Old Summer Palace

The Old Summer Palace, known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness (Template:Zh-cp), and originally called the Imperial Gardens (Template:Zh-cp), was an extremely large complex of palaces and gardens 8 km (5 miles) northwest of the walls of Beijing, built in the 18th and early 19th century, where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty resided and handled government affairs, the Forbidden City inside Beijing being used only for formal ceremonies. Also known to be one of the largest museums in the world (a popular name in China was the "Garden of Gardens", 萬園之園), the Imperial Gardens were entirely destroyed by British troops in 1860. Today, the destruction of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still felt inside China as a vivid symbol of foreign aggression and humiliation.

Contents

1 Overview of the site 2 Destruction 3 Aftermath 4 Future 5 Location 6 External link

Overview of the site

The Imperial Gardens were made up of three gardens: the Garden of Perfect Brightness proper, the Garden of Eternal Spring (Template:Zh-cp), and the Elegant Spring Garden (Template:Zh-cp); they covered a huge area of 3.5 km² (865 acres). They were almost 5 times the size of the Forbidden City, and 8 times the size of the Vatican City. They had hundreds of halls, pavilions, temples, galleries, gardens, lakes, etc. Several famous landscapes of southern China had been reproduced in the Imperial Gardens, hundreds of invaluable Chinese art masterpieces and antiquities were stored in the halls, making the Imperial Gardens one of the largest museums in the world. Some unique copies of literary work and compilations were also stored inside the Imperial Gardens.

The Old Summer Palace is often associated with European-style palaces (Xi Yang Lou) built of stone. The designers of these structures, the Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist, were employed by Emperor Qianlong to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings and objects. Sometimes, visitors unfamiliar with the former layout of the Old Summer Palace are misled to believe that it consisted primarily of European-style palaces. In fact, the area of the Imperial Gardens at the back of the Eternal Spring garden where the European-style buildings were located was extremely small compared to the overall area of the gardens. More than 95% of the Imperial Gardens were made up of essentially Chinese-style buildings. There were also a few buildings in Tibetan and Mongol styles, reflecting the diversity of the Qing Empire.

Destruction

In 1860, during the Second Opium War, the British and French expeditionary forces looted the Old Summer Palace. Then on October 18, 1860, in order to "punish" the imperial court, which had refused to allow Western embassies inside Beijing, the British general Lord Elgin - with protestations from the French - purposely ordered to set fire to the huge complex which burned to the ground. It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze and took three whole days to burn. The burning of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still a very sensitive issue in China today.

Aftermath

Following this cultural catastrophe, the imperial court was forced to relocate to the old and austere Forbidden City where it stayed until 1924, when the Last Emperor was expelled by a republican army. Empress dowager Cixi built the Summer Palace (頤和園 - "The Garden of Nurtured Harmony") near the Old Summer Palace, but on a much smaller scale than the Old Summer Palace.

Only the European-style palaces survived the fire since - unlike the Chinese-style structures - they were made of stone . A few ruined stones of these European buildings still stand on the site today. This is maybe why unknowing visitors sometimes wrongly assume that the Old Summer Palace was made up only of European-style buildings.

A few Chinese-style buildings in the outlying Elegant Spring Garden also survived the fire. The Chinese imperial court restored these buildings and tried to rebuild the whole complex of the Imperial Gardens, but it was impossible to muster the money and resources for such an immense task due to the difficult situation of China at the time. In 1900, whatever buildings had survived or had been restored were burnt for good by the Western expeditionary forces sent to quell the Boxer Rebellion.

Most of the site was left abandoned and used by local farmers as agricultural land. Only in the 1980s was the site reclaimed by the Chinese government and turned into an historical site.

Future

There are currently some projects in China to rebuild the Imperial Gardens, but this appears as a colossal undertaking, and no rebuilding of above-the-ground structures has started yet. However, the lakes and waterways in the eastern half of the gardens have been dug up again and refilled with water, while hills around the lakes have been cleared of brushwood, recreating long forgotten vistas. However, some members of the Chinese government are fiercely opposed to the rebuilding, considering that the ruined site as it is will teach future Chinese generations about the price of being dominated and humiliated by foreign powers.

In February 2005, work was undertaken to reduce water loss from the lakes and canals in the Yuanmingyuan by covering a total of 1.33 square kilometres of their beds with a membrane to reduce seepage. The park administration has argued that prevention of water loss saves the park a money, since water would have to be added to the lakes only once per year instead of three times. However, opponents of the project such as Professor Zhengchun Zhang of Lanzhou University fear that the measure will destroy the ecology of the park, which depends on the water seepage from the lakes and the connection between the lakes and the underground water system. It is also feared that reduced seepage from the lakes will disturb Beijing's underground water system which is already suffering from depletion. There are also concerns about the gardens, which are a designated heritage site of the city of Beijing, changing their natural appearance. This issue, when brought into the sight of the general public several weeks later, immediately caused an uproar from the press and became one of the hottest debates on the Chinese Internet due to the still painful memory of foreign humiliation epitomized in the destruction of this once "Garden of Gardens (萬園之園)". The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau (BEPB) is now (April 2005) conducting an assessment of the environmental impact of the measure.

A partial copy of the palace was built recently in the southern city of Zhuhai, in Guangdong province, as an amusement park.

Location

The Old Summer Palace is located just outside the west gate of Tsinghua University, north of Peking University and east of the Summer Palace. The postal address is: 28 Qinghua West Road, Beijing, 100084.

External link

• China Daily story on coating of the lake beds (http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005/Mar/124227.htm)de:Alter Sommerpalast (Peking)

zh:圆明园