Introduction to the Zhengda Guangming Hall
The Zhengda Guangming Hall is located in the main gate of the Old Summer Palace. It is the first of the forty sceneries of the Old Summer Palace. The Zhengda Guangming Scenic Area includes the Zhengda Guangming Hall and the Dagong Gate area. In the third year of Yongzheng (1725).
It’s an upright and bright career.” There is a poem by Qianlong that explains the meaning of "upright and bright": unbiased when building blessings, be restrained (zheng), follow the measures of things and begin to be grand (da), make use of the national view to be radiant (guang), present a warning to others (ming) .
First construction
According to Mr. Wang Rongzu’s investigation of the "Qing Dynasty Archives and Historical Materials", Yongzheng informed the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War before 1725 that "I am in the Old Summer Palace no different from the palace. "Everything that needs to be done will be handled as usual." The emperor called the place where he handled government affairs in the Old Summer Palace the "Qinzheng Hall". From 1725, life in the garden was almost the same as handling government affairs in the palace. The project started a year ago and included the main buildings, which were built for the emperor to handle government affairs, or to transfer the center of political power in the Forbidden City, including the Zhengda Guangming Hall and Jiuzhou Qingyan.
Regulations of Zhengda Guangming Hall
Zhengda Guangming Hall is the main hall of Yuanmingyuan. The hall is 129 feet high (about 39 meters) and 63 feet wide (about 19 meters). There are 7 diameters. The 2-foot-9-inch columns stand on 4-foot-tall steps. In the hall, there are couplets written by Emperor Yongzheng himself, and a plaque in Yongzheng's handwriting "Upright and Bright" hangs on the hall. It has 7 halls, a wide platform in front, and 5 east and west auxiliary halls. The jagged stone mountain behind the palace is called Shoushan. The mountain is still there today, but none of the jade bamboo shoots can be seen again.
Generally speaking, this area is surrounded by walls to form a large restricted area. As the political status of this palace rises, the main hall also adds two wings. The military minister on the east wing handles government affairs, and the prince on the west wing The purpose room.
Qianlong Period Style
Among the Forty Scenes of Qianlong, this was the first landscape he named.
In the center of the hall is the emperor's throne, which is made of rosewood and is exquisitely crafted. The throne is covered with a yellow embroidered satin cover. The throne is located on a high platform with three steps below. The platform is surrounded by red lacquered wood. The railings are beautifully carved with roses and other flowers. There are high screens on both sides of the throne. The screens are decorated with blue emeralds and peacock feathers, and the feathers are dotted with rubies and jaspers. The throne is covered with beautifully embroidered cushions. Directly above the throne hangs a plaque with four characters "Zhengda Guangguang" written by Emperor Yongzheng. The wooden ceiling is carved with deep patterns, and crystal clear Western-style carved glass lamps are suspended. The windows are covered with white Korean paper. There is also a large panoramic view of the Old Summer Palace hanging on the west wall of Zhengda Guangming Hall, which is so big that it almost covers the entire wall. On the east wall hangs Qianlong's imperial book "Yu Shu Zhou Shu Wu Yi Pian". Emperor Qianlong admired the layout of this place and praised it: "Without carving or painting, it looks like a pavilion with pine trees and thatch. Behind the house, there are steep stone walls and jade bamboo shoots. The front courtyard is empty and open. Looking around outside the wall, the trees are dark and dark, and the flowers are falling in red. Purple, the layers are endless." That is, "If you don't carve it, you won't return, and you will feel like a thatched cottage."
The Zhengda Guangming Hall includes a series of buildings such as the leading space. Starting from the south, you need to pass through the screen wall, the court room, and two palace gates before reaching the main body of the former building complex - the Zhengda Guangming Hall. The design of Zhengda Guangming Hall is elegant and dignified, with seven rooms wide and three rooms deep, with surrounding corridors. It has a gray tiled top with brackets and red rhombus doors and windows, and is located on a higher platform. It was built in about 1725, the early year of Yongzheng. This scene includes the Grand Palace Gate, the Zhengda Guangming Hall, the East and West Side Halls and other courtyards. It is the first group of buildings after entering the garden. The Zhengda Guangming Hall is tall and solemn. On the hall hangs a plaque with the four characters "Zhengda Guangming" hand-painted by Yongzheng.
