圆明园 Audio Guide

The Old Summer Palace is called Yuanmingyuan in Chinese, which means Gardens of Perfect Brightness. This was where the Qing emperors lived and handled state affairs. When people think of Chinese emperors, they often picture the Forbidden City. But the Forbidden City was the setting for formal ceremonies. The complex covered more than three and a half square kilometres. It grew through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Like the Forbidden City, no commoner was ever allowed in. Only the imperial family of the Qing Empire used the place. In its heyday it was reputed to be the Garden of Gardens. Today the grounds are a tourist attraction.

Photo: Gisling · CC BY 3.0

The complex was made of three gardens, and the gold characters on this dark plaque name one of them. That is the Garden of Elegant Spring. Qianlong added it in 1774, on the south side, as the last of the three. Its layout was noticeably irregular. The other two were the Garden of Eternal Spring and the Garden of Perfect Brightness, which gave the whole complex its name. The European-style palaces stood along the back of the Garden of Eternal Spring. They took up only a small strip of the whole estate.

钉钉 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Some visitors leave believing the Old Summer Palace was built entirely in European style. The European ruins are the most visible remains today, and that explains the mistake. Yet across the complex, more than ninety-five percent of the buildings were Chinese-style. A few were built in Tibetan and Mongol styles, reflecting the diversity of the Qing Empire. This eight-sided pavilion has two roofs stacked one above the other, with painted eaves in bright colours. Its lower walls are filled with red lattice panels. It stands in a courtyard lined with red-walled halls.

Photo: 颐园新居 · CC BY-SA 3.0

A bronze horse's head sits in this glass case, made of a metal the looters often overlooked. On the sixth of October 1860, British and French troops captured the palace. Over the next few days, its imperial collections were looted. The soldiers preferred porcelain. They neglected bronze vessels, even though the Chinese had prized them for cooking and for burial in tombs. Many dated back to the Shang, Zhou and Han dynasties, and some were up to three thousand six hundred years old. The exception was the twelve bronze animal heads from the zodiac clock fountain of the European palaces, which were taken. This horse head is one of those twelve. A Macau businessman bought it and gave it to the Chinese state in 2019, and since 2020 it has been shown here, in the garden's Zhengjue Temple. Some of the most notable treasures ended up in the Chinese Museum at the Palace of Fontainebleau. Empress Eugénie set that museum up in 1867 to house them. According to UNESCO, many of the looted treasures are now held in forty-seven museums around the world. Very little has come back. China has tried to recover them, but only a few statuettes from the Garden of Eternal Spring have been returned. In 2014 a deal sent seven of the palace's columns, displayed in a museum in Bergen, Norway, back to Peking University. Huang Nubo, a Peking University alumnus, arranged that deal.

Photo: 章彦博 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The imperial gardens reproduced several famous landscapes of southern China. Willow branches trail into this quiet waterway, the kind of scene that recalls the south. At the water's edge, a stone arch has partly collapsed. Its heavy blocks lie tumbled on the bank, with purple flowers growing among them. Across the water, another arched bridge stands in the distance.

User:Vmenkov · CC BY-SA 3.0

Water has come back to parts of the old gardens, but no palaces have. After the palace was destroyed, most of the site was left abandoned, and local farmers worked the land. The government reclaimed the site in the 1980s. The lakes and waterways in the eastern half were dug out and refilled. Brushwood was cleared from the hills, bringing back long-lost views. Several temples have been refurbished or rebuilt. No rebuilding of the above-ground buildings has been approved. Plans to rebuild the gardens have been opposed, on the grounds that they would destroy an important relic of modern Chinese history. A later water project set off a fierce debate. In 2005, work covered lake beds with a membrane to cut seepage. About one and a third square kilometres were covered. The park administration said this saved money, because the lakes needed refilling once a year instead of three times. A professor at Lanzhou University feared the plan would harm the park's ecology. It became one of the hottest debates on the Internet in China.

Photo: Leiem · CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1707, the Kangxi Emperor began the garden as a gift for his fourth son, Prince Yong. The prince later became the Yongzheng Emperor, and in 1725 he greatly expanded the gardens. He added the waterworks, digging lakes, streams and ponds to sit among the hills and plains. He also named twenty-eight scenic spots within the grounds. One of the lakes was called Fuhai. Lotus leaves spread across this water, and willows line the far shore.

Tiger@西北 · CC BY-SA 3.0

A small island holds a cluster of roofs in pale mist, with willows and a small pavilion beside them. Yongzheng had a number of living tableaux built, scenes acted out by real people for him and his family to watch and join. In one, called Crops as Plentiful as Fields, court eunuchs pretended to be farmers on an island. Another, the Courtyard of Universal Happiness, was a mock village. There the imperial family could interact with shopkeepers. Those shopkeepers were eunuchs in disguise.

Shen Yuan, Tangdai, Wang Youdun · CC BY-SA 3.0

The Western Mansions were European-style palaces of the eighteenth century, and they were built partly of stone. Most of their structure, though, followed Chinese methods. Timber columns held them up, and coloured roof tiles and brick walls completed the buildings. Today, carved stone blocks lie scattered over dry grass, with bare trees behind. One column still stands, topped with a carved capital.

钉钉 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Giuseppe Castiglione planned and designed the European-style palaces, and the Jesuit Michel Benoist took charge of their fountains. The emperor, Qianlong, is said to have become interested after seeing an engraving of a European fountain. The palace front is symmetrical, with a tall central block and a pavilion at each side. A formal fountain and basin lie before it, and trees frame the edges. A Chinese title sits in the upper right corner.

Yi Lantai · Public domain