Some 148 years ago, in the far orient, in the capital of Chinese Empire stood a royal wonderland: the ¡®garden of gardens¡¯. Its grandeur, its magnificence, and its collection of art dwarfed all other royal gardens in the world.
But on October 6, 1860, amid the turbulence of a war, a foreign "expedition corps" broke in, killed, looted, smashed, and burned the whole place to the ground. A masterpiece was no more!
This marvel of marvels was the Old Summer Palace, which had taken two generations of manpower to build, and had been subsequently perfected over several centuries. Voltaire wrote his admiration for it, Victor Hugo fulminated at its barbaric destruction.
The story of the Old Summer Palace is both the story of a miracle, and that of a tragedy for all mankind.
Old Summer Palace
The memorial park of the Old Summer Palace unfolds in the northwestern part of Beijing, against a strikingly splendid backdrop of verdant plains and dispersed hills. I had decided to visit it early in the morning to avoid the crowds.
The Old Summer Palace is described in our textbooks from primary school. I became even more connected to it when I studied history at university. The place always seemed to be a source of debate whenever the class brought it up. We gasped at its rise to glory, and bemoaned its fall to ruin. Now that I live in Beijing, the Palace is there, seeable and touchable like it had never been before.
The cabdriver dropped me off at the East Gate. "Don't miss the gardens inside," he advised before swooshing away. "You won't have another chance to see them all in just one place."
I saw what he meant. Over a period of 150 years since 1707, the imperial architects of the Qing Dynasty copied for the eyes of their emperors over a hundred gardens in the 350-hectare grounds. The original models, mostly well-known and privately-owned gardens, were scattered all over the country. Whenever they found one particularly beautiful during their inspection tours of China, the Qing emperors systematically used to order the creating in the Winter Palace (the Old Summer Palace) of an exact replicate of what they had seen.
Accomplished architects and skillful craftsmen were called to the imperial court from across the country to make each idea come true. And so they rebuilt Anlan Garden, Tian Garden, Ru Garden, Shizilin Garden? and erected pavilions, installed falls, and created even a fairyland that only exists in Chinese legend.
I took a circuitous path (Ticket: RMB 15), hoping not to miss any ash trail of those gardens. I had imagined a tough reality on the ground, and prepared myself to accept even worse.
Within a minute of my entering the Palace appears a lake glittering in the morning sun. It stretches to distant woods, and there takes a turn. This lake was said to evoke the feelings one has on the banks of the renowned West Lake in present-day Hangzhou. The far woods on the sloping hillock had been part of a Suzhou-style garden. Both doomed survivors of a fierce fire. Not far away is a large stack of stones, evidence of a huge garden rockery.
The gravel path soon disappears into a cypress woods ornamented with a shallow pond. A birch canoe anchors to a rotted stake. The lotus flower is about to begin to blossom next month. There a pair of ducklings is larking about in the water. Emperors and their concubines must have come here a lot. The pond and the woods offer the peacefulness and liveliness of the lovely countryside, a feat they could not find in the heavily protected Forbidden City.
As the ruined road snakes up, you may feel slightly confused in a maze of ruined debris. Along the way, you see endless parade of fallen stone lions with their face downward, bricks strewn about in chaos, foundations of former palaces now in rubbles. Standing in the midst of this desolation, pity, grief, and a furious anger inhabited my heart.
For this field of ruins should have been a masterpiece, a work of timeless art adorned with age-old calligraphies, refined paintings, historical archives, exquisite porcelains, never-to-be-found-again jades, and rare species of plants. Each one an architectural and artistic miracle.
In the northernmost corner, there used to stand an architectural Buddhist complex, a microcosm of the ancient Indian city of Sravasti. The Buddhist temple had been keeping several hundred thousand Buddhist statues of gold, silver, and jade, in meditating, enlightening, and dancing postures. The barbaric, ignorant, evil destruction of this religious sanctuary caused a loss there is simply no way to measure in monetary terms.
The infamous war which caused such a tragedy started in 1860. Historians call it "The Second Opium War", though this one has not so much to do with opium. An expedition corps of French and British soldiers was sent to subjugate the Chinese emperor who at the time was closing his empire to foreign influence. This corps disembarked at Tianjin, 150 miles southeast of Beijing, and drove straight to the empire's heart. The emperor escaped, and the ruthless invaders pillaged his most beloved Winter Palace (the Old Summer Palace). In their crass ignorance, they deemed their vile crime to be a 'ittle punishment to the Emperor himself'.
The gardens and its artifacts were not the only treasures to be looted. Emperor Qian Long was a great admirer of French and Italian architects. In the northeast part of the Winter Palace, he had built a palace in baroque style with columns and sophisticated fountains, similar to those standing in front of the Chateau de Versailles. The Emperor even built a Venetian microcosm in the middle of the lake of Changchun Garden. Observing the fine details sculpted on the remains, I couldn't but rave over the exquisite workmanship.
The Old Summer Palace is also the story of the Lei Family. The first Lei was a master builder in His Majesty's construction service. Emperor Kang Xi appreciated his talents, and bestowed upon him the honor of Chief Architect of the Old Summer Palace. He obviously did an excellent job, and so did his other family members since the Lei Family served 5 successive emperors to build most of the imperial palaces outside the Forbidden City.
As I wrapped up my tour, I recalled what Victor Hugo, the great French litterateur of 19th century once wrote: "This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man."
The Old Summer Palace, both in its past splendor and present desolation, belongs to all mankind. |
