China Popular Itineraries |
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The Ruin of the Old Summer Palace |
The ruin of the Old Summer Palace (called in Chinese Yuanmingyuan) is situated in the western suburbs of Beijing, near the Summer Palace. The gar-den itself grew out of a garden of the Ming Dynasty, being rebuilt in 1709.
The Old Summer Palace was a splendid place and extensive pleasure gar-den for the Qing emperors. In fact, the Old Summer Palace was composed of three gardens, respectively named Yuan Ming, Wan Chun and Chang Chun, the first garden with Yuan Ming being the largest one of the three. As the major landscape feature inside the gardens, lakes covered more than half of the total area. The halls, buildings and pavilions were seen scattered among the hills and winding streams. 145 landscapes in the gardens were graced with the theme of water, and built in imitations of enchanting scenes from all over the country. Hence it was the cream of gardens.
The Old Summer Palace was a center of both administration and relax-ation. It was believed that every year the six emperors, from Kangxi to Xian-feng, would spend 3 or 4 months here, attending to state affairs. In the gar-den there were: a hall named "Zhengda Guangming Hall" for the emperor to listen to reports by ministers; a hall named "Jiuzhou Qingyan" for holding banquets; a palace named "Anyou Palace" for consecrating Qing emperors and ancestors; and a building named "Cangshuge" for storing books.
In terms of architecture, the Old Summer Palace had a mixed style of traditional Chinese and Western buildings. In the north part of the garden there was once a garden-styled building group called Western Building which featured European characteristics. Designed by foreign specialists, Western Building, with its roofs made of Chinese glazed tiles and its lower framework built of white marble decorated with baroque and Roman engravings, was re-garded as the most supreme building group in the world.
The garden deserved to be called an art treasure-house of the eastern cul-ture, for there were a great number of collected cultural relics and treasures, calligraphy and paintings, books and records there.
This grand garden was burnt down first by the Anglo-French invaders in 1860, during the rule of Emperor Xianfeng of the Qing Dynasty, and then by the Allied Troops in 1900, during the rule of Emperor Guangxu. Now, only remains of the building are left -- the Ruin of the Old Summer Palace.
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