Chapter 19 Section 2 Royal Gardens of the Qing Dynasty

The heyday of gardening in the Qing Dynasty was from Emperor Kangxi to Emperor Qianlong.After Emperor Kangxi used force to stabilize the political situation and the economy was restored and developed, he began the construction of royal gardens.Construction is concentrated in the western suburbs of Beijing and Chengde in Hebei.Chengde is the place where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty brought the royal family to hunt and practice martial arts. There are mountains and rivers, and the climate is cool.In the forty-second year of Kangxi (AD 1685), the royal garden was built there by using the undulating hills and the confluence of Rehe springs, covering a total area of ​​more than 8,000 mu. This is the largest royal garden in the Qing Dynasty - Chengde Mountain Resort.

The terrain of Beijing is surrounded by mountains on three sides, with a small plain in the middle. The terrain gradually slopes from west to east. The western suburbs of Beijing are at the junction of the western mountains and plains. There are many hills. In addition to Xishan, there are Yuquanshan and Wengshan. , the groundwater source is sufficient.Since the Jin Dynasty, many royal and private gardens have been built here.In the Qing Dynasty, these official and private gardens were not included in the government. Kangxi used the former site of the "Tsinghua Garden" of Li Wei, an official of the Ming Dynasty, to build Changchun Garden. In the front, there is a palace part for discussing politics and living, and in the back there is a water-based garden. Part of it became the first palace-style garden in the western suburbs.Then Chengxin Garden in Yuquan Mountain was rebuilt into Jingming Garden, and Jingyi Garden was built in Xiangshan.In the forty-seventh year of Kangxi (AD 1708), the Old Summer Palace was specially built on the north side of Changchun Garden for his son Yinzhen. After Yinzhen became emperor, he expanded the Old Summer Palace so that he could handle government affairs and live in it, and became Yongzheng. The emperor's palace.Emperor Qianlong came to the throne. After a period of recuperation in the country, the national power was prosperous and the economy was prosperous. In addition, the emperor was very happy and obsessed with entertainment. He enjoyed the beauty of various places during his six visits to the south of the Yangtze River. peak.He further expanded the Old Summer Palace and merged the nearby Changchun and Wanchun gardens into a large palace-style garden covering an area of ​​more than 5,000 mu.In the ninth year of Qianlong (AD 1744), the project of the Old Summer Palace was completed. Emperor Qianlong wrote a "postscript of the Old Summer Palace", which described the grand scale of the garden and the beautiful scenery, and warned future generations not to abandon the garden and spend a lot of money. A new garden has been built.However, not long after, he broke his promise and built another royal garden, Qingyi Garden, not far to the west of Yuanmingyuan, using the water surface of Wengshan Mountain and West Lake.So far, in the western suburbs of Beijing, the famous three mountains and five gardens in Kyoto have been built, namely Jingyi Garden in Xiangshan Mountain, Jingming Garden in Yuquan Mountain, Qingyi Garden in Wanshou Mountain, Changchun Garden and Yuanmingyuan.In addition to the nearby Weixiu Garden, Langrun Garden, Shaoyuan Garden (the above three gardens are in today's Peking University), Xichun Garden, Jinchun Garden (the second garden is in today's Tsinghua University), etc., within a radius of tens of miles Within the scope, the gardens are almost connected, and the pavilions face each other, becoming an unprecedented and unparalleled palace garden area in history.The following will focus on the Old Summer Palace and Qingyi Garden.

(1) Yuanmingyuan Yuanmingyuan was first built in Kangxi and completed in Qianlong.This is a flat land, with neither natural hills nor formed lakes.However, the underground water source is very rich. It can be said that water can be seen within three feet of the ground, so it is indeed a rare and good place to build a garden.Building a garden under such natural conditions has its own characteristics. One of the characteristics is that gardens are built on flat ground, with water as the mainstay.In the Old Summer Palace, there is a large water surface such as Fuhai, which is 600 meters wide and is located in the center of the whole garden. There are islands in the lake; It is about two to three hundred meters wide, and the scenery on the other side of the lake can be vividly seen; there are countless small water surfaces, and a pond of clear water can be found everywhere; The large and small water surfaces are connected in series to form a complete water system, forming a very distinctive waterscape garden.Just because the garden is built on flat land, the water surface is dug out, and the lakes are dug to pile up mountains, killing two birds with one stone, so there are many lakes and mountains, and the sum of large and small mounds accounts for about 1/3 of the entire garden area.It's just that these earthy mountains are not tall, and they don't destroy the water features of the Old Summer Palace.

