Old Buildings and Gardens of China: The Bracket and the Window

01The Bracket and the Window

How can you tell how old a Chinese building really is?

Almost every famous building in China has been rebuilt, and the handful that have not are mostly in Shanxi 山西. In a timber building the date is written under the eaves, in the brackets 斗拱 that hold the roof up: big and few means early, small and many means late. A garden is a building turned inside out, arranged so that every window frames the next view. Learn to read the bracket and the window and you can tell a Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century hall from a Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century one, and a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century garden from a late-Qing one, before you reach the sign.

Why so much is rebuilt. China built in wood for two thousand years, and wood burns, rots and is replaced. Every dynasty rebuilt its palaces and most of its temples, so that the Forbidden City 故宫, the Temple of Heaven 天坛 and nearly every great hall on this page carry a founding date and a much later date for the timber you are looking at. That is not a scandal; it is the tradition. But it means that "old" needs a second question, and the page asks it of all forty-eight places: founded when, and standing since when.

Why the old ones are in Shanxi. The province was poor, dry and far from the wars that burned the capitals, and its village temples were too small to be worth rebuilding. The result is that the two Tang halls in China, the great Liao 辽, 10th to 12th century hall and the wooden pagoda, the Song 宋, 10th to 13th century hall with its maids and the Yuan 元, 13th to 14th century hall with its murals are all within a day's drive of Taiyuan 太原, and eight of the twenty-nine buildings on this page are there. Nobody who cares about buildings should leave China without a week in Shanxi.

The rule of the bracket. Look under the eaves. In a Tang hall the bracket sets are enormous, a third or a half of the column's height, and there are few of them, one to a column, so that the roof seems to float on a few great fists of timber. In a Qing hall the brackets are small, crowded, painted and decorative, and the roof sits on the wall. Between the two, the Liao and Song halls are big and bold but more numerous, and the Ming is the turn to the small. It is a rough rule and it works.

The rule of the window. A Ming garden, like Yipu 艺圃 in Suzhou 苏州 in Jiangsu 江苏, is plain: a pond, a hall, a few trees, white walls. A late-Qing garden, like the Humble Administrator's 拙政园 as it now stands or the Heyuan 何园 in Yangzhou 扬州, is dense with corridors, pavilions, carved windows and named rocks. The eye is led the same way in both, through openings that frame the next scene, and the difference is how much has been put in the frame.

This page has twenty-nine buildings and nineteen gardens from the survey: halls, pagodas, bridges, palaces, altars, a cliff temple and a water-works, and the gardens of emperors, scholars and merchants in Beijing, Chengde 承德, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi 无锡, Shanghai and Lhasa 拉萨. Temples visited for their faith are on the temples page; the same gardens as places to spend an afternoon are on the parks page. Here the subject is the building itself: who raised it, when, what is original, and how to read it.

02Timber, and Why So Little Is Old

Why are there so few old wooden buildings in China, and where are they?

The oldest wooden building in China is a village hall of 782. Everything older burned. The story of how the few survivors were found, in the nineteen-thirties by two architects on mules, is the story of how China learned to read its own buildings, and it gives a visitor the three tests to use at every site on this page.

The material. A Chinese hall is a timber frame: columns, beams and the bracket 斗拱 sets that carry the deep roof out beyond the walls, with the walls themselves doing no work. Frames flex in earthquakes and burn in wars, and every capital was burned at least once; the great Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century halls of Chang'an and Luoyang 洛阳 are all gone, and the Song 宋, 10th to 13th century ones of Kaifeng 开封. A dynasty that rebuilt a temple did so on the old plan with new timber, so the plan may be Tang while the wood is Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century. The survey's card for every building on this page separates the two, and this page repeats the distinction each time.

The discovery. In 1932 the architect Liang Sicheng 梁思成 measured the pavilion at Dule 独乐寺, near Tianjin 天津, and wrote what the survey calls the first scientific paper on a Chinese building. In 1933 he climbed the wooden pagoda at Yingxian 应县木塔 and said, by the survey's account, that without seeing it nobody could know what timber could do. In 1937, with his wife Lin Huiyin 林徽因 and two assistants, he rode into the hills of Wutai 五台山 on mules and found the east hall of Foguang 佛光寺, whose beams carry the date 857 in a donor's ink, the first Tang building anyone had identified; Japanese scholars had told him none survived. The smaller and older hall at Nanchan 南禅寺 was found in a survey of 1953. Those four finds fixed the timeline this page uses, and the survey's own pairs, Dule against Yingxian, Foguang against Nanchan, are the way to learn it.

What original means. Structure and paint are different things. At Foguang the columns, brackets 斗拱 and beams are ninth century, the sculptures are ninth century, the murals and the donor's writing are ninth century, and the roof tiles and paintwork have been renewed. At the Forbidden City 故宫 the plan and a few halls are fifteenth century and most of the timber is later. At Huaqing 华清宫 the pools are Tang and every building above them is after 1959. Ask the question at each site and the page gives the answer.

