Today's field trip, boys and girls, is to the Emperor's Summer Palace. Quoting from the Guide to the Summer Palace: "The Summer Palace, originally named Garden of Clear Ripples, was built by Emperor Qianlong in 1750 to celebrate his mother's birthday. It was later used as a pleasure garden by the emperors and empresses. In 1860 it was brutally burned down by the Anglo-French Allied Forces. Empress Dowager Cixi diverted navy funds to rebuild it in 1886. The garden was again seriously damaged by the Allied Forces of Eight Powers in 1900 and was rebuilt again in 1902."
The Summer Palace, also known as Yihe Yuan or the Garden of Health and Harmony, has a total area of 2.9 square kilometres. The buildings on the property have an area of about 70,000 square metres (roughly 700,000 square feet). Roughly three-quarters of the 2.0 square kilometres is under water, an artifical lake called Kunming Lake. The dominant land feature is Longevity Hill which was built using the earth excavated from the lake bed. (Information from Wikipedia and ebeijing.gov.cn)
Why should we care? First reason: it is my host's favourite of the historical sites in Beijing. Since she has taken care of me so well during my visit, the least I can do is tell you about her favourite place. Second reason: it is easy to get to, two subway stations on Line 4 are close to two different entry gates for the Summer Palace. (As always, "close to" is a relative term, about a fifteen minute walk, or you can spend Y20 for a power rickshaw ride.)
Third reason: it is incredibly beautiful and breathtaking. It is a long steep climb to the top of Longevity Hill from the North Gate entrance. Anybody who made that climb regularly would almost certainly be fit and live a long life. Once you get to the top and start down the other side, you start to catch glimpses of Kunming Lake. If you go on a fairly busy day, as we did, then you will also see various sizes of boats on the lake. It is almost magical. The small boats look as if they are floating high on the water or perhaps dancing on the surface. Even the larger ones look light and airy as they head in various directions to various destinations on the lake. There must have been some wisdom in the heads of the planners of the Summer Palace. Buildings are scattered around the site, more of them around Longevity Hill than elsewhere but they are spread throughout the Garden. If you were a court official (or the emperor) you could spend a few hours in one of many different places in the Garden and be away from the noise and business of the court.
One of the things that struck be about the Summer Palace is the significant similarities between it, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. The buildings have the same design and the decorative touches on the buildings are almost identical. The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are considerably older than the Summer Palace. All are immense engineering and design feats, especially without motorized vehicles. Yet they all look as if they could have come from the same mind (or set of minds) and all been built about the same time. At least some parts are deliberately similar. Parts of the Temple of Heaven were built to match parts of the Forbidden City for example. But these similarities suggest a mindset that relied on the past for guidance and did not change readily. Even work commissioned by Dowager Empress Cixi is like work completed by emperors in the distant past.
Another thing that struck me about these three sites (and the Great Wall) is something I alluded to in the previous paragraph. The work was done without motorized vehicles. The Summer Palace, all 2.9 square kilometres of it including dredging roughly 2 square kilometres for a lake, and piling that earth to make the stable, long lasting Longevity Hill, all that was done using human and animal power. And it was completed in less than two years, in time for Emperor Qianlong's mother's sixtieth birthday.
Some things have changed in China since then. The country and the government look forward as well as show respect for history. For example, China has the single largest number of Internet users in the world on a per country basis. However Internet penetration on a per capita basis is not impressive, people are working to change that. And China, like most nations, has lots of motorized vehicles for major projects. The government is still able to mobilize tens of thousands to millions of people to focus on a particular national project just as the emperors could. Unlike the projects of the emperors today's projects are focused both inwardly (Three Gorges Dam) and outwardly (2008 Olympics).
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