve original scenes, which were probably lost at an early date. A monochrome paper scroll copy of the painting, complete in twelve scenes, was made during the Southern Song (1127–1279), and is now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing, China.