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A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan. By Young-tsu Wong. [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001. 226 pp. Hard cover $60.00, ISBN 0-8248-2226-9; paperback ISBN 0-8248-2328-1.]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2002

Philippe Forêt
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Extract

Yuanming Yuan has become the most famous garden of imperial China thanks to its well-documented and tragic history. The nationalism of Chinese historians and the enthusiastic endorsement of Westerners – Victor Hugo used to compare Yuamming Yuan to the Parthenon – have combined to turn the ruins of the Yuanming Yuan into a major tourist attraction today. At the very beginning of the 18th century the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722) supervised the simultaneous construction of two new garden complexes, the court's principal residence of Yuanming Yuan in Haidian (Beijing) and the summer residence of Bishu Shanhuang in Chengde.

Type
Book Review
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 170 , June 2002 , pp. 477 - 502
Copyright
© The China Quarterly, 2002

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