[VOL III] HALL OF AUDIENCE, PALACE OF YUEN-MIN-YUEN, PEKING

HALL OF AUDIENCE, PALACE OF YUEN-MIN-YUEN, PEKING

Cover Image: Hall of Audience, Plalace of Yuen-min-yuen / BeiJing China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by E.Brandard – ALAMY Image ID:2X55N27

*The Old Summer Palace, located in the northern part of Beijing, was a vast imperial garden during the Qing Dynasty. It covered a total area of 160,000 square meters, approximately equivalent to about 5,200 acres, and featured over 150 different scenic spots, earning it the nickname “Gardens of Perfect Brightness.” However, during the Second Opium War in 1860, the Old Summer Palace was plundered and extensively damaged, ultimately being set on fire and destroyed.

Fling ye the silken curtain wide,
With gold restrained, with purple dyed,
And let the colours wander o’er
The polished walls, the marble floor.
White are the walls, but o’er them wind
Rich patterns curiously designed.

The Khan of Kathay.

IMPERIAL luxury appears, in China, to be insatiable. There is not a minor political division of this vast empire, unadorned by some palace, or villa, or hall of majesty; and the display of fancy exhibited in their arrangements is only inferior to the gorgeousness with which the designs are executed. Yuen-min-Yuen is perhaps the most extensive and sumptuous of all these abodes of magnificence and power; and it is also better known to Europeans, from the reception, within its marble halls, of foreign embassies, than the travelling-palace of Hoo-kew-shan, and other picturesque localities.

A noble park, improperly called the Gardens of Yuen-min-Yuen, is situated about three leagues north-west of Peking, and occupies an area of eleven square miles. Here are no less than thirty distinct imperial residences, each surrounded with all the necessary buildings for lodging the numerous state officers, servants, and artificers, that are required, not only on occasions of court and public days, but for the regular conduct of the household. Each of these assemblages includes so great a number of separate structures, that at a little distance the appearance is precisely that of a comfortable village, and of tolerable extent. The mode of building possesses few traits of permanence, on a closer examination a character of meanness, and a poverty of ornament, are at once discovered; and even here, in the most luxurious and spacious of all the imperial homes, it is to the amazing number of fanciful huts, and decorated sheds, rather than to their stateliness or durable pretensions, that any magnificence is ascribed.

Amongst these thirty groups of painted palaces, the Hall of Audience is the most conspicuous for its magnitude, ornament, and proportions. Elevated on a platform of granite, about four feet above the surrounding level, an oblong structure stands, one hundred and twenty feet in length, forty-five in breadth, and in height twenty. A row of large wooden columns surrounds the cella, and supports a heavy projecting roof; while an inner tier, of less substantial pillars, marks the area of the chambers: the intervals of the latter, being filled with brick-work to the height of four feet, form the enclosing screen or walls of the chief apartment. Above these the space is occupied with lattice work, covered with oiled paper, and capable of being thrown open, when the temperature of the hall demands it. On the ceiling are described squares, circles, polygons, and other mathematical figures, in various combinations, and charged with endless shades of gaudy colours. The floor is a more chaste piece of workmanship, consisting of slabs of a beautiful grey marble, disposed chequer-wise, and with the most accurate and perfect precision in the jointing. In a recess at the centre of one end stands the imperial throne, composed entirely of cedar richly and delicately carved, the canopy being supported by wooden pillars painted with red, green, and blue colours. Two large brass kettle-drums, occasionally planted before the door, and there beaten on the approach of the emperor, form part of the furniture of the hall; the rest consisting of Chinese paintings, an English chiming-clock, made by Clarke of Leadenhall-street, and a pair of circular fans formed of the wings of the argus-pheasant, and mounted on polished ebony poles. These stand on each side of the throne, above which are inscribed, in the Chinese letter and language, “True, great, refulgent, splendid,” and beneath these pompous words, the much more pithy one—“Happiness.”

The columns in all cases—within the hall, beneath the imperial canopy, and those that sustain the overhanging roof—are without capitals; and the only substitute for an architrave is the bressumer, or horizontal beam on which the projecting rafters of the roof recline. Below this architrave and between the columns, wooden screens are interposed, painted with the most glaring hues of the brightest colours, profusely intermixed with gilding. Over the whole of this fancy-work a net of gilded wire is stretched, to protect it against the invasion of swallows, and other enemies to the eaves and the cornices of buildings. The grounds around the many palaces are either broken by nature, or formed by art into hill and dale, diversified with wood; and water—the latter enclosed by banks so ingeniously thrown up, that they represent the fortuitous workmanship of the free hand of creative power. Bold rocky promontories are seen projecting into a lake, and valleys also retiring from them, some, deep-wooded bosoms—others, scenes of richest cultivation. Wherever pleasure-temples, or grottoes, or pavilions for rest, are erected, the views from each are evidently studied productions of some eminent in the delightful art of landscape gardening. In the arrangement of trees, not only the magnitude to which the species ultimately attains, but even the tints of the foliage, are maturely considered in the composition of the picture.

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