It was a slightly crowded Sunday. After entering the Old Summer Palace from the south gate of Qichun Garden, passing through the crowd of people watching water birds and lotus viewings, all the way north, and arrived at Western Building and visited , nearly two hours had passed - this was just a corner of the park.
On this land that is five times larger than the Forbidden City, there was a garden building group known as "a model of all gardening art." However, in the past hundred years after 1860, this land has been trampled and destroyed by imperial gardens, invaders and various powerful peoples, and once became the residence of thousands of farmers. The gardens were destroyed.
In 1976, the Old Summer Palace Management Office was established, ending the chaotic history in the park. In 1988, Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park was opened to the public. In July 1997, it was announced by the Central Propaganda Department of and was selected as the first batch of " patriotic education bases " in China.
Today, between the ever-changing Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads of Beijing, there is only traffic flow around the Old Summer Palace and no smoke. Surrounded by a modern city, this garden site has been protected again.
On July 14, 2022, in the West Building Landscape Area of the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park, staff inspected and checked the remains and observed whether the remains were damaged. Photo by Wang Jianing, reporter of Beijing News
日本
In the 1970s, Xie Xiuqing spent his childhood in the Old Summer Palace. Her family’s old house is located in the area of Hanqiu Pavilion in the southeast corner of Qichun Garden. According to historical records, it is a place where Emperor Jiaqing built a place to enjoy autumn.
Jiejia’s old house is surrounded by vegetable fields, lotus root land and walnut forest . The parents plant grass beads and and kettle melon in the yard. They also raise chickens. After laying eggs, they sell them to teachers and students of Peking University and Tsinghua University . There is a large reed marsh in the waters on the east side of the old house. "In the 1970s, many people brought plastic bucket into the reed marsh. Half an hour later, they came out with a bucket of bird eggs."
Throughout their childhood, Xie Xiuqing felt that the old Summer Palace was deserted and the sound of birds, cicadas and wind were far beyond the sound of people. It is a paradise for nature and children. There are no walls or doors in the park. There is only a narrow dirt road that runs through north and south, just allowing a tractor to drive over. Xie Xiuqing and his friends would go to the Western Building in the northeast corner of the garden, climb the broken walls, sit in the big shell of Haiyantang and joke with each other, saying that it was the bathtub where Cixi took a bath.
It will take many years before she knows that under the boundless grassland that was run over by her bicycle tires, what is hidden is not only shocking atrocities, but also immeasurable cultural relics and architectural ruins.
time is shifted forward for nearly three hundred years. In 1707, Kangxi gave more than 600 acres of land in Huajiatun, the northwest suburb of Beijing to his fourth son, Yinzhen, and named it "Yuanmingyuan", which means "round and enter the spirit, and is the time of a gentleman. It is the wisdom of a master." It means that Kangxi hopes that Yinzhen will be perfect and wise.
After Yinzhen ascended the throne, he expanded the Old Summer Palace and lived in it to govern. Later, after several dynasties, the Spring Garden and Qichun Garden were promoted to the General Administration of the Old Summer Palace. The total area of the three parks is more than 5,200 mu, and the total construction area is 200,000 square meters, more than 40,000 square meters more than the Forbidden City. There are rare treasures such as white marble handrails, various enamel vases, bronze lions, etc., as well as artificial natural intertwined scenery such as rivers, mountains and jade buildings.
"In our Europe there is nothing to compare the luxury of this garden." French general Montubon once said.
1856, the British and French governments launched the Second Opium War against the Qing government on the grounds of " Yaro Incident" and "Ma Shenfu Incident". On September 22, 1860, under the steel guns and iron cannons, Emperor Xianfeng fled with his wife and children and some noble bureaucrats, and his younger brother, Prince Gong, stayed in Beijing for negotiations. At 7 p.m. on October 6, French troops arrived and captured the Old Summer Palace. The next day, the British and French coalition forces began to robbery for more than ten days in the Old Summer Palace. On the morning of October 18, the British army scattered into small groups and set fire in the Old Summer Palace, and countless palaces, temples, pavilions and lanais were burned.
