You just have to imagine that it is a fascinating building, like the castle of the Moon Palace, and the Summer Palace is such a building. Hugo was a great French writer, but he still did not hesitate to describe this garden that he became a summer palace, and therefore, people said: Greece has the Patranon Temple, Egypt has a pyramid, Rome has a Colosseum, and the East has a summer palace. The summer palace mentioned here is a Chinese garden, a garden that has won honors for ancient civilizations, a garden that has once impressed Westerners, and a garden that the Chinese nation is proud of.
It is the Yuanmingyuan, how beautiful is it? Over the centuries, people can only appreciate its former beauty from the description. However, there was once a group of photos taken by the British, which was sold for a high price of 1.7 million, and from here, you can see its charm. This is just a photo, and how can it be seen by photos? In its body, it gathers the masterpieces of China's thousands of years of excellent gardening art, and pushes the classical Chinese garden to a height. In fact, the construction of the Yuanmingyuan came from the habits of the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty, who had lived a long life of fishing, hunting and farming in the northeast, and the climate was very cool.
But the dry and hot weather in Beijing made them very uncomfortable, and the emperors were increasingly tired of the high-walled court life. So Kangxi began to build gardens, and this project lasted for more than two hundred years. The western suburbs of Beijing are obviously the most suitable for construction, and the continuous western mountains are extremely beautiful and have many terrains. Flowing springs are everywhere, and lakes of all sizes are everywhere. The mountains and rivers are beautiful, the natural scenery is very pleasant, as early as the Liao Dynasty, there were officials and nobles who stared at this land. So, Kangxi also looked at it.
The designer of the Yuanmingyuan is the Style Lei Family, a family of craftsmen who have served the Qing Dynasty for more than two hundred years, of course, the system still depends on the meaning of the emperor. After all, modern designers may feel personality according to their own ideas, but in ancient times, it was not possible, and the emperor could not afford to provoke. The name Yuanmingyuan was given by Kangxi, round and into the gods, the gentleman's time is also in the middle; bright and illuminated, the wisdom of the master is also. The meaning of this is extraordinary, the circle refers to the perfection of personal morality, and the ming refers to political perfection and wisdom, but it is not an ideal standard used to flaunt the appearance of the wise and the wise
Of course, because the Ninth Son's conquest entered the end at that time, Yin Chan was basically confirmed to be the future heir. Kangxi this is not an expectation of his son, from the beginning of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Yuanmingyuan was built for more than a hundred years. Such a long time, not luxurious, not exquisite, sorry for the manpower, material resources, and time spent on it. After it was built, it was indeed amazingly beautiful, with the beautiful scenery of Jiangnan, just as it was called: who said that the scenery of Jiangnan was good, moving the sky and shrinking in Junhuai. There are even temple gardens and Western architecture, which are so exquisite that they are amazingly Chinese wisdom.
But it was ruined, not because of beauty, but because it was enough to shock the people of the world. The robbers first valued the wealth it possessed, and before it was burned, it was arguably the world's largest royal museum at the time, a paradise for artifacts. There is no accurate number of how many, it may be too much, Hugo once said, even if the treasures of all the museums in our country are added together, they cannot be compared with it. On October 6, 1860, during the Second Opium War, the Anglo-French coalition could no longer hide their ambitions and greed.
They destroyed for several days, and even a small soldier could eat and wear for the rest of his life. Through the descriptions of some of the people involved, we can know what kind of amazing wealth it is, and a French soldier said: "I was stunned by what I saw, and the story of the Thousand and One Nights seemed to me to become real and believable." One said that within two days, I had received silk and jewelry worth 30 million francs, a psychedelic.
Originally, the Qing government planned to negotiate peace, but this group of invaders was not willing, how could stealing alone shock the people of the world? So on October 18, 1860, 3,500 British troops rushed into the Yuanmingyuan, and a fire burned it for three days and three nights, and this unique masterpiece was destroyed overnight. The arsonists also made arrogant announcements, which were bound to be shocking. It was indeed a shock, and they also left the world with an eternal insult, and even their own people wrote: One day, two robbers broke into the Yuanmingyuan, one looted, the other set fire. ...... They walked back to Europe arm in arm and grinning.
It has long been thought that only the Yuanmingyuan was burned, but in fact the Three Mountains and Five Gardens, and only a few remote and water attractions were left. Moreover, it was looted once in 1900 and completely destroyed. As a result, the group of remnant photographs taken in 1873 became valuable. Its content is the state of the earliest known Western-style building in the Yuanmingyuan, but the transaction price is not high, a total of 14 photos, and all kinds of prices have been auctioned for more than 100,000 yuan. The photos before they were destroyed were sky-high, taken by the British photographer Felice Bit before the Yuanmingyuan was burned down. Because the vintage was auctioned in 1873, the price only started at £200,000.
At that time, people were still immersed in the trade in the relics of the Old Summer Palace, so no one was interested in this set of photos. It was only sold for £200,000, but now, without 1.7 million, I am afraid that I can't get it. The true appearance of the Yuanmingyuan can only be seen a little by later generations here, but the photos do not show its grandeur and grandeur of that year, and the entire Yuanmingyuan covers an area of more than 350 hectares. Even if you rely on photos, without tens of thousands of photos, I am afraid that you will not be able to take all of them. Therefore, the photos of the Yuanmingyuan that are now being auctioned are only the tip of the iceberg, and if they are backward, they will be beaten, and only when they are strong will such things not happen again.