A 720-meter long corridor at gorgeous Summer Palace in the
western suburbs of the national capital Beijing is undergoing an
overhaul to protect the dainty paintings on its ceilings and beams
against the rain.
The renovation project, the first of its kind in the past half
century since 1956, will replace 80 percent of the existing, old
tiles with new ones, but traditional handwork will be adopted to
retain the structure's original outlook, the Beijing News reported
Monday.
The project, launched formally on Sunday, is expected to be
completed before the rainy season starts in mid June, the
metropolitan newspaper quoted a park official surnamed Liu as
saying.
The wooden frames and paintings of the Long Corridor have been
blanketed with a soft material that will hopefully protect the
structure from damages and rainfall during the overhaul, according
to Liu.
He said the corridor has been scaffolded and closed to visitors,
but tourists can visit other parts of the Summer Palace as
usual.
The Long Corridor is simply an art gallery with more than 8,000
vivid colorful landscapes, portraits and traditional Chinese style
paintings of birds and flowers. It was built in the shape of a bat
with open wings since the Chinese word for the nocturnal animal is
pronounced in the same way as happiness and fortune.
The structure was first built in 1750, the very year the Summer
Palace was built, but was ruined in 1860 by the Anglo-French
forces. The imperial garden was rebuilt in 1888 by Empress Dowager
Cixi with funds that had been appropriated for building the Chinese
navy.
The Summer Palace was inscribed as a World Heritage site by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in
1998.
(Xinhua News Agency March 6, 2006)