"We walked out of the palace gate of the Old Summer Palace , with a hint of sadness in our excitement. Looking back, we saw the flying and jumping flames like strange garlands, igniting and swallowing the doors... The flames roared and crackled, as if singing in destruction." A British soldier wrote in his memoir.
After that, history was like a train with failed brakes, pulling Qing Dynasty and the Old Summer Palace, irreversibly sprinting towards decline.
1873, the Qing government tried to rebuild the Old Summer Palace, but it ended due to insufficient financial resources. In the next half century, the Old Summer Palace was destroyed by the Eight-Nation Alliance, warlords, bandits, soldiers and others, and after the 1911 Revolution, a large number of farmers entered the park to produce and live.
After the founding of New China, the ruins of the Old Summer Palace were managed by the management department of Summer Palace. In 1951, Zhou Enlai told Liang Sicheng, then deputy director of the Urban Planning Committee, that "The ruins of the Old Summer Palace must be preserved, and the land should not be allocated. Imperialism burned it, and we can restore it if conditions permit in the future." In the same year, the Beijing Municipal Government ordered that any organization prohibit the movement of the Old Summer Palace stones. In 1956, the Beijing Municipal Garden Bureau began planting trees in the Old Summer Palace. In 1964, the Greening Team of the Old Summer Palace Ruins Interchange District was managed.
However, during the Cultural Revolution, the Old Summer Palace encountered phenomena such as "digging mountains and filling lakes, taking stones to build houses, occupying land, and stealing trees". Until the end of the turmoil, the Old Summer Palace seemed to be a complete ruin.
In the summer of 1975, when the Qing history scholar Wang Daocheng first visited the Old Summer Palace, the information on hand was pitifully limited. "There was only a simple schematic map that marked the scope of the Old Summer Palace, and there was no way to walk."
He decided to first inspect the "largest and most conspicuous" waters in the Old Summer Palace. Fuhai was developed during the Yongzheng period, and the West Lake landscapes such as Pinghu Autumn Moon and Leifeng Sunset were imitated along the coast. It was a common place for the Qing Dynasty to hold ice sporting and dragon boat competitions. Historically, the water area reached 344,000 square meters, which was about 327 standard swimming pools for racing.
Now, the king of nearly 90 years old, is still vivid in his mind - he walked on the path to the east coast of Fuhai as shown in the map, was shocked and saw a large rice field near the coast, with the wind and the wheat waves arched one after another. On the other side are several low houses, and farmers are carrying hoes to the ground. Beyond the farmland, there is desolation.
"There is a ' Pengdao Yaotai ', a large and small island in the center of Fuhai. It was built in the image of Li Sixun's fairy mountain pavilion, but at that time, the pavilion, Pengdao and Yaotai were gone." There were several willow trees around the lake, which were thick and vigorous. He estimated that it might be an ancient tree planted a hundred years ago.
It was a sunny summer day. Wang Daocheng sat by the Fu Sea for an afternoon. He listened to the woodpecker "Doudu" woodpecker, and also heard the croaking of frogs. He thought of "the fragrance of rice flowers says good harvest, and the sound of frogs" and even more thought of "the wheat and millet in the Forbidden City are vicissitudes of life."
On July 14, 2022, in the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park, a cruise ship was sailing on the lake. The cruise ship was the main means of transportation for tourists to visit the Old Summer Palace. Photo by Wang Jianing, reporter of Beijing News,
Park
The history of the deserted garden ended in 1976. In November of that year, with the approval of the Beijing Municipal Construction Committee, the Old Summer Palace Management Office was officially established.
was established in the first year, and the management office had 28 employees, and the number of employees increased to more than 40 the following year. The employees did it themselves, built more than 30 office, living and management rooms in the eastern part of the Old Summer Palace, and built an exhibition room of more than 2,000 square meters in the Western Building area to open the "Yuan Mingyuan Garden History Exhibition" to the public.
They found several trolleys, cleared more than 3,000 cubic meters of debris in the Western Building, and pulled back the five giant stone screens and two white marble square towers that were scattered in Langrunyuan , initially restoring the appearance of the square appearance, water viewing method, water viewing method, and water method. The several large stacks of ancient buildings in the Old Summer Palace stored by the Management Office were also depicted on rice paper after borrowing them from the National Library.
