On October 18, 1860, 160 years ago, the Yuanmingyuan, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", was looted and burned by Western powers, the garden buildings were destroyed, countless treasures were lost, and a generation of famous gardens gradually became abandoned gardens. After 160 years, what will the Old Summer Palace look like today and tomorrow?
The "horse's head" returns, but there is nowhere to put it?
November 13, 2019, is a day worth remembering for Li Xiangyang, deputy director of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office. On this day, the donation ceremony of the bronze statue of the "Horse Head" among the twelve animal heads in the Yuanmingyuan was held at the National Museum of China.
At the donation ceremony, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that after consultation with the donor, Mr. Stanley Ho, a patriotic entrepreneur in Macao, the bronze statue of "Horse Head" will be exhibited and collected by the Yuanmingyuan Management Office.
Li Xiangyang, deputy director of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office in Haidian District, Beijing: I am particularly excited. Because the Yuanmingyuan has so many cultural relics lost outside, not a single heavyweight cultural relics have returned to the Yuanmingyuan, so if it can come back, it is a very important thing for the Yuanmingyuan.
Located in the northwestern suburbs of Beijing, the Yuanming, Changchun and Qichun Gardens were built in the 46th year of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, that is, in 1707, and was a large imperial palace that lasted more than 150 years by the five emperors of the Qing Dynasty and concentrated countless skilled craftsmen.
Mention the Yuanmingyuan, people are most impressed by the "big water law", "water law" means "water trick", usually refers to the Changchun Garden "Western Building" scenic spot from south to north "water law", "big water law" "yuanying view", the Qing Emperor likes to sit in the "water law" to see the fountain of the "big water law", but the "fountain" of the Yuanmingyuan can be more than "big water law", its west side, there is a larger palace, called "Haiyan Hall", "Haiyan Hall" in front of the hall also has a unique water spray device, commonly known as " The hydraulic clock" consists of twelve statues of human and animal faces arranged in a row of eight characters, and every hour, a column of water erupts from the mouth of a "beast head", and at noon, 12 animal heads spray water at the same time, and the scene is extremely spectacular.
△ Yuanmingyuan three-dimensional animation data
160 years ago, in October 1860, the Anglo-French army broke into Beijing, looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, and 12 animal heads were also lost overseas. Later, although it has changed hands and auctioned many times, 7 animal heads have now returned to China, namely the head of the ox, the head of the tiger, the head of the monkey, and the head of the pig, which are now in the Poly Art Museum in China; the head of the rat and the head of the rabbit are stored in the National Museum of China, and the other 5 are still missing.
In 2007, Mr. Stanley Ho successfully acquired "Ma Shou" for HK$69.1 million, and 12 years later, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Macao's return to the motherland, he donated the "Ma Shou" to the state, hoping that the "Ma Shou" would return to its parent body, the Old Summer Palace.
The embarrassment of "Ma Shou" returning home, but it is difficult to have a suitable place to place it, which makes the managers of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office once again realize that the Yuanmingyuan should have a Yuanmingyuan Museum with a certain scale.
△ Zhang Bai, former deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage
Zhang Bai believes that the difference between the Yuanmingyuan site and other sites is that the Yuanmingyuan carries the historical pain that Chinese people can never forget, which is an important content that the Yuanmingyuan Museum should show.
Zhang Bai, former deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage: The Yuanmingyuan was invaded by foreign countries, and it came in and burned it, which is a national shame, and it will always record that period of history. Now when you look at the ruins, you just look at it and don't have a deep understanding. If there is a museum, reflect it well, it is not the same.
By 2000, this wish was recognized and supported by the state. In this year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Beijing Municipal Government officially approved the "Planning of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park", which pointed out: "Preliminary consideration will be given to arranging the contents of the Yuanmingyuan Exhibition Hall, the Qing History Museum and the Yuanmingyuan Research Center on the west side of the Grand Palace Gate of the Yuanmingyuan to facilitate tourists to visit, tour, research and garden management." However, this "plan" really has to be implemented, and there are many difficulties, such as the "one acre garden" area near the Gate of the Yuanmingyuan Grand Palace that has long been inhabited by residents, and the demolition work and other necessary preparations have not been completed, and the construction of the museum cannot be promoted.
The museum cannot be built in a day, but the "horse's head home" is imminent. At this time, everyone thought of a place: Zhengjue Temple. Zhengjue Temple is located in the south of Qi Chun Garden, one of the three gardens of the Yuanmingyuan, when the British and French troops burned the Yuanmingyuan in 1860, Zhengjue Temple was spared because a small river outside the north wall blocked the crazy tongue of fire, and some buildings and ancient trees have survived.