The second feature is gardening within the garden.The three gardens of Yuanming Dynasty are large in scale, but they do not have the peaks like Wanshou Mountain in Qingyi Garden and Qionghua Island in Beihai as the scenic center of the whole garden. They are filled with groups of small gardens.These small gardens are centered on buildings, with landscape trees; or in the landscape, dotted with various buildings and surrounded by walls, forming independent and interconnected small gardens, forming countless unique gardens. landscape.There is the Zhengda Guangming Hall inside the palace gate for the emperor to attend the court; there is the "Pengdao Yaotai" which is composed of Fuhai and three islands in the sea, which symbolizes the Qiongge in Xianshan; There is a small city of Sravasti with a Buddhist temple; there is a building "Wanfang Anhe" built in the water with a swastika-shaped plane.Emperor Qianlong wanted to bring all the famous gardens in Suzhou and Hangzhou to the garden when he went to the south of the Yangtze River several times, so a Suzhou Water Street-style shopping street appeared in the Old Summer Palace; Landscape; it's just that these scenic spots in the south of the Yangtze River have become small, model-like scenic spots here.

The third feature is that the architectural forms in the garden are varied and varied.In addition to rectangles and squares, the planes of buildings also have various forms such as I-shaped characters, □ characters, Tian characters, well-shaped characters, swastika characters, curved rulers, and fans; , hard mountain, hanging mountain, rolling shed and other forms; light pavilions have four corners, hexagons, octagons, circles, cross shapes, and special "flowing water" pavilions; corridors are also divided into straight corridors, curved corridors, climbing corridors and high and low pavilions. There are many types of drop corridors.During the Qianlong period, a group of Western-style stone buildings were concentrated in the northern part of the Changchun Garden.These buildings were designed by Lang Shining, an Italian priest and painter who was working in the imperial court at that time. They are full of cumbersome stone carving decorations, known as the European "Baroque" style, and the neat flowers and trees of European gardens are also arranged around the buildings. and fountains etc.It can be said that this is the first time that Western architectural forms have concentrated in China.In this way, the Old Summer Palace has its own unique landscape formed by water surfaces of different sizes, hills of different heights and various buildings.In the Yongzheng period, 24 scenes were formed, and in the Qianlong period, another 20 scenes were added, plus 30 scenes in the Changchun Garden and 30 scenes in the Wanchun Garden, forming a grand royal garden covering an area of ​​more than 5,000 acres and a total of more than 100 scenic spots. Therefore, some people in the West call Yuanmingyuan "the garden of ten thousand gardens".

(2) Qingyi Garden-Summer Palace In 1750, Qianlong began to renovate and operate the Summer Palace in the double name of celebrating the 60th birthday of his mother, the Empress Dowager, and regulating the water system in the northwest suburbs of the capital.The garden builders first remodeled the original Weng Mountain and West Lake, expanded the water surface, built an east dike on the east side of the lake, set up a water gate, and left a west dike on the west side of the lake to form a water storage function. The lake with three water surfaces is named Kunming Lake.At the same time, large-scale construction was carried out on the top and bottom of Weng Mountain, and the Dabaoen Yanshou Temple was built in the center of the southern slope of the mountain. Weng Mountain was named Longevity Mountain to celebrate the birthday of the Empress Dowager.In 1764, another large royal garden, Qingyi Garden, was built covering an area of ​​more than 5,000 mu, and the water surface accounted for 3/4.