In addition, the employees planted a large number of trees. "The quota for tree pits of 70×50 cm is to dig 18 pits per person a day, and the average person completes 30 pits per day, and the most are actually digging 59 pits a day." Zhang Enyin, former deputy secretary of the party branch, recalled that every year, the employees plant more than 6,000 new trees.
In the autumn of 1980, Wang Daocheng went to the Old Summer Palace to attend the meeting. When he came to the east coast of Fuhai again, he saw that the surroundings were already green and the roads were widened and repaired. However, the problem is still clearly visible. "A row of pigpens appeared on the west coast of Fuhai. The spring cave in Wuling collapsed halfway, the Apricot Flower Spring Pavilion was razed to the ground and became a farmland. Zhengda Guangming Palace became a garbage dump. Dozens of cars drove from all over Beijing to remove garbage every day..." There are also mechanics and boilers, shooting ranges, etc. in the park. Data from the Old Summer Palace Management Office shows that in 1980, there were 7 production teams, 270 households, more than 20 settlements and more than 2,000 residents in the park.
In the same year, the Old Summer Palace academic seminar was held in Beijing. At the meeting, the signature activity of the "Protection, Renovation and Utilization of the Old Summer Palace Ruins Initiative" was launched. According to the " Guangming Daily ", the activity received support from 1,583 people from all walks of life, including Soong Ching Ling . This is a decisive proposal. In 1983, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council approved the planning of the Old Summer Palace site as a ruin park. The following year, the Fuhai restoration project began.
Jie Xiuqing could not forget the scene. On December 1, 1984, a huge crowd was crowded at the bottom of the lake, or in other words, at the bottom of a wet pit. "If you turn over a few shovels, you can dig out a snake." The women were wearing red and green headscarves, and the cleared mud was continuously pushed away by small carts. Then there was a revelation of the shore and water release. By June 1985, Fuhai had already achieved its first appearance and could open the cables and release the boat.
In 1986, under the unified arrangement of the government, Jie Xiuqing and his family moved to Fuyuanmen, a street outside the Old Summer Palace. By 2000, all residents in the Old Summer Palace had been moved out.
After leaving, Jie Xiuqing gradually realized that she had a home-like love for the Old Summer Palace. She was born and grew up there; she had the same name as Xiuqing Village, which was named "Yaxiuxiuxiuxiu" in the garden; after she went to school, she sat on the small earth slope on the east side of Hanqiu Pavilion; and every stone she touched in the Western Building - all of this was calling her back.
Four years later, in 1990, Xie Xiuqing graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking Normal University and returned to the open Old Summer Palace Ruins Park as a tour guide. Like her, many old neighbors in the Old Summer Palace have successively joined the management office to clean, sell tickets, and drive boats through the "agricultural to non-government" policy.
Since the 1990s, the Old Summer Palace Management Office has sent letters to all primary and secondary schools in Beijing every year, inviting students to visit the park for free. Xie Xiuqing explained to the students at the exhibition hall, "How did the British and French forces plunder and burn the Old Summer Palace? What was the Old Summer Palace in its prime? What was the Old Summer Palace now?"
is very popular. Xie Xiuqing has sold souvenirs part-time in the exhibition hall, "all of which are 1 cents or 8 cents, and the most expensive one is only 50 cents." He can sell 2,500 yuan in cash a day. This once heavily guarded royal garden has become a ruin park for all people at the end of the new century after being trampled by invaders and powerful people.
On July 10, 2022, tourists are visiting the Western Building Scenic Area in the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park. Photo by Wang Jianing, reporter of Beijing News,
issues, discussions and consensus
For a long time, a slightly helpless misunderstanding has been placed in front of the public. "When you mention the Old Summer Palace, you only know the broken walls of Western buildings." Wang Daocheng said, "In fact, what about? Western buildings only account for 2% of the total area of the park, and the other 98% are Chinese-style garden buildings."
During the heyday, Yuanming Sanyuan had various architectural shapes such as halls, halls, pavilions, halls, corridors, bridges, etc., forming more than a hundred scenic buildings, and the landscape was mostly taken from the landscape of Jiangnan gardens. "Chinese gardens must be 'alth-made by man, but they are like they are blooming from the sky'. This is why Europeans praised the Old Summer Palace as a 'model of all gardening art'."
