For centuries it was one of China's best-kept secrets. Tucked away in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City in Beijing is a leafy landscape garden that the Qianlong emperor built for his retirement after a 60-year reign between 1736 and 1795.
Also known as the Ningshou Gong Garden, its construction took six years (1771-1776). However, the entire complex was gradually cut off from the outside world. It was left undisturbed until 10 years ago, when the Palace Museum - which runs the Forbidden City complex - teamed up with the New York-based World Monuments Fund on a project to restore the garden as well as the 27 buildings inside to their former glory. And for the first time in its 240-year history, the doors were opened to an enclave meant strictly for the enjoyment of the emperor alone. What surprised researchers and conservationists most were how well-maintained and preserved everything were.
'The last emperor [Pu Yi] turned the key and left it in 1924. The garden was left dormant until 2000, so everything was left there and there was just a lot of dust,' says Henry Tzu Ng, executive vice president of the World Monuments Fund.
Among other factors, the Ningshou Gong Garden was closed to the public because it was an intimately scaled private retreat, Ng says. 'None of the buildings were really appropriate for public access as it was made to the scale of one person. It's a very meditative space. You can hardly imagine that but there is just enough room for the emperor to walk through. It was not meant for attendants or guards. It's as if he wanted his own world.'
But thanks to the project's education and outreach goals, the Hong Kong public can now share the emperor's world through a new exhibition titled 'A Lofty Retreat from the Red Dust: The Secret Garden of Emperor Qianlong', to be held at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from June 22 to October 14.
On show are 77 sets - or 93 individual exhibits - of paintings and calligraphy, furniture, murals, architectural elements and religious art on loan from the Palace Museum that will shed light on the emperor's philosophical thoughts and religious beliefs, and his pursuit of longevity and eternal bliss, according to its curator Rose Lee Wing-chong.