The Yuanmingyuan Management Office restored the Zhengjue temple complex in 2002 and is now open to the public. After several discussions, it was agreed that displaying the horse first in the Manjushri Pavilion, located in the very center of The Zhengjue Temple, was a preferred option.
If the Wenshu Pavilion is selected as the place where the horse's head returns home, the security of the Wenshu Pavilion and its surrounding areas will have to be transformed as necessary, so the Yuanmingyuan Management Office quickly invited the relevant state security departments to guide, design and check.
Li Xiangyang, deputy director of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office in Haidian District, Beijing: This steel plate is mainly to prevent intrusion from the bottom down, we think of it from the sky and the ground, if it is invaded from all aspects, it has security measures.
At present, the security upgrading and transformation of Wenshu Pavilion and its surroundings also need multiple links such as bidding, construction, and acceptance. Coupled with the new crown pneumonia epidemic this year, construction has had to be postponed repeatedly, resulting in the inability to take the horse's head home as expected on October 18, the 160th anniversary of the burning of the Yuanmingyuan. However, they will try to get Ma Shou back to the Yuanmingyuan before November 13, the first anniversary of Ma Shou's donation.
Tracing the missing relics, they said bluntly that they were distressed
According to many public publications, on October 6, 1860, the Anglo-French army began a frenzied raid and destruction at the Yuanmingyuan.
In 1900, the Eight-Power Alliance broke into the Yuanmingyuan again, and once again robbed and burned the remaining landscape in the garden and the buildings and treasures of the Yuanmingyuan restored by the Tongzhi Emperor twice.
After that, domestic warlords, magnates and even residents around the Yuanmingyuan also began to grab the inscriptions, Taihu stones, stone components, bricks, wood in the Yuanmingyuan... By the 1960s, a large number of people entered the Yuanmingyuan, leveling mountains, filling lakes, cutting down trees, demolishing ruins, building houses... In the course of a hundred years, the Old Summer Palace has actually undergone repeated destruction.
According to the estimates of experts who study the Yuanmingyuan, the looted cultural relics of the Yuanmingyuan are scattered around the world and throughout China, with a total of one millions; and the cultural relics scattered in China are mainly concentrated in Beijing. The ratio of domestic and foreign countries is about two to eight.
Liu Yang, who lives in Beijing, is 40 years old. When I was a child, I took a bus to the Summer Palace and got off the wrong car at the "Yuanmingyuan" station, accidentally hit and bumped into the Yuanmingyuan, was shocked by the "desolate" world in front of me, and has since formed an "indissoluble relationship" with the Yuanmingyuan. In Liu Yang's heart, there has always been an obsession, that is, he hopes to one day find out how many cultural materials are scattered all over the world and all over the country in the Yuanmingyuan, although he knows that this is almost an impossible task.
Liu Yang, member of the Academic Professional Committee of the China Yuanmingyuan Society: We can only estimate about 800,000 to 1 million pieces through the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, as well as the proportion of the decorations of the Chengde Summer Resort and the scale of the Yuanmingyuan.
Liu Yang found in his research that the "Shiqu Baodi" compiled by the Qianlong Emperor during his reign provided an important basis for the search for calligraphy and painting relics in the Yuanmingyuan. "Shiqu Baodi" is a huge work in the history of China's calligraphy and painting bibliography, which brings together the collection of calligraphy and paintings of the past dynasties collected by the Qing Court.
Liu Yang spent 2 years extracting the calligraphy and painting works of the Yuanmingyuan from the "Shiqu Baodi".
With a "list of calligraphy and painting works in the Yuanmingyuan collection", Liu Yang and his colleagues began to run around, trying to find the whereabouts of these works, and marked the places where these works appeared in different colors.
In the process of constantly searching for the whereabouts of cultural relics in the Yuanmingyuan, Liu Yang has visited many foreign museums at his own expense and also walked the streets and alleys in Beijing's hutongs. He constantly discovered the cultural relics that originally belonged to the Yuanmingyuan, and while he was happy, he often felt heartache. Liu Yang said that even in overseas museums, he has seen the cultural relics of the Yuanmingyuan being arbitrarily placed and poorly protected.
Whenever he saw such a situation, Liu Yang felt even more important to let the wandering cultural relics return to his "home" in the Yuanmingyuan.