Today, the ruins of Western buildings are still stubbornly standing there, while the Chinese gardens with wood as the main material have long been burned out, and the remaining wood slags and tiles are also buried by loess and turf.
On July 10, 2022, a tourist stood in front of the ruins of Zhengda Guangming Hall, looking at a large area of grass, a few trees and a falling rockery, and said, "This is the ruins of the Old Summer Palace? There is nothing."House 3
Management Office has been established for more than 40 years, and similar questions have continued. This extends an equally protracted discussion: Should we rebuild the Old Summer Palace? Should tourists experience the beauty of the Old Summer Palace as a "model of all gardening art"? The "Initiative for the Protection, Renovation and Utilization of the Old Summer Palace Ruins" issued in 1980 mentioned that "scientific excavation of sites in a planned and step-by-step manner" and when conditions are available, "repairing individual scenic spots as a pilot project, and clearing out several sites for tourists to pay tribute. "A reader immediately spoke in the newspaper: "It's okay to study and discuss, there's no need to renovate it." ”
After that, the academic community has derived a dispute between the "ruins" and the "reconstruction faction". The former advocates protecting the "invaders' crime scene" to record the national humiliation, while the latter believes that it is necessary to rebuild "reproduce the glory of the past gardening art."
Chen Hui, director of the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center of the Summer Palace Management Office, believes that this is a sincere academic discussion: "From the display effect, the rebuilt landscapes in the garden, such as the maze of Jianbi Pavilion and the Western Building, are definitely welcomed by some tourists. But from a practical point of view, even if you want to rebuild the Old Summer Palace, the considerations are very complicated, involving technology, finance, etc. "
In 2000, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially approved the issuance of " Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park Planning ", proposing to carry out necessary restoration and renovation on a certain basis, but in accordance with the principle of "small and less, more", the restoration area is controlled within 10% of the total ancient building area. Wang Daocheng believes that this is a compromise and programmatic document.
According to the information, the Management Office has been established for more than 40 years and has excavated more than ten ruins such as Dagongmen, Hanjingtang, Ruyuan , and Jianbi Pavilion, Haoran Pavilion, Yinghai Xianshan Pavilion, etc. have been restored on the original site one after another. More than ten buildings or landscapes.
Chen Hui mentioned a more imminent problem: most of the excavated and unrepaired sites are left with only rammed earth foundations, which are blocked by protective sheds, protective covers or dust cloths to play a temporary protection role. Under heavy rain or high temperatures, rammed earth may be lost or cracked.
For this reason, the employees of the management office reached a prudent consensus: first talk about protection, then discuss display. They recorded the long-term change data of rammed earth through manual inspection and high-tech probe monitoring, as the basis for applying for protection projects. "What we need to do is to help the site fight against time and prevent it from continuing to be destroyed. "Chen Hui gave an example. After approval by the superiors, the management office provided brick-packing, restoration, and repairing the rammed earth foundation of Hanjingtang.
So, after proper protection, how to show the Old Summer Palace to tourists?
Chen Hui agreed with the Hanjingtang display plan: Although its building group has not been restored, tourists can clearly see the stage, flue, drainage ditches, house locations, etc. of the site.
Jie Xiuqing hopes that under the premise of strengthening the protection of the site, a small number of Chinese-style buildings such as Danbo Jing and Wuling Chunse can continue to be restored in the garden. "We must remember the tragic and heroic Yuanmingyuan, and we must also see its beauty. ”
On July 14, 2022, at the Western Building Scenic Area of the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park, staff inspected and checked the remains and observed whether the remains were damaged. Beijing News reporter Wang Jianing Photo by Qiu Wenzhong, director of the Management Office of
, introduced that in order to better present the historical style of the Old Summer Palace to the public and spread the culture of the Old Summer Palace, the Management Office will have several major tasks in the next few years: First, carry out protection and display projects in areas such as Yuanmingyuan Dagongmen ; second, promote the construction of the Old Summer Palace Museum as soon as possible and plan more theme exhibitions; third, digitally present the Old Summer Palace. On the basis of three-dimensional scanning of the ruins and cultural relics, with the help of scientific and technological means, let tourists experience the beautiful scenery of the Old Summer Palace through mobile phones, AR glasses and other media.
