Royal view

The discovery of rock garden in Beijing's Old Summer Palace will help the public better understand Qing-era construction. Wang Kaihao reports.

In the northwestern corner of Beijing's Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park, which spreads over 340 hectares, is a 15-meter-high rock garden with over 1,000 pieces of megalith.

It used to be the highest point of Yuanmingyuan ("the garden of perfect brightness") - also known as Old Summer Palace - the large royal resort of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The layout of Yuanmingyuan was designed as a scaled-down replica of the country's geographic features. So this rock garden represents the Kunlun Mountains, a range that extends over 3,000 kilometers on the northern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Northwest China.

Invading Anglo-French forces burned down Yuanmingyuan in 1860 and turned this place once full of wonders into ruins. Nothing of consequence was visible around the rock garden until recently.

In an excavation lasting from June to November, archaeologists discovered a huge garden at the foot of the "miniature Kunlun Mountains".

The 13,700-square-meter Zibi Shanfang, which literally means "a purple-and-green villa on the mountain", was first built during the reign of Yongzheng (1722-35) and was renovated, in typical Jiangnan style (south of the Yangtze River), during the reign of his son Qianlong (1736-96).