The Burning of the Zhengdaguangming Hall
In 1793 (the fifty-eighth year of Qianlong), the British envoy George Macartney (1737-1806) visited China, bringing the British King Gifts for Emperor Qianlong's birthday are displayed in this hall.
In October 1860, when the British and French allied forces ravaged Old Summer Palace (the Battle of Gengshen), the headquarters of the British and French invading troops looted and burned Old Summer Palace and other gardens in the western suburbs was located here. This hall was the temporary headquarters of the leaders of the invasion of China, but it was later burned down.
Detailed introduction of information about the Old Summer Palace
The Old Summer Palace is not only famous for its gardens, but also a royal museum with extremely rich collections, which can be called a cultural treasure house. Hugo once said: "Even if all the treasures of Notre Dame de Paris in our country (France) are added together, they cannot compare with this large and magnificent Oriental Museum." The garden is luxuriously furnished and has a large collection of art. Treasure. According to descriptions from Westerners who have witnessed the Yuanmingyuan, “the splendor and splendor of the garden are beyond description and description, and beyond the imagination of Europeans.”
“All kinds of precious treasures are accumulated in this royal villa, among thousands of households.” The finest carved red sandalwood furniture, exquisite ancient cracked porcelain and enamel bottles, woven with gold Silver brocades, felt blankets, leather goods, gold-plated French clocks, exquisite general plans of the Old Summer Palace, gem-inlaid hunting pictures, lifelike plaques with landscapes and figures, as well as various other domestic artistic masterpieces and various European eccentricities There are all kinds of decorations.
The Old Summer Palace contains an extremely rich collection of books and cultural relics, here are just a few examples. Wenyuan Pavilion is a library built after Fan's Tianyi Pavilion in Ningbo. It is one of the famous four royal north pavilions and was built in the 40th year of Qianlong's reign. The pavilion contains one copy of the "Sikuquanshu" issued by Qianlong and Kangxi's "Collection of Ancient and Modern Books". "Sikuquanshu" is the largest comprehensive series of books in ancient my country, containing more than 3,400 kinds of books, nearly 80,000 volumes, and more than 36,000 volumes. It embodies the ancient civilization of our country and shows the great courage of the Chinese nation. Because the "Quanshu" contains so many chapters, the most important ones were selected and compiled into the "Siku Quanshu Collection", totaling 12,000 volumes. There are two copies of "Hui Yao". One is stored in the Forbidden City's Zaozao Hall, and the other is stored in the "Weifu Study Room" in the east wing of the Sutra Hall in Changchun Garden. In addition, there is another famous literary pavilion in Hanjing Hall - Chunhua Pavilion, which was specially built to collect copies of the famous Dharma calligraphy "Chunhua Pavilion Calligraphy".
"Ge Tie" was originally copied in the third year of Chunhua (992) in Beining, and includes the famous calligraphy works of 99 people including Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Cang Jie, Xia Yu, and Confucius. Divided into ten volumes, it is the first large-scale collection of Tie in my country and is known as the ancestor of all Tie. During the Qianlong period, according to the Northern Song Dynasty's "Initial Expansion and Gift Edition" of "Ge Tie", after careful review and revision, the stone carving was carried out. It took three years, and in the spring of the 37th year of Qianlong's reign (1772), the 144 copied boards were inlaid in the 24 cloisters in front of the Chunhua Pavilion. This is the famous "Qianlong's engraving of Chunhua Pavilion Notes". Needless to say, when the Old Summer Palace was destroyed, the precious cultural relics such as "Sikuquanshu", "Collection of Complete Books", "Collection of Ancient and Modern Books", "Chunhua Pavilion Notes" and other precious books and cultural relics collected in the garden were not spared. This can reflect from one aspect the huge damage caused to human culture by the imperialist invaders burning the Old Summer Palace.