"In addition, we must also gradually and plan to continue archaeological excavations. "Qiu Wenzhong said that the new "plan" is under editing. "Twenty years have passed. Whether it is still as stated in 2000, the implementation of 10% recovery still needs experts to make the latest assessment. Of course, all new plans will eventually return to the premise of protection. ”
An obvious fact is that there is no standard answer to “how to show the Old Summer Palace”.It has been discussed for more than forty years and will continue to be discussed in the future.
Repair cultural relics, follow cultural relics
In 2003, after Liu Yang joined the Yuanmingyuan Management Office, he went to various archaeological excavation sites in the park many times. He saw the bridge collapsed and fragmented, and the unfired wood was crooked, and there were tiles, bricks, stones, porcelain pieces and glazed fragments everywhere. He felt heartbroken.
That is the tip of the iceberg. In the 1990s, the Beijing Institute of Cultural Relics , the Peking University School of Archaeology and Arts and Arts began to carry out archaeological work in the Old Summer Palace. To date, more than 100,000 pieces of various cultural relics have been unearthed in the park.
In 2019, the Old Summer Palace Management Office launched the "Repair 1860" project. Under the guidance of experts, systematically repaired the cultural relics unearthed from of each site. This project has been completed every year and has been conducted for four phases.
A basket of "unsmashed" cultural relics fragments were sent, and the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center first cleaned them and then sorted them out. "Hand-operated repair is actually the last step in the work. If repair takes two months, our early cleaning and classification will take at least four or five months." Chen Hui said.
The most impressive restoration artifact was a " embroidery ", that is, a seat with blue and white porcelain . When it was unearthed from the Tantantanglang site, it had become more than 120 pieces of debris of different sizes. During the splicing, all the porcelain pieces were spread flat on a large table, and colleagues stood around the table, making attempts in puzzles.
What clerk Zhang Kexin is more memorable is an snuff bottle , unearthed from the Dagongmen site of Changchun Garden. It has a texture of green glaze , which is transparent like " Sunshine Rose Grape ", and the surface is also painted with bamboo forests and flowers. The snuff bottle is relatively intact, and Keri only cleansed, refined and colored it.
It is reported that so far, the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center has restored more than 60 cultural relics, and the fifth phase of the cultural relics restoration project is about to begin.
More cultural relics are scattered.
On December 1, 2020, the bronze statue of horse-head purchased and donated by the well-known entrepreneur Stanley Ho officially returned to the Old Summer Palace and was placed in Zhengjue Temple by the Management Office for exhibition to the public. The bronze statue of the horse's head is called "the first lost overseas cultural relics to return to the Old Summer Palace."
The cultural relics recycling work scattered in China is also continuing. Chen Hui introduced that from the 1970s to the present, relying on employees' visits and communication in the city, with the support of many donor units and individuals, the management office has collected more than 100 cultural relics.
In 2003, Liu Yang accidentally found a pair of white marble stone fish in a yard in Daliuhu Hutong in Xidan. With the consent of the residents in the yard, he took a photo and recorded the stone fish . A year and a half later, when he was reading "The Old Summer Palace Project Examination by Jesuits in the 18th Century", he found that the stone fish was originally located in front of the Western Building's Waterworks and had been lost for nearly 80 years. After repeated negotiations with the aforementioned residents, Shiyu returned to the Old Summer Palace in 2007.
In 2010, Bajia Village, Haidian District was demolished. Chen Hui received a clue that two stone carvings were found in the home of a relocated household. She rushed to investigate and found that it was a dispersed cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace. After many communications, the relocated household agreed to return the cultural relics.
In 2018, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Democratic League donated two stone carvings to the Management Office, with inscriptions from Qianlong and Jiaqing respectively. Chen Hui remembered that on the day of the donation ceremony, a cadre from the Democratic League told her that when she was still a little girl, these two stone carvings were in the backyard of the Democratic League. Now she is about to retire and the stone carvings are leaving. "She said that this stone carving has been with her for half her life, and hopes that we must protect it."
This is the most moving moment since Chen Hui started working.