Three tests. First, the brackets: measure them against the column by eye, and count them. Second, the eaves: a Tang or Liao 辽, 10th to 12th century roof reaches out three or four metres past the wall, a Qing one much less. Third, the columns: early halls lean their outer columns slightly inward and raise the corner ones, so that the roofline lifts at the ends; later halls stand straight. None of the three needs a guide, and all three are visible from the courtyard before you buy the ticket to go in.

One warning. Sites that call themselves ancient and look new usually are; the survey's practice, and this page's, is to give the year of the timber you see, and to say when a gate tower or a hall is a design of the nineteen-nineties. Reconstruction is not a fault; the fault is not saying so.

03The Tang Halls and the Liao Giants

Which are the oldest wooden buildings in China, and how do you visit them?

Five buildings in the north, four of them in Shanxi 山西 and Hebei 河北 and one in Liaoning 辽宁, are the oldest large timber structures on earth. Two are Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century, three are Liao, and the survey sends anyone who wants to understand Chinese building to them first.

Nanchan 南禅寺, 782, the smallest and the oldest. Twenty kilometres from Wutai 五台山 county town, a three-bay hall in a village, rebuilt in 782, survived the persecution of Buddhism in the eight-forties because nobody in the capital knew it existed, and is the oldest wooden building in China by the survey's account. Inside are seventeen Tang clay figures. There is no ticket, and the survey says you may be the only visitor. An hour.

Foguang 佛光寺, 857, the great one. Thirty kilometres from the county town on the mountain's southern flank, the east hall of Foguang is seven bays wide, with brackets 斗拱 that reach out four steps and eaves that reach out four metres, the deepest of any surviving timber building by the survey's measure, and it holds what the survey calls four wonders under one roof: the Tang structure, Tang sculpture, Tang murals and a Tang inscription naming the woman who paid and the monk who built. It was inscribed with Mount Wutai in 2009. A small ticket, an hour and a half, and the courtyard at sunset when the brackets throw their shadows is the reason people who love buildings weep here.

Dule 独乐寺, 984, the tallest old room. In Jizhou 蓟州 district north of Tianjin 天津, eighty kilometres from Beijing, the pavilion of Guanyin 观音 at Dule is the oldest multi-storey timber building in China by the survey's account, built by the Liao, the steppe dynasty that ruled the north after the Tang, around a clay figure of the bodhisattva sixteen metres high. Twenty-four kinds of bracket set hold it up; the survey notes the brackets are half the height of the columns. In the Tangshan 唐山 earthquake of 1976 the figure's crown fell and the frame did not move. A small ticket, an hour and a half.

Yingxian 应县木塔, 1056, the wooden pagoda. Eighty kilometres from Datong 大同 in Shanxi, the pagoda of the Buddha's Palace Temple is sixty-seven metres of timber, five storeys outside and nine inside, built by the Liao in 1056 with fifty-four kinds of bracket set and, the survey records, no nails, and it has stood through more than forty strong earthquakes. It is the tallest and oldest all-wood pagoda in the world by the survey's claim, and the survey records it proposed for world heritage with the other Liao timber buildings. You cannot climb it now; you stand under it. An hour, no booking.

Fengguo 奉国寺, 1020, the seven Buddhas. Fifty kilometres from Jinzhou in Liaoning, the main hall of Fengguo is the largest surviving Liao hall by the survey's account, and inside it sit seven painted clay Buddhas of the Liao, each nine metres high, in a row across the width of the building, an arrangement the survey links to a Liao emperor's prayer for his mother. Almost no foreign visitor has been. An hour and a half to two.

The lesson of the five is the bracket rule in its purest form: at Nanchan and Foguang the brackets are the building; at Dule and Yingxian they multiply into structure; at Fengguo the hall has grown to a scale the Tang never tried. See them in that order.

04Song, Yuan and the Painted Walls

Which Song and Yuan dynasty buildings and murals survive?

After the Liao 辽, 10th to 12th century giants the north kept building for four centuries, and five sites hold the Song 宋, 10th to 13th century and Yuan 元, 13th to 14th century work that came next: a whole Song temple, the oldest hall south of the Yangtze, a Song hall full of maids, and two Yuan halls whose walls are painted from floor to beam.

Longxing 隆兴寺, the Song temple whole. At Zhengding 正定, fifteen kilometres from Shijiazhuang 石家庄, a temple founded in 586 keeps four Song buildings on one axis, and the survey quotes Liang Sicheng 梁思成 calling it the finest temple outside Beijing. The Mani hall 摩尼殿 has a cross-shaped plan with a porch on each face that the survey calls unique in China; a bronze figure of Guanyin 观音 with a thousand arms, twenty-two metres, cast in 971 for the founder of the Song, stands in the great pavilion; and a revolving scripture case of the Song, the oldest in the country by the survey, still turns. Two hours, a small ticket.