Of course, nothing is perfect. The Old Summer Palace is so large, and it was expanded and renovated by emperors of several dynasties. Coupled with the influence of the decadent consciousness of feudal emperors, no matter how you look at it, it still has shortcomings. However, overall, the Old Summer Palace is indeed an outstanding garden. It can be said that it is the culmination of thousands of years of excellent gardening art in my country and pushes my country's classical gardens to a new height. At that time, everyone who witnessed its grand occasion said that it was indeed good. Some Westerners started to take a new look at Chinese gardens from the Old Summer Palace. In short, the Old Summer Palace has won honors for our ancient civilization and was once the pride of our Chinese nation!
Information on the destruction of the Old Summer Palace
The Old Summer Palace is located in a plain north of Haidian Town in the northwest suburbs of Beijing superior. It was originally the royal garden of the Qing Dynasty.
It was built in the forty-eighth year of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1709) and was basically completed in the ninth year of the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1744). Since then, the Jiaqing, Daoguang and Xianfeng dynasties have repeatedly repaired and expanded the building, which lasted for more than 150 years.
What people are accustomed to call the Old Summer Palace is actually the general name of the three gardens of Old Summer Palace, Changchun Garden and Qichun Garden (later renamed "Wanchun"). It covers a very large area with a circumference of about 10 kilometers. The Old Summer Palace is a waterscape garden, with the water surface accounting for more than half of the entire garden area. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, there are 145 landscapes distributed, some of which are named after water as the theme. For example, "Autumn Moon on Flat Lake", "Spring Dawn on Su Di", "Moon Reflected in Three Ponds" and "Lotus in Wind in Quyuan" all come from the ten sceneries of West Lake in Hangzhou. There are also "Wuling Spring Colors" imitating the Peach Blossom Spring, "Xifeng Beauty" imitating Lushan Mountain, "Stacked Stone Maze" imitating the Lion Grove Garden, "Ruyuan" imitating the Zhanyuan Garden, and "Moving Crane Steps" imitating the Crane Pavilion of Gushan. etc., bringing together the essence of countless scenic spots and famous gardens in the world.
In its heyday, the Old Summer Palace was not only a royal garden of unprecedented scale, but also the ruling center where the Qing emperors issued orders and exercised power. From Kangxi to Xianfeng, six emperors lived here for three or four months every year, handling government affairs and conducting various political activities. On both sides of the Grand Palace Gate in those days, there were offices of central government departments such as the Cabinet, the Sixth Ministry, and the Military Aircraft Department. In the ruins to the northwest, several groups of large-scale palace ruins can still be found. There are the "Zhengda Guangming Hall" where the emperor listened to government affairs, the "Jiuzhou Qing Banquet" where grand banquets were held, the "Anyou Palace" where the images and sacrifices of successive Qing emperors were enshrined, and the library "Wenyuan Pavilion", etc.
In terms of architectural art, the Old Summer Palace has also formed a unique style that combines Chinese and Western styles. At the northern end of the Changchun Garden, there was originally a group of European-style garden gardens, including a "Western-style building" designed by Italian missionaries, painters such as Castiglione and other foreign experts. ), a large number of building materials are finely carved stone, and various forms of pools and fountains are installed in the main scenic spots. Garden road paving, hedge pruning, as well as walls, stone carvings, bronze statues, etc. all have Western characteristics, but the roof is covered with unique Chinese glazed tiles, and the walls are inlaid with glazed bricks. At the same time, traditional Chinese stone stacking technology and Brick carving craftsmanship. At that time, it was the only garden building complex in the world with both Eastern and Western styles, and was therefore known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens" in the West. The park also has an extremely rich collection of cultural relics, treasures, calligraphy and painting classics, which can be called a treasure house of oriental culture and art.
The Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded China organized by the Eight-Power Allied Forces in the 26th year of Guangxu's reign (1900), including Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the United States, Japan, Italy, and Austria. At the end of the 19th century, the Boxer Rebellion broke out in northern China. The Boxers proposed the slogan "Support the Qing Dynasty and destroy the foreign countries" and entered Beijing one after another. On May 31, 1900, Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Russia, Italy and other countries sent more than 300 troops to forcefully enter Beijing in the name of protecting their embassies. On June 17, the Eight-Power Allied Forces captured the Dagukou Fort in Tianjin. On June 19, Cixi decided to declare war on all countries, and issued a declaration of war on the 21st. On August 14, the Eight-Power Allied Forces attacked Beijing. On the morning of August 15, Cixi took Emperor Guangxu and fled westward. After the invading army entered the city, they burned Prince Zhuang's Mansion, massacred about 1,700 Boxers in the Prince's Mansion, and looted Beijing for three days, followed by private robberies. On August 27, the Qing government sent Yi Kuang and Li Hongzhang as plenipotentiary ministers to sue for peace with the eight countries. On September 7, 1901, the Qing government signed the "Xinchou Treaty" with the governments of various countries.
There is this passage in the movie commentary of "The Burning of Old Summer Palace": There was a fire that branded shame on every Chinese person's face, and at the same time, it branded a deep hatred in every Chinese person's heart. Hatred. While the fire was burning in the sky, a nation with the rolling waves of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, a nation with hundreds of millions of pairs of strong hands and millions of pairs of tearful eyes, could only hold empty fists and watch helplessly as this ten thousand The garden of the garden turned into ashes...
Garden features of the Old Summer Palace
Overview of features
The Old Summer Palace covers an area of ??more than 350 hectares, of which the water surface area is about 140 hectares. Its land building area is 10,000 square meters more than the Forbidden City, its water area is equal to that of the Summer Palace, and its total area is equal to 8.5 Forbidden City.
The Old Summer Palace stretches for 10 kilometers around and consists of the Old Summer Palace, Qichun Garden and Changchun Garden. The Old Summer Palace is the largest, so it is collectively called the Old Summer Palace (also known as the Three Old Summer Palaces).
In addition, there are many subordinate gardens located on the east, west and south sides of the Old Summer Palace, including Jingyi Garden in Xiangshan Mountain, Jingming Garden in Yuquan Mountain, and Qingyi Garden (the later Summer Palace was built on this basis). etc. The total area of ??the whole park is more than 5,000 acres.
The Old Summer Palace not only brings together several famous gardens in the south of the Yangtze River, but also creatively transplants Western garden architecture, integrating the culmination of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign gardening arts at that time. There are splendid palaces, exquisite pavilions and pavilions in the garden; there is the "Business Street" symbolizing the lively market; there are mountain villages symbolizing the pastoral scenery; there are the autumn moon on the flat lake and the sunset on the Lei Feng that imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou, and the Lion Forest in Suzhou. Scenic spots; there are also those built after the poetic and artistic conception of ancient poets and painters, such as Penglai Yaotai, Wuling Spring Color, etc. It can be said that the Old Summer Palace is the crystallization of the wisdom and blood and sweat of the Chinese people, and is also a model of architectural art and culture for the Chinese people and even the world. Not only that, the Old Summer Palace also contains countless priceless treasures of various styles, extremely rare historical classics and rich and precious historical relics, such as calligraphy and painting of the past dynasties, gold and silver jewelry, porcelain of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, etc. It can be called one of the treasure houses of human culture. It can also be said that it is the largest museum in the world.