On July 10, 2022, tourists were visiting the Hanjingtang ruins in the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park. Photo by Wang Jianing, reporter of Beijing News
From the old garden to the new garden
On the morning of July 14, 2022, cicadas were screaming and in the grass with ankles high, occasionally a few yellow flowers and a few dogtail grass . Under the scorching sun, the huge rocks in Western buildings became hot. Zhang Kexin walked through the huge rocks. She was familiar with the roads and knew where the grass was low and where the slope was gentle.
Twice a month, staff of the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center will inspect the ruins of the entire park. Zhang Kexin and her colleagues are in charge of the Western Building area.
After a few rains, shallow water accumulated in several abandoned water-like pools; visible to the naked eye, black marks washed by rain fell on the inverted trapezoidal rammed earth core of the water storage building in Haiyantang; grass grew in several cracks of stones, and the ivy also climbed higher. Zhang Kexin recorded these changes and made a more detailed observation: Are the residual stone components such as stone carvings and stone pillars damaged, lost or scribbled?
"After the park was built and the management was built, the stones were never thrown away," Chen Hui said. "But even more than ten years ago, tourists still painted on the stones from time to time." They could only use professional protection and repair methods to clean them. Now, fences, patrols and electronic monitoring have firmly protected several ruins of Western buildings, and the phenomenon of scribbling has been eliminated. Except for the plants in some areas that need to be cleaned regularly, the stone components of Western buildings are rarely serious.
Zhang Kexin held a stack of inspection record tables in his hand, and 35 different photos of stone carvings, stone pillars and other components were printed on each side of the paper. Whenever a corresponding stone component was found, she would hit a hook under the photo, which meant that the inspection was passed. Walking like this for nearly an hour, nearly 300 stone components of various types have been inspected.
This is not an easy job. Zhang Kexin remembers that when she first joined the management office five years ago, "it took several months to recognize every stone."
July 14, 2022, in the Old Summer Palace, every time a corresponding stone component was found, Zhang Kexin would hit a hook under the photo, which means that the inspection was passed. Photo by Wang Jianing, Beijing News reporter
Zhang Kexin studied history and culture at university. She said that many of the colleagues in the unit are born in the 1990s. Many of them are like her. On the one hand, they are attracted by stable work, and on the other hand, they are also out of their preference for cultural and museum work. "I study history. If I can enter the ruins and touch cultural relics, it will be a very happy thing." The work of the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center obviously fulfilled her wish. When inspecting the ruins every month, she found that five years ago and five years later, the stones had almost no changes: arc-top stone doors, carved stone pillars, scattered stone components... and the large shells that were once climbed by Xie Xiuqing and his friends as bathtubs, were still immovable here, like an eternal symbol.
Sometimes, Zhang Kexin will make the same imagination as many people: How great would it be if this place had never been destroyed?
In the 1990s, Xie Xiuqing saw two lines of stiff Chinese writing in the guestbook of the exhibition hall: "I come from a country that burned the Old Summer Palace, and I feel ashamed of the atrocities in history. I hope that one day we can get rid of the burden and return the plundered cultural relics to the Old Summer Palace." She memorized this sentence.
On the morning of July 15, 2022, standing on the east coast of Fuhai, Jie Xiuqing, who had been retired for a year, recalled this incident. Lotus, willow shadows, and a few ducks swam past us. In the distance, tourists were playing flute . Xie Xiuqing said that during the unattended wasteland, there were occasional tourists in the Old Summer Palace, mainly literary and artistic, some painters, some painters, and some play flutes.
Half a lifetime in the garden, Xie Xiuqing witnessed a lot of new ideas happening in the garden.
The main road of the garden has been widened, allowing two cars to drive across the opposite direction; tourists' auxiliary measures such as wheelchair ramps have also been built; most of the mountain-shaped water system has been restored; plants and flowers have also been repaired better, and the two rows of white pine in the Western Building area are towering.
She also feels about a small thing. In 1982, her sister planted a small date tree behind the old house in Hanqiu Pavilion. The tiny seedling was preserved during the demolition construction and grew up every year.
That day, she pointed out to me that the jujube tree has grown thicker than its waist.
Beijing News reporter Feng Yuxin Editor Chen Xiaoshu Proofreading Li Lijun
