Only Americans and other cultural newbies think they’re entitled to happiness and prosperity. The Chinese, on the other hand, have long known that you don’t get something for nothing, and balance is the operative principle of cosmic destiny.

So, to ensure enough grain to sustain so many lives, something or someone had to pay the ultimate price.

Common superstitious sense would dictate human life, but by the Ming Dynasty such barbarism was only a shadowy rumor. Instead, the Emperor himself, divine embodiment of his agrarian people, would bust a little sod with a ritual plow once in a while, and sacrifice a yoke or two of lily white oxen to the many gods who made earth-tilling possible – weather gods, earth gods, and especially Xiannong, the Holy Farmer, the righteous antecedent who turned Peking Man from a nit-picking hominid into a corn-shucking human[also known as 'Shenlong' and 'Yandi'].

The Holy Farmer

Here’s what the whole ritual compound looked like back in 1420, when Ming Emperor Yongle decided to move his show from Nanjing to Beijing. He built the whole place exactly like his killing field down south.

You can see the whole place for yourself. It's a few blocks to the west of Tiantan Park, and is now called the Museum of Ancient Architecture.

On ritual days, the emperor would first stop at this ceremonial furnace, to offer up prayers for good harvest, written on silk. Apparently earth and weather gods were fond of such extravagance.

After doing some ceremonial tilling and planting, the emperor would ascend this platform and watch his dukes and ministers get their hands dirty, too.  Who said ancient Chinese rulers were devoid of progressive  socialist practices?

What do you think you see? A bunch of boring steles? Fine, then the Holy Sepulchre is a musty old tomb. To the people of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, these were no less than the earthly resting places of the gods of both the heavens and the earth. 

Here's a close-up. The icons placed in the alcoves, unsurprisingly, are long since gone.

This is one of two wells from whence was drawn the only water deemed pure enough to wash the sacrificial animals, and the platform once the ritual was complete.

Here it is, the very platform on which countless oxen shed their lifeblood to propitiate Xiannong. Fairly uninspiring, but if you can envision an emperor on top, clothed in silken purple robes, attended by rank after rank of ministers and court officials, the somber music of a carillon punctuated by the bellow of a dying ox...no? Time to turn off that television.  In any event, even the anti-historical can find many a gratifying sight at the Ancient Architecture Museum - witness: