Pictures, history, legends and poems of the Summer Palace

The Summer Palace, the imperial garden of China in the Qing Dynasty, was originally named Qingyi Garden. It is located in the western suburb of Beijing, 0/5km away from the urban area/kloc-0, covering an area of about 290 hectares and adjacent to Yuanmingyuan. It is a large-scale landscape garden with Kunming Lake and Wanshou Mountain as the background and Hangzhou West Lake as the basis, drawing lessons from the design techniques of Jiangnan gardens. It is also the most well-preserved royal palace, known as the "Royal Garden Museum" and a national key tourist attraction.

Before the Qing Emperor Qianlong succeeded to the throne, there were four large royal gardens in the western suburbs of Beijing. In the 15th year of Qianlong (1750), Emperor Qianlong rebuilt Qingyi Garden here with 4.48 million taels of silver, forming a royal garden area 20 kilometers long from Tsinghua campus to Xiangshan. In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), Qingyi Garden was burned by the British and French allied forces. In the 14th year of Guangxu (1888), it was rebuilt and renamed the Summer Palace as a summer amusement park. In the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), the Summer Palace was destroyed by "Eight-Nation Alliance" and its treasures were looted. After the demise of the Qing Dynasty, the Summer Palace was destroyed again during the period of warlord melee and Kuomintang rule.