Why is the Old Summer Palace called the Old Summer Palace?

The word "Yuanming" literally means "harmony and pervasiveness", which means perfection and perfection, but in fact the name is in Buddhist language. Quoting the famous Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang, the first lady of the King of Pure Rice in the Ganbu Continent, the prince of the present child is very happy, because he will be a person who is enlightened, and it is well known that the two emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng loved Buddhism. Kangxi is known as the "Son of Heaven", and Yongzheng also calls himself "Yuanming Layman", so it is not surprising that Kangxi chose this term with Buddhist connotations as the name of the palace.

Excerpt from "In Search of the Lost Old Summer Palace".

The introduction and historical background of the Old Summer Palace are as follows:

1. The construction time of the Old Summer Palace: it was built in 1709 (the forty-eighth year of Kangxi), and was basically completed in 1809, which lasted a century, and then Jiaqing, Daoguang and Xianfeng three generations have been repeatedly repaired and expanded, which lasted more than 150 years.

2. Historical background: The Old Summer Palace was built on the site of a private garden of the Ming Dynasty given by Emperor Kangxi to the fourth son of Yinzhen, after Yinzhen ascended the throne as Emperor Yongzheng, it was expanded into the palace where the emperor lived for a long time, and it was expanded again during the Qianlong period, and was completed in the ninth year of Qianlong (1744).

During the Qianlong Dynasty, it was the last prosperous period of China's feudal society, Qianlong gathered the skilled craftsmen of the whole country to expand and build the Old Summer Palace on an unprecedented scale, in addition to the partial addition, reconstruction and improvement of the famous "Forty Views of the Old Summer Palace", but also built Changchun and other gardens in the east.

To the 35th year of Qianlong (1770), the pattern of Yuanming, Changchun and Qichun three gardens was basically formed, the whole garden is 2620 meters wide from east to west, 1880 meters long from north to south, and the total length of the periphery is about 11000 meters, covering an area of 350 hectares, of which the water surface is about 140 hectares.

The Old Summer Palace is not only famous for its gardens, but also a royal museum, which is a rare cultural and artistic treasure house in the world at that time, showing the essence of China's ancient feudal culture, and at the same time collecting a variety of extremely rich books, cultural relics and art treasures.

Floor space. The Old Summer Palace covers an area of more than 350 hectares, of which the water surface area is about 140 hectares, and the land construction area of the Old Summer Palace is 10,000 square meters more than that of the Forbidden City, and the water area is equal to a Summer Palace, and the total area is equal to the Forbidden City.

The Old Summer Palace is surrounded by 10 kilometers and is composed of the Old Summer Palace, Qichun Garden and Changchun Garden, and the Old Summer Palace is the largest, so it is collectively called the Old Summer Palace (also known as the Three Yuan Ming Palaces). In addition, there are many subordinate gardens, distributed in the east, west and south of the Old Summer Palace, including the Jingyi Garden of Xiangshan, the Jingming Garden of Yuquan Mountain, the Qingyi Garden (the later Summer Palace was built on this basis), etc., with a total area of more than 5,000 acres.

There are 4 gardens in the Old Summer Palace, and the Old Summer Palace is the largest. That's why it's called the Old Summer Palace.

2. In addition to the four shores of Houhu Lake, the main landscape extends to the cultivation and weaving Xuan in the north, and the Shenliu Reading Hall on the west bank of the Fuhai Sea in the east. After Chongbei, it was expanded on a large scale by the Yongzheng Dynasty (1723-1735) and added in the early years of Qianlong, and in 1744 (the ninth year of Qianlong), Emperor Qianlong wrote a poem with a theme"Forty views of the Old Summer Palace"。In the following twenty or thirty years, there were many additions and renovations in the park.

There are nearly 50 garden scenery groups, and there are about 600 halls and pavilions scattered here and destroyed. Many of these landscapes are imitated from famous gardens in various parts of China, especially in the south of the Yangtze River, such as the Ten Scenic Spots of West Lake in Hangzhou, Anlan Garden in Haining, and Jichang Garden in Wuxi.

3. The kind of people who agree to repair the Old Summer Palace, because this national humiliation experience of the Old Summer Palace is something that Chinese will not forget, and the current Chinese education often mentions stories such as the War of Resistance Against Japan, so future children will learn this period of national humiliation in the Old Summer Palace like us. The top priority now is to build the Old Summer Palace, so that the motherland can gain great benefits and be ashamed before blood.

Categories: Culture Art >> historical topics.

Analysis: Why is it called the Old Summer Palace? I'm afraid no one is going to dig into this.

The word Yuanming, which originated from Buddhism, was first used to describe the alayas that are clear, complete, and bright, and that they attain the reality of the Circle. So what is alayya? Man has the knowledge of the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, the consciousness, the mana, and the alayya.

The first five senses are ordinary intuition; The sixth consciousness is combined to govern the five consciousnesses mentioned above; At the end of the seventh consciousness, the consciousness refers to thought, and the rational component is large; Alayya consciousness is the highest state of the spirit, also known as "seed consciousness."

Actually, according to Buddhism, what people come into contact with, experience, and perceive when they walk in this world will not be forgotten, but your alayas will be obscured. One day, when your alayas are opened, even a page of the book that you have passed when you were very young will be remembered clearly. Everything is kept in the alayya.

Of course, Yuanming, there is also the Confucian interpretation. The first hall of the Old Summer Palace is the "Zhengda Guangming" hall, which means that the body is round and bright, that is, the tangible body is Zhouzheng, and the invisible inner light is bright. This is the doctrine of moderation and righteousness.

The learning of the Chinese, in a word, is to talk about "righteousness", righteousness, integrity, justice, and faithfulness. China does not mean a country, but an ideal country that practices the right way. So, it's not national, it's not cultural, it's spiritual.

In addition, when the Old Summer Palace was given by Kangxi to Yongzheng, it was not called this name, but called "Engraving Moon Kaiyun", which refers to the moon. The moon has a very special meaning in the hearts of Chinese, as if it is a soul, hanging high above the head, guiding all the Zhongzheng people scattered around the world to walk back to their hometowns on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. There is a word cloud:

The moon is very good, and it is not round. "This mood is very sad. In the mythological era, people also made up the story of Chang'e running to the moon, which is related to joys and sorrows.

The night of the New Year should be a good night for accord, but this wish is always difficult to achieve in reality. This explanation is very folk and can be understood as Taoist thought.

But the most interesting thing should be the understanding of the Frenchman Hugo. When the British captain invited Hugo to exhibit the fruits of the looting of the Old Summer Palace in Paris, the romantic literary master replied: "Art has two origins, one is ideals, which give rise to European art, and the other is fantasy, and fantasy gives rise to oriental art."

The Old Summer Palace has the same place in fantasy art as the Parthenon in ideal art. Imagine that there are buildings that words cannot describe, and there is some kind of moon palace-like building, which is the ...... of the Old Summer PalaceIf you haven't seen it, you've dreamed of it. "It can be seen that in the French, Yuanming.

It is the meaning of dreams, which is the imagination of human beings.

Therefore, the destruction of the Old Summer Palace is the destruction of human dreams.