颐和园
(yí hé yuán)

Summer Palace

A best preserved imperial park

Located 15 kilometers to the northwest of Beijing, Yiheyuan or the Summer Palace is the largest and best preserved imperial park in existence in China today.

Covering a total area of 293 hectares, it is also considered a museum of the Chinese imperial gardens and architecture.

The Summer Palace consists mainly of a 60-meter-high hill called Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake, which occupies nearly three quarters of the park.

Both the lake and the hill are manmade. The hill was built with the earth excavated from digging the huge lake, which is a copy of the famous West Lake in the scenic city of Hangzhou in east China.

The park also boasts a total of more than 3,550 classical, ancient Chinese pieces of architecture, such as palaces, pavilions, towers, waterside halls, platforms, bridges, long galleries and courtyards.

Among them, Pavilion of the Buddhist Fragrance, Long Gallery, Suzhou Market Street, Seventeen-Arch Bridge, the Marble Boat, the Temple of Sea Wisdom and a number of other grand buildings are best known among both ancient Chinese architecture aficionados and ordinary tourists.

Pavilion of the Buddhist Fragrance sits on the middle of the southern slope of Longevity Hill and is the focal point of a cluster of grand buildings dotting the hill. The 41-meter tower features three stories and four levels of flying eaves.

The original tower was burned down in 1860 by the Anglo-French Allied Army during the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The one people see today was rebuilt in 1891 and completed in 1894. It cost the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) more than 780,000 taels of silver.

Long Gallery meanders 728 meters at the southern foot of Longevity Hill and along the bank of Kunming Lake. In 1992, it found its way into Guinness World Records as the longest gallery in the world.

The roofed promenade also features more than 14,000 beautiful pictures of landscapes, flowers, birds, historical or legendary figures and popular folk tales painted in bright colors on its beams and ceilings.

Suzhou Market Street is located behind Longevity Hill. Lined with stalls and shops, the street has all the features of a typical ancient market street in Suzhou, a popular water town about 84 kilometers to the west of Shanghai.

The 150-meter-long, eight-meter-wide Seventeen-Arch Bridge is a major attraction on Kunming Lake. The gracefully designed bridge is often likened to a “white jade ribbon” or a “white rainbow” flying over the water. Its parapets are adorned with 544 white marble lion sculptures with distinctive features.

The building of this park started in 1750 under the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. It was then called Qingyiyuan or the Garden of Clear Ripples.

It copied some most beautiful gardens in other parts of the country. However, many buildings in the garden were destroyed during the Anglo-French allied invasion of Beijing during the Second Opium War.

Rebuilding of the park began in 1886 and the project won support from the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), who was widely perceived as an extremely powerful, ruthless and mysterious woman who actually controlled the Qing Dynasty for 48 years.

To meet her insatiable desire for an extravagant lifestyle and luxuries, Cixi had reportedly embezzled huge amounts of state funds originally allocated for the Chinese Navy to finance the reconstruction of the imperial park, which was then renamed Yiheyuan or the Summer Palace in English.

Later, the empress dowager’s embezzlement of the Navy building fund was partly blamed for China’s humiliating defeat in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War.

In 1998, the Summer Palace was included by UNESCO on its World Heritage List. It called the imperial park “a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design.”

Today, the Summer Palace is among the top 10 attractions for both Chinese and overseas visitors in Beijing.

Pictorial dictionary

·　长廊　(cháng láng) long gallery

As an integral part of all exquisitely designed Chinese gardens, chanɡlanɡ is a roofed promenade or covered walkway that connects buildings, ponds, green areas or other functional areas within a plot of land.

Chanɡlanɡ is designed mainly to provide people the convenience of moving around in a garden while protected from bad weather.

But it also helps to divide a garden into different zones, such as buildings, hills, rockeries, water areas and green areas.

A meandering or zigzag chanɡlanɡ often works as a scheme to create interesting vistas as well as an illusional depth of field in many relatively small gardens.

Most such roofed open corridors have their beams and ceilings decorated with colorful paintings usually featuring landscapes, flowers, birds, historical or legendary figures and scenes from folk stories. So while walking along the corridors, one can have double the enjoyment with both scenery and art.