Baoguo 保国寺, 1013, the south's oldest. Fifteen kilometres from Ningbo 宁波, a hall of 1013 is the oldest timber building south of the Yangtze by the survey's account, built ninety years before the state published its building code and showing, the survey says, how the south did things before the code: slender columns made of pieces, finer brackets 斗拱, less timber. The story goes that no bird nests in it and no insect bores it. An hour, a small ticket, and the temple is a museum of building.

Jinci 晋祠, the Song hall and the maids. Twenty-five kilometres from Taiyuan 太原, a memorial garden begun under the Northern Wei 北魏 holds a hall of the ten-twenties to a goddess, with forty-three painted clay maids of the Song around her whose faces, the survey says, look eerily modern, and in front of it a stone bridge of the Song crossing a pond in the shape of a cross, the only one of its kind. A Jin hall of 1168, a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century stage and a spring that has never dried share the same trees. Two to three hours, booking advised.

Yongle Palace 永乐宫, the Yuan murals. A hundred kilometres from Yuncheng at Ruicheng 芮城, a Taoist temple built between 1262 and 1358 for the school that had won Genghis Khan 成吉思汗's favour holds a thousand square metres of murals, two hundred and eighty-six figures up to three metres high by the survey's count, the largest and finest of the Yuan, which the survey calls China's Sistine ceiling; and in 1959, when a reservoir threatened the site, the whole temple, walls and paintings, was moved twenty kilometres and put back up. Two hours, a modest ticket, and no crowd.

Guangsheng 广胜寺, the glazed pagoda. Fifteen kilometres from Hongtong 洪洞, a temple founded in 147 has an upper court with a pagoda of 1515 to 1527 clad in coloured glaze from foot to tip, forty-seven metres, the finest glazed pagoda in China by the survey's account; a lower court whose Yuan murals were sold in the nineteen-twenties and now hang in New York; and a water temple with Yuan murals still in place. In 1942 the monks and soldiers carried a Jin-dynasty printed canon out of the pagoda ahead of the Japanese army, which the survey tells on site. Two hours.

Read the five together and the Song shows itself as the age of the whole plan and the Yuan as the age of the painted wall, before the Ming turned to brick, glaze and colour.

05Pagodas and Bridges

Which are the oldest pagodas and bridges in China?

China built in wood and reserved stone and brick for two things: towers for the relics of the Buddha, and bridges. Six of them on this page are the oldest of their kind, and none has a bracket 斗拱 to date it by, so the page gives the year.

Songyue 嵩岳寺塔, 523, the oldest brick. Six kilometres from Dengfeng 登封 below the Song mountains, a twelve-sided tower of the Northern Wei 北魏, fifteen storeys of close-set eaves rising in a curve like a rocket, is the oldest brick pagoda in China by the survey's account and the only one with twelve sides, a shape the survey suggests came from India or Central Asia. It was inscribed in 2010 with the Song mountain monuments. An hour, a small ticket.

The two Wild Goose pagodas, 652 and 707. In Xi'an 西安 the Great Wild Goose Pagoda 大雁塔 was built in 652 to hold the scriptures the monk Xuanzang 玄奘 brought back from India after seventeen years, the real journey behind the Monkey King 孙悟空's story; it is square, tiered like a tower of storeys, and you may climb it. Eight kilometres from the centre by metro, a modest ticket and a small extra to climb, booking advised, and a fountain show in the square at night. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda 小雁塔, six kilometres away, is the other Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century type, a tower of close eaves in a curve, built between 707 and 710 for another translator, and famous for having split open in an earthquake and closed again in a later one, three times by the survey's telling. Free to enter the grounds, a small fee to climb, and quiet. Both were inscribed with the Silk Road in 2014.

Zhaozhou 赵州桥, 605, the bridge that was early by twelve centuries. Forty-five kilometres from Shijiazhuang 石家庄, a single stone arch of thirty-seven metres, built between 595 and 605 by a mason named Li Chun 李春, carries two small arches in each shoulder to let flood water through and lighten the load, a design the survey says Europe did not match for twelve hundred years. Liang Sicheng 梁思成 found Sui 隋, late 6th to early 7th century carved railings in the mud beside it in 1933. An hour, a small ticket, and nobody there.

Lugou 卢沟桥, 1192, the bridge Marco Polo 马可·波罗 praised. Fifteen kilometres from the centre of Beijing, eleven stone arches of the Jin cross the Yongding River 永定河 for two hundred and sixty-six metres under a parapet of two hundred and eighty-one posts carrying, by the survey's count, more than five hundred stone lions carved over four dynasties, which is why the Chinese say the lions cannot be counted. Marco Polo called it the finest bridge in the world by the survey's citation, and the West named it after him. On 7 July 1937 the shots exchanged at the bridge and the small walled town beside it began the war with Japan, and the memorial there is free with a reservation. Two hours with the town.

