Where have all the flowers gone?

Yesterday I visited Yuanmingyuan, the Garden of Perfect Brilliance*, in the northwest of Beijing. It is part of the complex of summer palaces built by the early Qing emperors from the 17^th century. Here, the rulers and their court came for green scenery and fresh air outside of the central Forbidden City. Like the more famous Summer palace complex just to its West, Yuanmingyuan was destroyed by French and British military troops in 1860.

Entering the complex from the East gate, I took a quick look at the map of the garden and saw there were lots of palaces and temples marked out. I eagerly started my visit. I first strolled through the section featuring the remains of the imperial palaces built in Western-style architecture. When visiting historical sites in China, I am often disappointed by the general practice of reconstructing or refurbishing old heritage buildings so that they look very colourfully new. This makes for good photo opportunities but I personally find the historical patina more attractive than vivid colour contrasts. In Yuanmingyuan, the chosen archaeological principle seems to be radically opposite to what I have seen in other Chinese historical sites. Only the baseball-pitch size walled labyrinth among the Western-style structures had been reconstructed to its original appearance. The marble columns, doorway capitals and balustrades were all that were left of the other palaces. I moved on to the much larger complex of traditional Chinese architecture buildings.

I first circled the convoluted lake of Changchunyuan, the Garden of eternal spring. The whole surface of the lake was covered by a sea of lotus, their large leaves like plates balancing on the top of a field of twirling poles. The lotus blooms had already wilted off. I had to imagine what a sea of lotus blooms could have looked like at the beginning of the Summer.

For the next three hours, I wandered through a very large garden with nothing much to see other than the foundations or floor plans of illustrious old buildings. Sometimes, there was just a green field or a small hill with a signboard in front of it indicating this was the location of a former early Qing dynasty palace. The signboards were sometimes just 50 meters apart. This place used to be densely built up with palaces, pavilions, temples and man-made gardens. And then it struck me: the choice not to rebuild the structures to their former glory was probably the wiser one to make the visitor imagine how vast and grandiose this Imperial Summer palace must have been and realise how stupid mankind is each time it irremediably destroys a part of its own priceless cultural heritage.

* Thanks to Josh D. for the poetic translation

Where have all the flowers gone
Joan Baez