Portfolio Essay 2

Huanxi Zhang

ENG113B TTH

Jeffrey Klepper

Dec.13.2013

Summer Palace

Summer Palace is the largest and best-preserved imperial garden of China; it was originally a Qing dynasty emperor’s palace and garden. In addition, it is known as the royal garden museum. When the Summer Palace was built, it learnt some lessons from Jiangnan gardens’ design and techniques in order to create a large natural landscape palace. Many people visit the Summer Palace because it has social value, gorgeous archaic architectural style, and uses space wisely.

The Summer Palace was found in 1750, and built in 1764. It was severely damaged in the second Opium War. Then it was rebuild in 1888, and finished rebuild in 1895. In November 1998, the Summer Palace was list in the "World Heritage List". Summer Palace the best one of the Qing Dynasty’s three mountains and five state parks, and even the last one of Chinese imperial society built large imperial garden in the Qing Dynasty. The area of Summer Palace is 290 hectares, contains about three-quarters of water. (http://www.summerpalace-china.com)

The main lake Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace is about 220 hectares. There is a 17-hole bridge lying on the lake, the three islands on the lake also has three different forms of classical architecture. The 17-hole bridge that built on Kunming Lake is very famous, Kunming Lake is the largest water zone in the Summer Palace, and the bridge is overall 150 meters long and eight meters wide. The bridge is named because there are seventeen holes on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is white and made of stone, which makes it looks beautiful on the lake; moreover, there are more than five hundred different looking carved stone lions stand on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is also the largest stone bridge in the Summer Palace. Another build on the Kunming Lake that catch peoples’ eye is the Qingyan Fang. Qingyan Fang commonly known as stone boat. In the western end of the lake, it is the only building that with western-style; its predecessor was a released temple station. Qingyan Fang is thirty-six meters long, and it was piled up with marble, the overall looking is white. It has two levels; the bottom floor is made of floor tiles; there are stained glass windows on the side, for the top roof, there is brick decoration on it. There also are four tubes go through the boat from the top roof. When it rains, the water flows from top of the ship through those four tubes located in the corners, at the end of the tubes, there are four dragon heads craved by stone that leading the water into the lake, which is a very clever design. (The Summer Palace, Peking)

The main buildings are located on Front Mountain, which near the palace’s main entrance, so it is more convenient to start the tour here. The Front Mountain faced south; you can see the overlooking of the Kunming Lake on the mountain. Those craftsmen who built the buildings on the Front Mountain focused a lot at here, such as the Buddha Pavilion. Buddha Pavilion is a magnificent religious building; it’s the center of the architectural layout of Summer Palace. The name of Buddha Pavilion is in praise of the Buddhism, and it is built with Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou as a mode. The Buddha Pavilion used red, green and gold as main color, and it’s more colorful when we see it closely. The Buddha Pavilion built in the 20-meters platform made by stone; it has eight sides, three levels and four eaves. The pavilion is forty-one meters high; there are eight wood pillars straight through the top in the pavilion that makes the Buddha Pavilion as hard as we can imagine.

On the south side of the Front Mountain, there is he Long Corridor, which is another famous architectural design in the Summer Palace. “The Long Corridor is facing the Kunming Lake; the length of the Long Corridor is 728 meters, and it has 273 separate rooms in total.”(Jia, 72) The Long Corridor is one of the longest verandas in China. In 1992, the “Guinness Book of World Records” recognized it as the world’s longest veranda. Each of the pillars in the Long Corridor has those beautiful paintings on it; there are more than 14000 pictures had been drawn on those pillars in all, including landscapes, flowers, birds, fish and insects, allusions draws on them.

Over the years, the Summer Palace stand on "cultural construction of the park" for the purpose, in-depth mining culture, and vigorously promote the protection of the Summer Palace, management and do research about the environment, water, ancient relics, and landscape of Summer Palace's protection, established a complete system of protection and management of the Summer Palace. For continue the social value of the Summer Palace, people has done a lot of work to ensure it is being protect well.

After visiting the Summer Palace, where everything is so gorgeous that makes people can’t forget. It has both magnificent momentums and man-made natural beauty. With those artistic architecture reflects the wisdom of ancient Chinese, we should cherish those artwork that ancient people have left to us.

Works Cited

Jia, Jun. “Beijing Summer Palace.” Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2009. Print.

Zhao, Wei. Jin, Mingzhe. Summer Palace. Shanghai: Yangtze river literature and art press，2011. Print

CUMMING, C F GORDON. "The Summer Palace, Peking." Littell's Living Age (1844-1896), 164.2121 (1885): 434.

http://www.summerpalace-china.com