Original text of "Summer Palace"

The Summer Palace

Anonymous

The Summer Palace in Beijing is a beautiful big park. Entering the gate of Guhe Garden, walking around the main hall, you come to the famous corridor. Green-painted pillars and red-painted railings can be seen as far as the eye can see. This corridor is more than 700 meters long and is divided into 273 rooms. There are colorful paintings on the sill of every room, depicting figures, flowers, plants, and scenery. No two of the thousands of paintings are the same.

The corridor is lined with flowers and trees. This kind of flower has not faded, and that kind of flower has bloomed again. The breeze blows from Kunming Lake on the left, making people feel refreshed. After walking along the corridor, we came to the foot of Wanshou Mountain. Looking up, I saw an octagonal pagoda-shaped three-story building standing on the mountainside with shining yellow glazed tiles. That is the Buddhist Incense Pavilion. The rows of magnificent palaces below are the Paiyun Palace.

Climbing Wanshou Mountain, standing in front of the Buddhist Incense Pavilion and looking down, you can see most of the scenery of the Summer Palace. The lush trees set off the yellow and green glazed tile roofs and the vermilion palace walls. Directly in front, Kunming Lake is as quiet as a mirror and as green as a piece of jasper. Pleasure boats and boats slide slowly across the lake, leaving almost no trace.

Looking to the east, you can vaguely see several ancient towers and the White Tower in the city. Coming down from Wanshou Mountain is Kunming Lake. Kunming Lake is surrounded by a long embankment. There are several stone bridges of different styles on the embankment, and countless hanging willows are planted on both sides. There is a small island in the center of the lake. Looking from a distance, the island is green and a corner of the palace is exposed among the trees.

Visitors can go to the island after walking across the long stone bridge. This stone bridge has seventeen holes, called the Seventeen-hole Bridge; there are hundreds of stone pillars on the bridge railings, and little lions are carved on the pillars. There are so many lions with different postures, no two are the same.

There are beautiful scenery everywhere in the Summer Palace, which can’t be described enough. I hope you will have the opportunity to enjoy it carefully.

Extended information:

The history of the collection of cultural relics in the Summer Palace:

The Summer Palace is a royal garden during the Qing Dynasty in China, formerly known as Qingyi Garden, located in the western suburbs of Beijing. It is 15 kilometers away from the city, covering an area of ??about 290 hectares, and is adjacent to the Old Summer Palace. It is a large-scale landscape garden based on Kunming Lake and Wanshou Mountain, based on the West Lake in Hangzhou, and drawing on the design techniques of Jiangnan gardens. It is also the most complete preserved royal palace garden and is known as the "Royal Garden Museum" , is also a key national tourist attraction.

Cultural Relics Collection During the Qingyi Garden period, Emperor Qianlong collected many cultural relics, including Shang and Zhou bronzes, porcelain and jade from the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, as well as calligraphy and paintings. At that time, more than 40,000 pieces of furnishings were recorded. A "Furnishings Inventory" is specially set up for file management. After the Opium War, due to the decline of the Qing Dynasty's national power, the Qingyi Garden's furnishings were somewhat abolished. By the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), there were actually 37,583 furnishings.

In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), five large royal gardens in the northwest suburbs of Beijing, including Qingyi Garden, were brutally burned and looted by the British and French forces. According to the inventory after the looting by the British and French allied forces, there were only 530 furnishings and items left in Qingyi Garden, and many of them were in pieces. In 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing, and the Summer Palace suffered another catastrophe, and all the cultural relics in the garden were destroyed and looted.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Summer Palace