On Our Way Up

Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Beijing

This gate is near the Garden of Virtue and Harmony, home to the three-story-tall theater the Empress Dowager Cixi had built for her 60th birthday (in 1895). She’s responsible for much of the palace grounds...and much of the county’s financial pain paired with it.

Even though the Palace (which, ironically, isn’t just one structure, but an entire system of buildings, temples, gardens, and such) dates back to 1153, it was ransacked and virtually destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1860 in retaliation for China’s defiance during the second Opium War. All that was left were nonflammable structures—the bronze pavilions and stone pagodas.

Twenty-eight years later, Cixi “kinda sorta” re-appropriated 30 millions taels of silver that were supposed to go to the Chinese Navy and “kinda sorta” spent them on rebuilding—and enlarging—the Summer Palace. In fact, that’s when she named it the Summer Palace.

Fast forward twelve years to 1900, when the next wave of destruction hit, this time when the Allied Forces invaded Beijing. Nearly all new construction was demolished, and all valuables were stripped and stolen by the troops.

But Cixi was a tough old cookie. Didn’t stop her from going for build out number three, this time in 1902 when, according to historical records, she "rebuilt the Summer Palace with unbounded extravagance and opulence, spending some 40,000 taels of silver per day. Singing and dancing went on without end."

Which would have been fine, if not for the fact she ransacked the state coffers yet again.

Literally moments before she died, Cixi named the next, and final, Chinese Emperor—Puyi—who ascended the thrown just weeks before his third birthday. After the 1911 Revolution, the deposed Emperor retained the Palace as private property, but three years later opened it to the public.

When he was forcibly removed from the Forbidden City and Beijing, the Summer Palace was nearly destroyed yet again—this time, by the Chinese army. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, restoration began one last time.

It took nearly four decades to bring the Summer Palace back to its original grandeur, but it is most certainly there.

And it is most certainly glorious.