Theme elements
Most of the garden landscaping in the Old Summer Palace is water-themed, because water is the source of interest, and many of them directly draw on the interest of the famous waterscapes in the south of the Yangtze River. The Back Lake Scenic Area of ??the Old Summer Palace has nine small islands built around the back lake, which are symbols of the "Yu Gong" and "Nine States" in the country's territory. The Old Summer Palace is built on each island.
The Old Summer Palace
Small gardens or scenic groups have their own characteristics, and they also borrow from each other to form a beautiful scenery. The skylight above and below the north bank is like climbing the Yueyang Tower to have a panoramic view of Dongting Lake. "A hanging rainbow dominates the lake, winding for hundreds of feet, with railings and wings, and a wide pavilion in the middle. The reflection of the pattern, between the lintel sills, overlooking from the sky, a Vast expanse of green." The openness on the west bank resembles that of Yuquan Fish Watching in Hangzhou, commonly known as the Goldfish Pond. "The pond was dug to be a paradise for fish. Under the houses around the pond, there are thousands of brocade scales." In the west of the Yuanmingyuan, Wanfang Anhe, the houses are built in the lake, shaped like The swastika is warm in winter and cool in summer. Looking at the other shore, the strange flowers are as delicate as embroidery. Emperor Yongzheng liked to live here. The water in the northern part of the Old Summer Palace is Mingse, which uses the Taixi (Xize) water method to introduce water into the room and turn the fan. "Lin Sese, the water is cool, the stream wind is roaring, and the mountain birds are singing." Emperor Qianlong liked to cool off here. Haiyue Kaijin in the West Lake of Changchun Garden has a three-story palace built on a huge round white jade platform, which looks like a mirage from a distance.
Penglai Yaotai in the sea of ??blessings is based on the mythical Penglai Island, formerly known as Penglai Island. According to legend, Qin Shihuang once sent a man named Xu Fu to lead more than a thousand boys and girls across the sea to find fairy lands and elixirs for him, so as to achieve immortality. Of course, this can only be "Haike talked about Yingzhou, but Yan Tao was so confused that it was hard to find a letter." Emperor Yongzheng asked craftsmen to pile rugged boulders into three islands in the East Lake of the Old Summer Palace, symbolizing the legendary Penglai, Yingzhou and Abbot "Three Immortals Mountains". Five. Jade Tower Twelve", and according to the meaning of "Xu Fuhai Zhongqiu", the East Lake was named "Fuhai". There are also more than ten beautiful gardens on the four sides of Fuhai. Fuhai is five to six hundred meters wide in the east, west, north and south. Including the surrounding small waters, the total area is about 35 hectares, which is equivalent to the water surface of Beihai Park. The water here is wide and the scenery is beautiful. Every Dragon Boat Festival, large-scale dragon boat races are held here. On the night of July 15th, the Qing Emperor watched the river lanterns here. After the ice froze in winter, the emperor took a ride on the ice bed to tour Fuhai. Fuhai is actually the water entertainment center of Yuanmingyuan.
Architectural style
Another notable feature of the Old Summer Palace is that it is heavily imitated from many famous gardens and scenic spots in various parts of China, especially those in the south of the Yangtze River. Emperor Qianlong Hongli visited Jiangsu and Zhejiang six times in the south, Wutai in the west, Daiyue in the east, and Rehe, Shengjing (ie Shenyang), Panshan and other places many times. Everywhere he went, he would have the accompanying painters copy the famous mountains, rivers, and gardens that he liked, and then build replicas of them in the gardens after he returned to Beijing. According to incomplete statistics, there are no fewer than forty or fifty direct copies of the garden scenery of the Old Summer Palace. The ten scenic spots of West Lake in Hangzhou, including their names, are all replicated in the park without changing their names. As the saying goes: Who knows the beautiful scenery in the south of the Yangtze River, it will move the sky and shrink the earth in your arms.
