The Imperial Gardens as they once stood The Old Summer Palace, known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness (圓明園), and originally called the Imperial Gardens (御園), 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, the Imperial Gardens were entirely destroyed by English 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.
Overview of the site
The Imperial Gardens were made up of three gardens: the Garden of Perfect Brightness proper, the Garden of Eternal Spring (長春園), and the Elegant Spring Garden (綺春園); they covered a huge area of 3.5 km² (865 acres) (almost 5 times the size of the Forbidden City, and 8 times the size of the Vatican City), comprising 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 museum in the world. Some unique copies of literary work and compilations were also stored inside the Imperial Gardens.
The Old Summer Palace is often known in the West for the European style palaces built of stone that the Jesuits employed by Emperor Qianlong designed to satisfy the emperor's taste for exotic structures and objects. Sometimes, ethnocentric Westerners even assume that the Old Summer Palace was entirely made of European style palaces. In fact, the area of the Imperial Gardens where these European palaces were located was extremely small compared to the overall area of the gardens, and was located at the back of the Eternal Spring Garden. More than 95% of the Imperial Gardens were made up of essentially Chinese buildings, with also a few Tibetan and Mongol buildings, 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 3500 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
Ruins of the European palaces 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 palaces survived the fire, as they were made of stone unlike Chinese structures, and this is maybe why Westerners sometimes wrongly assume that the Old Summer Palace was only made up of European style buildings. A few ruined stones of these European buildings still stand on the site.
A few Chinese 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. Yet, the lakes and waterways in the eastern half of the gardens have been dug up again and refilled with waters, 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.
A partial copy of the palace was built recently in the southern city of Zhuhai, in Guangdong province, as an amusement park.
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