Visitors to Beijing will be offered a rare treat this year at the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) park – the chance to visit an on-going excavation of the ruins known as Hanjingtang, one of the most important formal gardens in China that also served a Qing Dynasty political and cultural center.

“It is rare to see in the world today an excavation site that welcomes visitors,” said Jin Fengyi, a researcher with the Beijing Institute of Cultural Heritage. Jin said the public nature of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins had a lot to do with the institute’s decision to allow public access beyond the usual limitations to scholars and researchers.

Built between 1745 and 1770 during the heyday of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Hanjingtang was burned to the ground along with the rest of the Old Summer Palace by French and English invading forces in 1860. The Old Summer Palace consists altogether of three independent but interconnected gardens that cover 865 acres: Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfect Splendor), Chanchunyuan (Garden of Eternal Spring), and Qichunyuan (Garden of Blossoming Spring). Hanjingtang sits in the center of the Garden of Eternal Spring section.

“The park belongs to people. If we can use it as a place to learn about Chinese history, we should not deny people that opportunity. Everyone has the responsibility, obligation and right to care about their heritage.”

The Hanjingtang excavation site which has been receiving up to 1,000 visitors a day opened this summer, but work will be suspended starting November 15 during the winter months and the site covered with a specially designed cloth, ashes and a pearlite powder to assure the protection of unearthed relics.

The entire Old Summer Palace area was once described as the “garden of gardens” for its lavish palaces and mansions in both Eastern and Western style. After its destruction in 1860, it was partially rebuilt and then again burned and looted in the early 1900s by the Eight-Power Allied Forces of Britain, Germany, The United States, France, Tsarist Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria.

“We chose Hanjingtang to excavate because it represents the highest level of garden building in China,” Jin said of the Hanjingtang complex that faces north/south and covers a total area of some 11 acres (45,000 square meters).

In the past six months, clearance work on 16 palaces and two rock gardens has been completed over an area of 2.5 acres (10,100 square meters). The Beijing municipal government has invested some 340 million yuan alone for the resettlement of 660 farm households and 13 institutions that had moved onto the grounds over the years. The Number 101 Middle School is still there to accommodate the needs of current students, but it will be moved.

There is discussion in Beijing over whether to leave the excavated ruins as a historical reminder or to restore at least some of the park to its former glory. Visitors to the Hanjingtang excavation site are asked to fill out a questionnaire on the subject of the protection of Hanjingtang, and so for more than half say that part of the area should be left as it is and part should be restored.

Hanjingtang was a major residence for emperors in the Qing Dynasty. Emperor Qianlong, for instance, lived there for about 200 days out of each year, helping to make the Hanjingtang a cultural and political center of the Qing imperial court.

Originally, Hanjingtang was surrounded by lotus and water on four sides, but climate changes have left the east side dry. Toward the front were three ornamental archways and a square covering about an acre (3,700 square meters) that was said to have served as a reception area for receiving foreign envoys, chieftains of ethnic groups as well as for holding banquets.

Visitors today can only imagine what might have met them on passing through the arches and entering the palace gate: On the east side was a library and on the west a two-storied corner tower devoted to the Tibetan Goddesses, the White Tara and the Green Tara.

But today visitors can get an overall view of Hanjingtang from the top of a high platform set up by workers: To the northeast was a theater with a two-storied double-roofed auditorium. The pit had a place for charcoal pots and places for a mechanism to produce flying images when opera productions required them. In the northwest was the Liandikang, a unique way in ancient China to get heat consisting of a stove chamber and fire channel that heated the house. Some of the fire channels, records indicate, were built from iron bricks to increase the heat.

On the east side of the Hanjingtang complex is Long Street, also known as Trading Street. It is said that during the first lunar month of each year, court eunuchs dressed up as merchants sold all kinds of goods in the shops along the street. Concubines could shop and then pay with play money. On the west, there were buildings for the emperor to watch the sunset and then wait for the rising moon, or compose poems. The environment inspired Emperor Qianlong to compose some 41 poems at Hanjingtang.

Considering its worldwide reputation, Yuanmingyuan was chosen by the State Administration for Cultural Heritage as a place to help showcase for the world the culture and history of China, especially during the 2008 Olympic Games:

“The Yuanmingyuan Ruins can inspire a sense of pride in the Chinese nation. It also offers a vivid textbook for all generations on what the Eight-power Allied Forces, especially those of Britain and France, did here,” Jin said.

An exhibition room near the Hanjingtang excavation site displays some of the unearthed articles, including jade, a broken Buddha, statues and stone and bricks.

Experts in garden design, ancient architecture and archaeology met in Beijing November 5-7 to discuss ways of protecting Hanjingtang, and decided not to reconstruct any part of the excavated site on the original location. What will be presented instead is a period of history as seen from the well-preserved and complete foundation of the palaces. Other locations might be used for some Hanjingtang restoration work, Jin said, with the ultimate aim being the acceptance of Yuanmingyuan Park by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site.

The ruins of the Old Summer Palace are located less than a mile from the existing Summer Palace, not far from the Beijing and Qinghua Universities. The northern entrance is guarded by two stone lions with paths that lead to ruins that include pillars and frescos of European baroque style, as well as of traditional Chinese architecture. The main part of the park also features Fu Hai lake where in the summer visitors can hire paddle and row boats.

(china.org.cn by Li Jinhui November 12, 2001)