Is this a feng shui verdict on Forbidden City?

No. The page computes terrain geometry from public elevation data and reports the kernel verdict with its threshold. Classical template statements (backed by a mountain, facing water) are quoted from the public record with sources; whether the building "has good feng shui" is cultural interpretation, not computation.

Where does the sitting direction come from?

public record: the palace axis is laid out north–south (Jingshan park sits immediately north as the back hill). We did not measure it on site. If you want the measured value, take a compass reading (model declination here ≈ 7.6° W) or use the solar compass — and note the difference from the literature value.

Why trust these numbers?

The skyline comes from SRTM 30 m via opentopodata (sampled once, frozen into this page — the page itself runs zero network calls), and the judgments are computed by the same WASM kernel as the public API, with the same provenance discipline. The data limitations are printed next to the data, not in a footnote.

Forbidden City 故宮 terrain case

The canonical "backed by a mountain, facing open water" template — Jingshan (the artificial hill raised in the Ming) is directly north, and the Golden Water bends in front. What does the terrain model actually say?

The building, on the record

Location	Beijing, China · 39.9163, 116.3972
Built	1406–1420 (rebuilt/expanded through 1912)
Sitting/facing (literature)	sitting north, facing south (子山午向 by the classical axis)
Source	public record: the palace axis is laid out north–south (Jingshan park sits immediately north as the back hill)

We did not measure anything on site — the sitting direction is quoted from the public record, and this page says so wherever the direction matters.

Terrain, as the model sees it

360-azimuth skyline sampled once from SRTM 30 m (a terrain model — no buildings) at 350 / 700 / 1200 / 2500 m rings, frozen on 2026-10-27. Ground elevation at the sample point: 53.0 m. Highest skyline angle: 1.4° at 126° azimuth.

Sector (±45°)	Max elevation	Mean
North (玄武 seat)	0.7°	0.2°
East (青龙)	1.4°	0.6°
South (朱雀 face)	0.8°	0.2°
West (白虎)	1.2°	0.2°

Interactive version with a draggable panorama and a sitting slider: open this location in the terrain tool.

White-tiger check (kernel verdict)

The same terrain_white_tiger judgment as the terrain tool, run on this frozen skyline with the literature sitting direction (0° = north): 无白虎抬头 — right (white tiger) max 1.4° vs left (azure dragon) max 1.2°, Δ = 0.2° (threshold 10.0°). The right sector rises above the left by more than the engineering threshold. The threshold is an engineering estimate pending advisor calibration — it ships with the verdict, never hidden.

If you go and measure

Model magnetic declination here (WMM2025): 7.6° west. The honest sequence: take a compass bearing of the building axis (or of the sun with the solar compass), subtract the declination your instrument actually shows, and compare with the literature direction above — the difference is the interesting part, and it is a measurement, not an opinion.

Honest boundaries

DTM resolution limit, shown not hidden: Jingshan (景山), the 45-m artificial hill immediately north of the axis, is flattened in the public 30 m DTM (summit ~88 m on the ground vs ~51 m in SRTM/ASTER tiles at this spot). The table below reports the DTM as measured — the mountain you can climb is in the public record, the model simply does not carry it. Any site whose verdict depends on sub-100 m urban relief needs a survey, not a free DEM.
No living-person statements: this page quantifies terrain and quotes the public record about a public building; it makes no claims about residents, owners or designers.
Cultural and educational use only — terrain markers with printed thresholds, not predictions.