Summer Palace is China's Own Garden of Eden

The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) in north-west Beijing, some 20km from downtown, is the largest surviving imperial garden in China. About 75 percent of its total 290 hectares (716 acres) is taken up by a lake. The palace has more than 3,000 structures, including halls, pavilions, towers, courtyards, bridges and houses. All are integral in representing the development of Chinese landscape gardening at its finest--its scale, layout, creativity and artistic elegance. The Summer Palace can truly be described as an unparalleled treasure of Chinese gardening.

Once called the Garden of Clear Ripples (Qingyiyuan), the palace also embraces Longevity Hill (Wanshoushan) and Kunming Lake. The 60-meter-high (197 feet) hill is an extension of Western Hill, while the lake used to be fed by the springs of Jade Spring Hill to its west. With the hill and lake forming stunning backdrops, the palace structures are both testimony to the luxurious style of feudal emperors and brilliant examples of Chinese architecture and landscaping.

The palace and its gardens were originally laid out more than 2,000 years ago during the Han Dynasty, the vision being for a garden within a palace. According to ancient Chinese mythology, there were three "fairy" mountains in the East China Sea--named Penghai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou--on which grew many heavenly elixirs for which feudal emperors are said to have yearned day and night. The imaginary mountains became symbolic of the South Lake, Circle City and seaweed-producing Hall islands of Kunming Lake. From this ancient mixture of fact and fiction came the then highly innovative decision to build an imperial garden in China.

The aesthetics of Chinese architecture have long favored a central axis linked with symmetrical structures on each side, an approach as true of the layout of Old Beijing and the Forbidden City as of the Summer Palace. Such was Empress Dowager Cixi's admiration for the gardens of Suzhou and Hangzhou that she had the southern face of the palace's Longevity Hill laid out in the same style as at West Lake in Hangzhou, and the northern face a near imitation of the architectural style of Suzhou canal buildings.

Over the centuries, architects have used every means possible in promoting the long-established traditions of aesthetics in the balance of Summer Palace architecture, best exemplified in a group of buildings around the Tower for Buddhist Incense which form a focal point on the southern face of Longevity Hill. From the central pier of Kunming Lake's northern shore, a visitor can pass through nine tongue-twisting structures, including Jade-like Firmament in Bright Clouds; Cloud-dispelling Hall; Hall of Virtuous Brilliance; Tower for Buddhist Incense; Multi-fragrant Boundary; and Sea of Wisdom Temple.

Above the lake's surface, the buildings--each one higher than its immediate neighbor--form orderly lines to the top of the hill, a symmetrical vertical axis in accordance with traditional layouts.

The palace's 728-meter Long Corridor is famous for the 14,000 paintings on its beams, a spectacle so hypnotic for visitors that they usually fail to notice the corridor's numerous undulations and turns that exist, even though it was designed to be straight and level.

The corridor's four octagonal pavilions--named Beauty-retaining Pavilion; Enjoy-the-Ripple Pavilion; Autumn Water Pavilion; and Clarity Distance Pavilion--represent the four seasons. They were constructed in such a way that people walking along the corridor cannot feel the rise and fall of the land. Visitors' visual conception is also confused by the tranquillity of the setting. Even though flooring is uneven in places, it can't be detected just by walking on it. Small wonder that architects describe it as a "magical masterpiece".

The largest pavilion ever built in China, fittingly named Spacious Pavilion, is located on the east bank of Kunming Lake with a 17-arch bridge being the only link to dry land on South Lake Island. A landscaping expert said that if you look into the distance west of the bridge, you can see an island which--were there no Spacious Pavilion--would monopolize the immediate scene and create a feeling of imbalance and heaviness at one end of the palace area.