A 720-meter long corridor at gorgeous Summer Palace in the western suburbs of the national capital Beijing is undergoing an overhaul to protect the dainty paintings on its ceilings and beams against the rain.

The renovation project, the first of its kind in the past half century since 1956, will replace 80 percent of the existing, old tiles with new ones, but traditional handwork will be adopted to retain the structure's original outlook, the Beijing News reported Monday.

The project, launched formally on Sunday, is expected to be completed before the rainy season starts in mid June, the metropolitan newspaper quoted a park official surnamed Liu as saying.

The wooden frames and paintings of the Long Corridor have been blanketed with a soft material that will hopefully protect the structure from damages and rainfall during the overhaul, according to Liu.

He said the corridor has been scaffolded and closed to visitors, but tourists can visit other parts of the Summer Palace as usual.

The Long Corridor is simply an art gallery with more than 8,000 vivid colorful landscapes, portraits and traditional Chinese style paintings of birds and flowers. It was built in the shape of a bat with open wings since the Chinese word for the nocturnal animal is pronounced in the same way as happiness and fortune.

The structure was first built in 1750, the very year the Summer Palace was built, but was ruined in 1860 by the Anglo-French forces. The imperial garden was rebuilt in 1888 by Empress Dowager Cixi with funds that had been appropriated for building the Chinese navy.

The Summer Palace was inscribed as a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1998.

(Xinhua News Agency March 6, 2006)