After Emperor Qianlong’s southern tour, four famous gardens in the south of the Yangtze River were imitated in the Old Summer Palace. One of them is Anlan Garden in the northwest of Fuhai. During the 27th year of Qianlong's southern tour, he used Chen's Yuyuan in Haining as his residence and named it "Anlan Garden". Emperor Qianlong liked the garden's beautiful structure very much. After returning to Beijing, he renovated and added new buildings near the Siyi Bookstore in Yuanmingyuan, imitating its location. After the garden was completed, it was also named "Anlan Garden". The other three famous gardens imitated at that time were all in the Changchun Garden. One is the Xiaoyoutian Garden built in the east courtyard of Siyongzhai in the 23rd year of Qianlong's reign, modeled on Wang's Garden in West Lake, Hangzhou; the other is the Xiaoyoutian Garden built in the 32nd year of Qianlong's reign, modeled on the Zhanyuan Garden in Jiangning (i.e. Nanjing). Garden; one is the Lion Grove, which was built in the 37th year of Qianlong's reign and imitated the famous gardens in Suzhou. Ruyuan and Lion Forest both have more than 16 scenic spots.
The beautiful west peak of the Old Summer Palace was the place where Emperors Yongzheng and Qianlong held a Qixi Festival banquet every seventh day of the seventh lunar month. Here you can enjoy the scenery of the Western Mountains. On the west bank of the river, there is a group of overlapping mountains with steep pines and steep mountains and rapid waterfalls in the mountain streams. Looking up at it, it looks like the majestic majesty of Lushan Mountain, so it is named "Xiao Kuang Lu".
Sitting on a stone facing the stream, it is imitated from the Orchid Pavilion in Shanyin, Kuaiji, Shaoxing. Built in the Yongzheng Dynasty, it is commonly known as Liubei Pavilion. Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and other literati met in the Orchid Pavilion of Kuaiji on March 3rd of the ninth year of Yonghe (that is, Shangsi day), drank wine in a meandering stream, composed poems and repaired wedges (sacrificial activities), and it became a legend.
The Orchid Pavilion in the Old Summer Palace is an open pavilion with three bays and double eaves. In the forty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign, 6 pieces of "Lanting Preface" calligraphy by famous calligraphers of all dynasties were collected. Together with the handwritings of the great scholar Yu Minzhong and Emperor Qianlong himself, they were combined into the "Lanting Eight Pillars Volume". Emperor Qianlong ordered the pavilion to be rebuilt into eight directions and replaced with stone pillars. Each pillar was engraved with one post. These are the famous eight pillars of the Orchid Pavilion of Yuanmingyuan. Kuoran Grand Duke, later also known as Shuanghezhai, was built after the Jichang Garden in Huishan, Wuxi. The northern half of this scene was built in the middle of the Qianlong period, imitating the rocks in the Yunlin Stone Chamber of Panshan Jingji Villa. Jiaqing poems praised "Shuanghezhai": its structure is modeled after Huishan, and its famous garden conveys a tranquil environment. The winding roads are steep, the sycamore pines are especially luxuriant, the small caves are rugged and the rocks are not stubborn. People know that the Harmonious Garden in the Summer Palace was modeled after the Jichang Garden in Huishan. In fact, a replica of the Jichang Garden was also built in the Old Summer Palace at that time. It's just that the two imitations have different artistic conceptions. The spring scenery of Wuling imitates the artistic conception of Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Spring". It was built in the late Kangxi period and was called Taohuawu during the Yongzheng Dynasty. It was once the place where Hongli studied, and the study room was called "Leshan Hall". This scene is said to have thousands of mountain peaches. There used to be Taohuawu in Changmen, Suzhou, which was said to be the former residence of Tang Bohu. Although Taohuawu in the Yuanmingyuan broke through the shackles of official norms in many aspects, it recruited a wide range of ideas and took various forms.