After unremitting efforts, in 2006, Liu Yang found a pair of large stone fish in a private house yard in Beijing's Dongcheng District.
The pair of "stone fish" was originally located in the "Big Water Law" of the "Western-style Building" scenic spot of Changchun Garden, but after repeated work, the stone fish was "invited" back to the Yuanmingyuan, and now it is displayed in a small exhibition hall in the Yuanmingyuan, becoming the "treasure of the town hall".
Since the establishment of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office in 1976, successive generations of Yuanmingyuan people have tried to find traces of the cultural relics of the Yuanmingyuan through continuous visits. Nowadays, the channels for obtaining information are constantly expanding, providing more clues for the search for cultural relics.
Keeping the original or restored to glory? The controversy continues
For a long time, around the relevant discussions on the Yuanmingyuan, the opinions of experts and scholars have not been unified, and there have always been two completely different views: one is the "ruin faction", which advocates maintaining the original appearance and reflecting the vicissitudes of history; the other is the "restoration faction", which believes that the Yuanmingyuan should re-show its glory through reconstruction.
In the debate between the "Restoration Faction" and the "Ruin Faction", the Yuanmingyuan Management Office has been trying to carry out careful exploration.
Wanfang Anhe is commonly known as "Wanzi House", and the main building overlooks into the "swastika" shape, from which the name Wanfang Anhe is derived. Ancient skilled craftsmen built 33 houses in the water according to the "swastika" shape, and the east, west, south and north chambers were zigzaggedly connected, and the emperor chose houses with different orientations according to the changes of the four seasons. After the house was destroyed, for a long time, Wanfang'an and the ruins and their surroundings were as dilapidated as shown in the photos.
In 2014, the Yuanmingyuan Management Office carried out renovation of Wanfang Anhe and its surrounding environment, so that people can see the "swastika" base more clearly and imagine the grand scene of Wanfang Anhe.
In recent years, the Yuanmingyuan Management Office has restored the palace gates of Changchun Garden and Qichun Garden in the three gardens of the Yuanmingyuan, and the Area of the Grand Palace Gate is the only area in the three gardens of the Yuanmingyuan that has not yet restored the function of the main gate. The restoration of the Grand Palace Gate has also become a long-term wish of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office.
However, it is not easy to really restore the gate of the Great Palace. Due to the long-term living of residents in the one-acre garden area near the Omiya Gate, the restoration could not be realized. Since 2015, the Haidian District of Beijing has carried out the overall demolition of the area, but several years have passed, and there is still no sign of reconstruction of the Dagongmen. However, it is not here that makes the Yuanmingyuan management office more nervous and worried, because in contrast, the protection of more sites in the park seems to be more imminent.
According to statistics, there are now 86 visible remains on the ground in the Yuanmingyuan Garden, of which 56 are architectural sites, 21 are stacked stone sites, and 9 rammed earth sites, including the Acropolis, and these 86 visible remains need regular protection to varying degrees, of which even the well-known Water Law faces the same problem.
Since the Yuanmingyuan Management Office has a strong desire, why has emergency protection been delayed in progress, or even stagnated?
In the early days of liberation, the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan were managed by the summer palace management department. In October 1964, a professional greening team was established in Haidian District, and the Greening Team of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins was managed by the Greening Team. In November 1976, the Yuanmingyuan Management Office was established. Since its establishment, the Yuanmingyuan Management Office has always belonged to a public institution under the Haidian District Government of Beijing Municipality. In this case, many work plans need to be reported and approved layer by layer, which means that many planning plans need to pass longer from reporting to approval, and may also experience more iterations and twists and turns.
Even if certain work plans are approved by superiors, expert demonstration meetings must be held before they are implemented. Often at this time, it is difficult for the "ruin faction" and the "restoration faction" to reach an agreement.
Wang Daocheng, a professor at the Institute of Qing History of Chinese Min University, wrote an article a few years ago, calling on higher-level relevant departments to attach importance to the construction of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park and list it as a national cultural project...
On October 18, 2020, the Yuanmingyuan was destroyed for 160 years. In order to find a safe and suitable "home" for Ma Shou in the Yuanmingyuan, and with the increasing number of scattered cultural relics unearthed and returned to the Yuanmingyuan, the Yuanmingyuan Management Office has once again submitted an application report to the relevant departments, hoping to promote the construction of the Yuanmingyuan Museum.
(Edited by Yin Huixian)
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Source: CCTV News Client