In the history of the Qing Dynasty, the two emperors of Kangxi and Qianlong had a huge interest in hunting and gardens, and they built a series of summer palaces at the foot of Xiangshan Mountain in the western suburbs of Beijing, many of which were named "Spring", revealing their deep expectations for the growth of all things and the gradual opening of flowers and trees in the spring.
Author Zhou Wenhan
<h5>Lang Shining's "Ping'an Chunxin Map"</h5>
In 1684, when the Kangxi Emperor toured the south, he was impressed by the gardens in Jiangnan, and after returning to Beijing, he ordered the Jiangnan gardener Zhang Ran to stack rockeries for the Yingtai and Yuquan Mountain Jingmingyuan in Xiyuan, and later co-hosted the planning and design of Changchun Garden with the Jiangnan painter Ye Tao.
The "Changchun Garden" on the site of today's Peking University is the first large-scale "Royal Garden" built by Kangxi in the west of Beijing, with a length of about 1,000 meters from north to south, a width of about 600 meters from east to west, covering an area of 900 acres, and the middle road is inward along the central axis of the Great Palace Gate, the Nine Classics and Three Things Hall, the Second Palace Gate, the Chunhui Hall, the Shouxuan Chunyong Hall, the Rear Cover Hall, the Yunya Pavilion, the Ruijingxuan, the Yanshuang Building, the Iris Flying Fish Leaping Pavilion, the north of the Iris Flying Fish Leap has the Lilac Causeway, Zhilan Causeway, Peach Blossom Causeway, Qianhu Lake, Hou Lake, and the West Gate of the Garden is the West Garden, which contains four lakes. The lake is dotted with buildings such as the Shuyuan Bookstore, the Guan de Office, and the Chenglu Xuan, which are the residences of the young princes.
Changchun Garden pursues the style of natural idyllic, trying to use local stones and mud piles to create the landscape of Tufu Pinggang, and rarely uses precious lake stones in the south, which is the result of the design concept brought by Zhang Ran and other Jiangnan gardeners. Kangxi was very fond of Changchun Garden, and after it was built, he went there every year to temporarily live and deal with the government, the longest one lived for 202 consecutive days, and he finally died of illness in the Qingxi Bookstore here.
In order to facilitate each other's movement, the Kangxi Emperor gave the nearby gardens to several adult princes to live in, such as he gave the garden around the Peony Pavilion a mile north of Changchun Garden to the fourth prince Yin Chan (Yongzheng Emperor), and the name of the garden was "Yuanmingyuan". After Yongzheng ascended the throne, it was expanded into a 3,000-acre imperial garden from 1723 onwards, and the Zhengda Guangming Hall and the Qinzheng Hall were added to the south of the garden, as well as the cabinet, the six ministries, and the military aircraft office, so as to "avoid the noise and listen to the government" in the summer. After Yongzheng's son, the Qianlong Emperor, ascended the throne, he continued to renovate and expand the Yuanmingyuan, building the Changchun Garden on the east side and opening up the Qichun Garden on the southeast side, and by the thirty-fifth year of Qianlong (1770), a pattern of three gardens was formed, which was later generally known as the "Yuanmingyuan".
In the design of these gardens, European missionaries have also participated, such as they designed the three fountains of "Harmony Fun", "Haiyan Hall" and "Big Water Method" for the Western-style Building of the Yuanmingyuan, using European fountain pump technology. Fountains this garden landscape as early as 2,000 years ago was introduced to the Central Plains, the Book of Han Records that a major landscape of Shanglinyuan is to lead the flowing river into a dragon-shaped copper cast sculpture, presenting the scene of "copper dragon spitting water, copper immortal cup under water bet", which should be the fountain manufacturing technology imported from the western region at that time.
This kind of "magic trick" occasionally appeared in the era of close cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, such as the hot spring pool of the Huaqing Palace in the Tang Dynasty, there was a pair of white stone urns carved from stone, and each urn had a spring sprayed water injection into the lotus carved from the stone below, similar to the common marble fountains in Europe and West Asia, it may be that Persian or Central Asian merchants introduced this technology to the palace, but it was not popular in China, and no one carried out in-depth research and inheritance.
The Qianlong Emperor liked to visit the garden, and also let the missionary painter Lang Shining create "Xiancao Changchun Tu", "Ping'an Chunxin Tu" and other works of art related to flowers and spring landscapes, such as "Ping'an Chunxin Tu" is to depict Yongzheng, Qianlong father and son in the garden to enjoy the flowers, Yongzheng is passing a spring flower to Qianlong, which may be the Qianlong Emperor according to his own memory or political needs to give the "proposition composition", intended to show the meaning of father and son inheritance, imperial power forever.
Qianlong also used the word "chun" in the naming of some of the attractions in the imperial garden. For example, the Yuanmingyuan has a Qushui Island Nagisa, Yongzheng once borrowed the name of Suzhou's "Peach Blossom Dock", the lake has a place surrounded by mountains, dense mountain peaches, from the east side of the waterway can be entered, the peach forest on the shore can allow the emperor to slowly travel by boat, experience the "hundreds of steps on the shore, no miscellaneous trees, fresh herbs, colorful fall" artistic conception. Yongzheng's son Qianlong studied here when he was a child, and after he ascended the throne, he renamed this scenic spot "Wuling Spring Color". Although this name with hidden colors is used, the "Deep in the Taoyuan" where the emperor landed has exquisite pavilions, not farmhouses, and does not have the rustic idyllic interest of ordinary farmhouses.
<h4>Source Beijing Evening News</h4>
<h4>Process Edit TF003</h4>