Qingyi Garden can be divided into three major scenic spots.One is the palace area in the east of Wanshou Mountain.All gardens belonging to the palace type have a place for the emperor to attend the court, so there is a group of palace buildings in the East Palace Gate of Qingyi Garden.Among them are the Hall of Renshou where the emperor governs, Yulan Hall, Yiyun Hall and Leshou Hall for accommodation, as well as groups of service buildings.They also adopt the traditional layout of the front court and the back bedroom, with the Hall of Renshou in front and the bedroom in the back.The second scenic spot is the Qianshanqian Lake area, which is the most important part of Qingyi Garden.Wanshou Mountain has been transformed to form a good layout with the north facing south and the lake in front. A large group of Dabaoen Yanshou Temple buildings are built in the center of the front slope of the mountain.The gate, main hall and pagoda of the temple are placed on the hillside sequentially along the axis, from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain, along the axis.The tallest one was originally a nine-story pagoda, which was not yet completed and was found to be in danger of collapsing. After it was demolished, it was rebuilt into a pavilion for Buddha statues, that is, the Buddha Incense Pavilion.This group of buildings is resplendent and magnificent, and has become the landscape center of the entire Qingyi Garden.On both sides of it, there are groups of buildings, including the religious buildings Zhuanlunzang and Wufang Pavilion; the recreational buildings Huazhongyou, Tingli Pavilion, Jingfu Pavilion; and many courtyard buildings for rest and play.Especially at the south foot of Longevity Hill, along the shore of Kunming Lake, a 728-meter-long corridor was built, running through the entire front mountain area from east to west.People walk in the corridor, looking at the lakes and mountains from the outside, looking at the palaces and residences of the group; looking inside the corridor, the beams of each corridor are filled with colorful paintings of different themes and contents.The promenade has become a colorful gallery, a corridor for viewing different scenery in the garden.After the reconstruction of the former lake, it was divided into three lakes by banks.The West Causeway imitates the Su Causeway of the West Lake in Hangzhou, and six bridges are also built on the causeway.There is an island in each of the three lakes, which symbolizes the three fairy mountains of Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou in the East China Sea.Climbing up to Longevity Hill, the clear water of Kunming nearby and the fertile farmland far away form an endless stretch, and the garden scenery has been extended endlessly here.The third is the back mountain and back lake area.The northern foot of Wanshou Mountain is close to the wall. The terrain is narrow and there is no scenery at all. However, the gardener cleverly dug a river channel along the north wall at the foot of the mountain, and made the river channel form a lake with alternate widths and narrows. The soil is piled up to form hills on the north bank, and trees are densely planted on both sides, and then the water of Kunming Lake is introduced from the west of Longevity Mountain to the back mountain.In this way, a Houxi River was formed between the hills, and a shopping street was built in the middle of the river in imitation of Suzhou Water Street.Boating on the back lake, or between the natural mountains and forests, the lake surface is wide and narrow, bright and dark, the mountains and rivers are full of doubts and there is no way, and there is another village with willows and flowers; or enter the bustling city street, where there are all kinds of shops lined up on both sides.Walking ashore and stepping into the mountain road behind the mountain, there are towering trees on both sides, and deep in the shade of the trees, there are groups of pavilions scattered.At the east end of Houshan, there is also a Harmony Garden, which is a garden within a garden imitating the construction of Jichang Garden in Wuxi.There is a pond of small water, surrounded by towers and pavilions, the environment is quiet and quiet, with unique caves.The entire back mountain has become a very quiet scenic spot which is completely different from the open front mountain and lake.

(3) Famous gardens were robbed. In 1856, the British and French imperialists launched the second Opium War of aggression against China. In 1860, the British and French allied forces invaded Beijing and occupied Haidian. Yizhu Garden first plundered the treasures in the garden, and then set fire to these gardens.Qingyi Garden was almost burned to the ground except for a few buildings. The Qing people once described Qingyi Garden after the catastrophe as follows: "Yuquan mourns the Kunming Fortress, only the copper rhinoceros guards the thorns, and the fox crows at night in Qingzhixiu. Under the Xiuyi Bridge, the fish are weeping in the air." This is really a true portrayal of the desolate scene of a generation of famous gardens.Until the fourteenth year of Guangxu (AD 1888), Empress Dowager Cixi embezzled funds from naval shipbuilding to restore the main part of Qingyi Garden and renamed it the Summer Palace.In 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded China. The Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu fled to Xi’an in a hurry. Tsarist Russian, British and Italian invading troops successively entered the Summer Palace for a year. .In 1902, Cixi returned to Beijing and spent huge sums of money to restore the Summer Palace. In 1904, she spent huge sums of money to hold her 70th birthday celebration in the garden. This was the last time feudal rulers used this royal garden on a large scale.

After the Yuanmingyuan was burned down, Emperor Tongzhi ordered to use the old materials from the demolition of Qingyi and other gardens to restore the three gardens, but it was soon suspended due to the emptiness of the national treasury and differences of opinion. Up to now, there are only a few in the Xiyanglou area. The broken columns and walls of the stone building are gone.Many people now visit Yuanmingyuan because they only see these stone buildings, so they regard them as the former appearance of the three gardens of Yuanming. This is really a misunderstanding. The Western Building does not represent the typical architectural style of Yuanmingyuan. The ruined walls can only make people see the brutality and ferocity of the imperialist invaders.