Architectural form
The main building types of the Old Summer Palace include halls, halls, pavilions, platforms, buildings, pavilions, pavilions, corridors, pavilions, studios, rooms, boats, pavilions, halls, Bridges, gates, walls, towers, as well as temples, Taoist temples, villages, markets, etc. are all there. The architectural style in its heyday encompassed almost all the possible layouts and styles of ancient Chinese architecture: there were common single-eaves rolled sheds with gray tube tile roofs, which were simple and elegant; there were also palace-style double-eaves roofs covered with glazed tiles. , splendid; it has a regular courtyard with two rooms and two rooms, as well as flexible building groups. There are as many as 38 types of architectural layouts. In addition to the common rectangle, square, circle, I-shaped, concave-convex characters, hexagonal, and octagonal, there are also many unique and novel plane forms, such as crescent shape, swastika, There are scroll shapes, cross shapes, field shapes, curved ruler shapes, plum blossom shapes, triangles, fan shapes, and even rings, squares, etc., which can be said to be extremely rich.
There are more than 100 gardens within gardens and scenic building groups in the Three Gardens of Yuanming Dynasty, which are commonly referred to as 100 sceneries. It integrates various garden buildings such as halls, pavilions, pavilions, pavilions, pavilions, corridors and verandas, covering an area of ??approximately 160,000 square meters. It is 10,000 square meters larger than the entire construction area of ??the Forbidden City. The buildings in the park not only draw on the advantages of palace-style buildings in the past dynasties, but also break through the constraints of official norms in terms of plane configuration, appearance shape, and group combination. They are widely collected and come in various forms.
It created many architectural forms that are extremely rare in both southern and northern China, such as Zixuan, Meiyuexuan, Tianzidian, as well as fan-shaped, bow-shaped, round mirror-shaped, I-shaped, mountain-shaped, cross-shaped, square Victory shape, scroll shape, etc. In addition, in the layout of the garden, the scenery changes with the situation, and the scenery is in various shapes; the scenery in the garden is surrounded by each other and deepens layer by layer, forming a rich, colorful, natural and harmonious overall beauty. The French missionary Wang Zhicheng once gave a vivid description. He said: The architecture of the Old Summer Palace has many changes in form, and is uneven and unconventional. Each of its small palaces seems to be made according to strange models, as if arranged at random, and no one is the same as the others. Everything is so interesting that one cannot take in the scene at a glance, but must study it carefully bit by bit.
Religious elements
The temple gardens of the Old Summer Palace also reflect an aspect of ancient Chinese culture. Anyou Palace (Hongci Yonghu) was built according to the old practice of Jingshan Shouhuang Palace. It is used to worship the "Shenyu" of Emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng. It is the royal ancestral temple in the garden. The palace has nine rooms, with a main ridge and double eaves resting on the mountain, and a roof covered with yellow glazed tiles. It is the largest building in the garden. There are pine trees and caps around it, and there are two pairs of Chinese tables at the southern end of the central axis, giving people a sense of solemnity. Fanghu Scenic Spot, located on the shore of the northeastern bay of Fuhai, was built according to the fantasy fairy mountain Qiongge. According to historical records, here There are more than 2,200 Buddha statues enshrined and more than 30 pagodas. The front base of this building is made of white marble in the shape of a "mountain" and extends into the water. The whole building is huge and magnificent. Whenever the mist begins to rise in the morning, the building disappears and appears in the smoke, just like a Qiongge Yaotai. The style and momentum of this building are rare among existing garden buildings in my country. Savatthi City is a typical Buddhist building. It is said to be built after the layout of the capital of the ancient Indian state of Qiaosara. There are 326 palaces and houses in the city. Since the Kangxi reign, whenever the emperor, empress dowager and empress dowager celebrate their birthdays, the Buddha statues enshrined by princes, princes and ministers have been stored here. Among them are pure gold, silver-plated, jade carvings, and bronze sculptures. Year after year, there are hundreds of thousands of them. The Old Summer Palace was looted and burned. The damage caused by this single place, whether in terms of economic value or cultural and artistic value, is difficult to estimate in numbers.