Why there are 9999.5 rooms in the Forbidden City? Where is the half room?

The Forbidden City was the palace of Chinese emperors in the Ming and Qing dynasties. There are 99999.5 rooms inside. Why is there a half room? Where is it, and what does it look like?

Why 9999.5 rooms?

The design of the Forbidden City is based on Taoism religion. The god is the Jade emperor, who lives in the north star. His palace has 10000 rooms. The emperor on earth is his son, who was sent to help him to rule the world. So, the Chinese emperor decided to make his palace with 99999.5 rooms.

But after people counted them individually, there were only over 8000 rooms. Wow, this may do a lot of work to death by cheating the emperor, but I think it is the way they measure the rooms. People count it 1 room with 4 pillars in the old days, making it different from today.

Why did they make the half room?

This is the imperial library WENYUAN GE (文渊阁). People use odd numbers to build houses; it needs to be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.

There are so many unique books in the building, and if it were to catch fire, it would be a significant loss, so all the designs had to be anti-fire.

Chinese believe 6 elements, and according to the old saying (天一生水，地六成之), 6 is born by water. So it is essential to have 6 rooms to antifire. But it is not good to have a room with a complete 6 rooms, so the artists designed 1 small room for stairs up and down; it is only half the size of a room.

One more thing you may notice is the roof of the building is black. Black belongs to water in 5 elements, so it is also for antifire.

What book is it inside that makes it so important?

Siku Quanshu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siku_Quanshu 

This book has 4 copies and is stored at 4 imperial palaces throughout this country. The other 3 are all destroyed during the wall. The one in Forbidden City is the only one that has been preserved.

It is stored in the Palace Museum in Taiwan because of historical reasons.

Other interesting facts about the Forbidden City

20 Intriguing Secrets and Facts Revealed in Forbidden City