In the beginning, in the Immutable, there was nothing, everything was bare, inert and empty.
Hengxian manuscript, Warring States Period (475-221 BC)
In these bare, inert and empty immensities, peacefully and without constraint, something was activated.
This something having happened, then came the air, then existence, then a beginning, then a deployment…
Then the heavy air generated the Earth, the light air generated Heaven.
This air is divine. It generates things bountifully and fills Heaven and Earth.
Visitors to Beijing who choose to meander off the beaten track may find themselves seduced by an unusual sight: an old-fashioned pre-telescopic observatory, complete with ornate 17th-century astronomical instruments. It is located on a large terrace, on top of a carefully preserved section of the walls that had surrounded the city until they were pulled down in the 1950s. The destruction of the walls was a terrible loss for the city and a foretaste of worse things to come: the almost complete demolition of the ancient quarters of the Chinese capital.
The observatory was built in 1442, during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but later reorganised by European Jesuits who, thanks to their advanced technical, artistic, and scientific skills, had managed to achieve a position of trust at the court of the emperors of the succeeding and final Chinese dynasty, the Qing (1644-1912). In 1670, the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661-1722) demanded a public contest to compare the merits of European and Chinese astronomy in the accurate computing of the yearly calendar, essential for the proper running of the state. The test was to predict three things: the length of the shadow thrown by a gnomon (the projecting part of a sundial that casts a shadow and indicates the time) at noon of a certain day; the absolute and relative positions of the sun and the planets on a given date; and, lastly, the exact time of an anticipated lunar eclipse.
