The Garden of Nurtured Harmony (Yiheyuan, better known as the Summer Palace), which was extended from a garden left in the Ming Dynasty, once served as the place for emperors to avoid summer heat and handle state affairs. The Summer Palace is an example of classical building in which natural scenery was harmonized to enhance Chinese architecture. Specifically, the Kunming Lake, the Hill of Longevity and the Long Covered Walkway built in the inner part of the garden and the Jade Spring Hill and the Western Hills are combined into an imperial garden as if provided by nature, though it was built by means of manpower.
The Kunming Lake, which comprises three-fourths of the area of the Summer Palace, is broad and bright. Built on the water are more than 30 bridges of various shapes, and the most beautiful of them all is a seventeen-arch bridge, which even affects the design of the lake and brings a unique flavor to the scenery of the garden. Against the background of the Jade Spring Hill and the Western Hills outside the garden is a body of water eight kilometers in circumference that presents a view of mountains beyond mountains and scenery framed within scenery as a result of man’s efforts and the natural landscape.
The hill of Longevity by the lake is 60-odd meters high, and more than 30 groups of buildings including the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which were arranged downhill one by one, were either hidden amidst the hill and forest or scattered by the lake, just like a paradise on the earth. Whenever you go around there, you will find that there are too many things for you to enjoy at one time, astonished at the work of art created by craftsmen several hundred years ago. On the southern slope of the Hill of Longevity is a long covered walkway by the lake, the longest of its kind in the world. Every beam above is decorated with colored painting numbering more than 14,000 and reflecting different themes, and strolling along the seven-hundred-metre-long walkway, you will feel as if you were walking inside the paintings. The long walkway and the Tower of Buddhist Incense meet at a right angle, thus connecting the natural beauty of the lake and hill in the Summer Palace.
Emperor Qian Long (1711-1799) was the most romantic and elegant of all the emperors in the Qing Dynasty, whose disposition finds expression in his efforts to construct Beijing. He had been fond of travelling south of the Yangtze River all his life, and he could not bring southern gardens to Beijing, but he was still able to pay a lot of money for such a project in the capital in the northern style. It comes from a higher level than nature itself, style gardens and the gracefulness of the south style ones on the one hand and of man-made and natural scenery on the other. The Summer Palace is an imaginary sketch of nature and Chinese garden architecture, which gives a lifelike explanation of the outlook of the world and that of art as well by way of learning from and harmonizing with nature.
The Garden of Nurtured Harmony (Yiheyuan, better known as the Summer Palace), which was extended from a garden left in the Ming Dynasty, once served as the place for emperors to avoid summer heat and handle state affairs. The Summer Palace is an example of classical building in which natural scenery was harmonized to enhance Chinese architecture. Specifically, the Kunming Lake, the Hill of Longevity and the Long Covered Walkway built in the inner part of the garden and the Jade Spring Hill and the Western Hills are combined into an imperial garden as if provided by nature, though it was built by means of manpower.
