Lion Grove Garden

Lion Grove Garden was first built in the Zhi Zheng period of the Yuan Dynasty. It was originally part of the Puti Zhengzong Temple. Inside the garden there are many rockeries in the shape of a lion (shizi), hence the name Lion Grove, or Shizi Lin in Chinese. The celebrated painter, Ni Zan, one of the four masters of the Yuan, captured the beauty of the garden in his famous Scroll of Lion Grove Garden, making the garden more renowned than ever. The Qing emperors Kang Xi and Qian Long visited the garden several times and they had a garden built modelled after it in the Imperial Summer Resort in Rehe (Jehol).
Carefully designed, the east part of the garden is decorated with many rockeries while the west part is covered by a vast body of water. The main structures are to the north, with the pavilions and halls all connected to one another by long galleries. Up and down, turning and twisting, these galleries are well-known for their unique format.
After entering by the gate in the southeast corner of the garden complex, one passes the Yan Yu Hall and Xiao Fang Hall (Small Square Hall). In the backyard of Xiao Fang Hall is a plum-blossom-shaped gate, and in the front of the gate are bamboo trees and rockeries, evoking a perfectly framed Chinese painting. To the north of the plum blossom gate is the Pavilion for Pointing to the Cypress which is the main structure of the whole garden. Looking south from the pavilion, one can see an expanse of rockeries with a forest of cypress trees standing high in their midst. To the southwest of the pavilion is Mountain View Mansion and Lotus Hall which, facing the lake, comprise a vantage point where one can admire the lotuses unobstructed. Further west is the Genuine Amusement Pavilion, Stone Boat and Faint Fragrance Dim Shadow Mansion (Anxiang Shuying Lou), all of which line the shore of the nearby lake. Turning south along the porch on the west, one comes to the Flying Waterfall Pavilion which is the highest spot in the garden. Under the pavilion is a hushi limestone rockery of three layers which drops steeply to join a brook at its foot. Further south are the Pavilion for Greeting the Plum Blossoms (Wen Mei Ting) and Double Fragrance Hall of the Immortals which is at the southwest corner of the garden. To its east, the Fan-Shaped Pavilion and the Pavilion of the Memorial Tablet of Wen Tianxiang (a loyal Song official) mark the southern border of the garden.
The specialities of Lion Grove Garden are its miniature mountains and peaks. The miniature mountain in front of Pointing to Cypress Pavilion has the most peculiar formation. Among its peaks, the Sunshine, Moon Rising, Black Jade and Sky Touching all have their own characteristics, with Lion Peak being the highest. Stone paths connecting the grottos and caves, which are located high and low over the mountain, form a labyrinth. The design of each cave and grotto is different and taken together they make up the famous Eighteen Scenes, with the Hall Sleeping on Clouds (Woyun Shi) situated in the middle. Constructed entirely with hushi eroded limestone, this miniature mountain looks grotesque and towering.
from: Classical Chinese Gardens, China Building Industry Press, Beijing

Beijing Olympic Forest Park

Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park was made for the 2008 Olympic Games. The landscape architecture design was led by Hu Jie, director of the Landscape Planning and Design Institute at the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Tsinghua University. As with many architecture companies in the People’s Republic of China, landscape architecture firms operate as design arms of university departments. The Beijing Olympic Park has an area of 680 hectares and was built between 2003 and 2008. It is at the north end of Beijing’s central axis, inviting comparison with the projection of the Grand Axis in Paris beyond La Defense. The competition-winning idea was to create an Axis of Nature. In accordance with traditional feng shui practice, this involved a hill at the north and a lake to the south. But it was decided that the earthmoving cost would be too high. The hills, woods and water concept is however along the lines of China’s imperial parks – and is very appropriate to Beijing’s climate, by turns very hot, very cold and very dry.
The park was designed to accommodate tennis, archery and hockey events during the 2008 Olympic Games and a great public park, in which only electric vehicles are allowed, after the Games. An expressway which crosses the park has been designed as a ‘green bridge’ ecological corridor over Beijing's Fifth Ring Road. It links the southern and northern parts of the forest park and is intended to be a landmark. The Olympic Forest Park has subway stations, an open air theatre, a lake, and a sophisticated system for bubbling air into the water for purification. In March 2008 Beijing's Olympic Forest Park was awarded 5th IFLA-APR Award for Landscape Architecture.




from gardenvisit.com

The Beihai Park in Beijing

The Beihai Park is an imperial garden northwest of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Initially built in the 10th century, it is typical of Chinese gardens. Prior to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 this area was part of the Forbidden City, but since 1925 it has been open to the public.

The Park has an area of more than 700,000 m², with a lake that covers more than half of the entire Park. At the center of the Park is an island called Qióng-huá Island with a highest point of 32 m. In the north of the park there is a large pool called the Taiye Pool connecting the two other pools, which are called the Middle Sea and the South Sea respectively. Therefore the Taiye Pool is also called the Beihai.

Beihai literally means "Northern Sea". There are also corresponding "Central" and "Southern Seas" (Zhongnanhai). The complex of buildings around Zhongnanhai houses China's paramount leaders.

from wikipedia.org