Old Summer Palace

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The Imperial Gardens as they once stood

The Old Summer Palace, known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Clarity (traditional Chinese: 圓明園; simplified Chinese: 圆明园; pinyin: Yuánmíng Yuán, referred to in many books as Yuan Ming Yuan), and originally called the Imperial Gardens (simplified Chinese: 御园; traditional Chinese: 御園; pinyin: Yù Yuán), was a 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 was used only for formal ceremonies).

Known for its extensive collection of garden and building architectures and other works of art (a popular name in China was the "Garden of Gardens", simplified Chinese: 万园之园; traditional Chinese: 萬園之園; pinyin: wàn yuán zhī yuán), the Imperial Gardens were entirely destroyed by troops from Britain and France in 1860. Today, the destruction of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still regarded as a symbol of foreign aggression and humiliation in China.

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.

1 History
2 Overview of the site
3 Destruction of the Summer Palace
4 Criticism
5 Aftermath
6 Future
7 Modern photographs and historic depictions
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

[edit] History

A pavilion in the ruins of the Old Summer Palace

Initial construction began in 1707, during the reign of Emperor Kangxi and was on a much smaller scale. It was intended as a gift for the emperor's fourth son, later Emperor Yongzheng. In 1725, under Emperor Yongzheng, the Imperial Gardens were greatly expanded. Yongzheng introduced the waterworks of the gardens which created some of the lakes, streams and ponds which greatly complemented the rolling hills and grounds. Yongzheng also named 28 scenic spots within the garden.

By Emperor Qianlong's reign, the second expansion was well underway. Qianlong personally took interest and directed the expansion works. Qianlong also increased the number of scenic spots in the gardens to 40. By the middle of the 19th century, the Imperial Gardens had undergone expansion in one form or another for over 150 years.

[edit] Overview of the site

Part of the Old Summer Palace. Feb/2005

The Imperial Gardens were made up of three gardens: the Garden of Perfect Brightness proper, the Garden of Eternal Spring (simplified Chinese: 长春园; traditional Chinese: 長春園; pinyin: Chángchūn Yuán), and the Elegant Spring Garden (simplified Chinese: 绮春园; traditional Chinese: 綺春園; pinyin: Qǐchūn Yuán); together they covered an 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 the 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 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.

[edit] Destruction of the Summer Palace

Ruins of the European palaces

The Old Summer Palace in traditional Chinese painting

In 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French expeditionary forces, having marched inland from the coast, reached Beijing (then known as Peking). On the night of October 6-7 French units diverted from the main attack force towards to the Old Summer Palace. Although the French commander, Montauban, assured the British commander, Grant, that "nothing had been touched", extensive looting, also undertaken by British and Chinese, took place. The Old Summer Palace was only now occupied by a few eunuchs, the Emperor Xianfeng having run away. There was no significant resistance to the looting from the Chinese, even though many Chinese Imperial soldiers were in the surrounding country.^[1]

On October 18, 1860, the British High Commissioner to China Lord Elgin, decided to destroy the Old Summer Palace as a means to punish the Emperor Xianfeng without harming the general population, or destroying Beijing itself, for the sanctioned torture^[2] and execution of almost twenty Western prisoners, including two British envoys and a journalist for The Times.^[3]

Further to the above, the destruction of the Forbidden City was also discussed, as another possible means to discourage the Chinese from using kidnapping as a bargaining tool, and to exact revenge for the mistreatment of the prisoners.^[4]

It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze and took three days for it to burn.

Charles George Gordon, a 27-year-old captain in the Royal Engineers wrote:-

We went out, and, after pillaging it, burned the whole place, destroying in a vandal-like manner most valuable property which [could] not be replaced for four millions. We got upward of £48 apiece prize money…. I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder then carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army.

The Belvedere of the God of Literature, a photo taken by Felice Beato between the 6th and 18th of October, 1860, shortly before the building was burnt to the ground. It was rebuilt later by Empress Dowager Cixi, although its replacement was three stories instead of four like the original tower seen here.

One consolation for the Chinese was that the British and French looters preferred porcelain, much of which still graces English and French country houses, neglecting the bronze vessels locally prized for cooking and burial in tombs. Many such treasures dated back to the Shang, Zhou and Han dynasties and were up to 3,600 years old. Once the Summer Palace was reduced to a charred desert a sign was raised with an inscription in Chinese, reading that "this was the reward for perfidy and cruelty". The burning of the Summer palace was the last act in the Second Opium War or Arrow War.^[5]

Like the Forbidden City, no ordinary Chinese citizen had ever been allowed into the Summer Palace, it was used exclusively by the Imperial family. (See Personal narrative of occurrences during Lord Elgin's second embassy to China, 1860 by Henry Loch, 1869). The burning of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still a very sensitive issue in China today.

According to Prof. Wang DouCheng of the People's University in Beijing, citing historical records, not all of YuanMingYuan perished in the original burning.^[6] As time progressed, however, the place was also laid to ruin by other Chinese plunderers, warlords and bandits, including during the Cultural Revolution.

[edit] Criticism

For most Chinese, the act of burning the palace is perceived to be barbaric and ruthless. Contemporary Frenchmen, such as Victor Hugo, disapproved of the actions of the British and French. In his "Expédition de Chine", he described the looting as, "'Two Robbers' broke into this museum, devastating, looting and burning, and left laughing and hand in hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain."^[7] In his letter Hugo hoped that one day France would feel guilty and return what it had plundered from China.^[8]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Future

There are currently some projects in China to rebuild the Imperial Gardens, but such moves are opposed on the grounds that they will destroy an important relic of modern Chinese history. The Chinese government decided to keep the ruined site as it will teach future Chinese generations the price of being dominated and humiliated by European foreign powers. In addition, any rebuilding would be a colossal undertaking, and no rebuilding of above-the-ground structures has been approved. 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.

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 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.

To this day the many relics which were stolen from the gardens still remain in foreign museums , although the Chinese government have tried to retrieve them. Only a few statuets have been retrieved which were taken from the The Eternal Spring garden. This was a very costly process, these have been displayed in the Beijing National Museum.

[edit] Modern photographs and historic depictions

A corner in the Old Summer Palace	Lake in the Yuan Ming Yuan without water	Historic drawing	Historic drawing
Huang Hua Zhen in the Western Mansions area	Ruins of the Fang Wai Guan	A stoneboat in the Yuan Ming Yuan	Fuhai Lake