The glazed one is on the previous section: the pagoda at Guangsheng 广胜寺 of 1515, brick under a skin of coloured tile, the Ming's answer to a tradition that had begun in brick a thousand years earlier at Songyue.

06The Forbidden City and Its Manchu Original

How do you visit the Forbidden City, and what is the Shenyang palace?

The largest palace in the world and the small one that came before it are the same idea at two scales: a court laid out so that everything, from the colour of a tile to the number of studs on a gate, says who may stand where.

The Forbidden City 故宫, 1420. Twenty-four emperors of the Ming 明, 14th to 17th century and Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century lived and ruled here for nearly five hundred years in a walled rectangle of seventy-two hectares by the survey's measure, with, by the survey's count, eight thousand seven hundred rooms, the largest surviving palace complex in the world and twice the size of Versailles 凡尔赛宫 by the survey's comparison. The plan is the argument: a nine-hundred-metre axis from the south gate through three great halls of audience to the private courts behind, everything symmetrical, the ancestral temple 祖庙 to the left outside the wall and the altar of land and grain to the right, as the classics prescribed. The code is in the materials. Yellow tile was the emperor's alone, green a prince's, grey everyone else's; the number of studs on a door, the height of a terrace and the count of beasts on a roof ridge all step down by rank, and once you know the code the whole city reads like a diagram. What is original: the plan, the terraces and some halls of the fifteenth century; most timber is Qing, and the survey tells the fire and rebuilding of each hall on its card. What to find: the carved marble ramp behind the third hall, a single stone of more than two hundred tonnes hauled from the quarry on an ice road in winter, and the hall where the last emperor was expelled in 1924, after which, on 10 October 1925, the palace opened as a museum. Three to four hours, and by the survey's account a reservation must be made seven days ahead with a passport; it sells out.

The Shenyang palace 沈阳故宫, 1625, the palace before the palace. In the middle of Shenyang, eight hundred metres from a metro station, the Manchu 满族 rulers who would take Beijing in 1644 built a palace of their own from 1625: small, compact, and laid out by a different logic. Its first court is an octagonal hall with ten pavilions in two rows before it, one for each of the eight banners 八旗 into which the Manchu state was organised and two for the princes, so that the government's structure is written on the ground. The empress's palace behind is a Manchu house, with a side door and a heated brick bed running round three walls. The Qianlong 乾隆 emperor added a library on his eastern tours in the seventeen-eighties. It was inscribed with the Forbidden City in 2004 as the second of the Ming and Qing palaces, and the survey rates it the least crowded way to understand the first. Two to two and a half hours, no booking, a modest ticket, and the warlord's mansion next door for the twentieth century.

See them in the right order if you can: Shenyang first, for the steppe court with its tents turned to timber, then Beijing, for what that court built when it inherited China.

07The Axis: Altars, Towers and a Hill

What is on Beijing's central axis besides the Forbidden City?

Beijing is built on a line. Seven point eight kilometres long, from a southern gate to a pair of towers in the north, it was inscribed as world heritage in 2024, and five of the survey's buildings sit on it or beside it: two altars, an ancestral temple 祖庙, the towers that told the city the time, and the hill the emperors put up to guard their palace.

The Temple of Heaven 天坛, 1420. South-east of the palace, in a park of old cypresses, the emperor came each winter solstice to a round three-tiered terrace open to the sky, and each spring to a round hall on a square base to pray for the harvest. Round is heaven and square is earth in the plan, the tiles are blue for the sky, and the hall of prayer, rebuilt after a lightning fire in 1889, is by the survey's judgement one of the most beautiful timber buildings in the world. It was inscribed in 1998. The park opened to the public in 1918, and at dawn it belongs to the neighbourhood, who dance, sing and play in it; the parks page has that. Two to three hours, booking advised.

The Ancestral Temple 太庙, 1420. One wall east of the palace, the temple where the emperors kept their ancestors' tablets is, by the survey's account, the highest-ranking ancestral temple surviving in China, its main hall eleven bays wide on sixty-eight whole columns of golden nanmu 楠木, thirteen metres tall, a timber rarer than that of the palace's own great hall. Since 1950 it has been a workers' cultural palace, which is why the ticket costs almost nothing and it is nearly empty. An hour, three hundred metres from the metro.

The Altar of Agriculture 先农坛, 1420. South-west of the Temple of Heaven, its pair across the axis, is the altar where the emperor ploughed a field each spring with his own hand to open the farming year; the survey says the field, one mu and three fen, is the only surviving imperial ploughing ground. The halls now house a museum of building, and its treasure is a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century ceiling from a demolished temple carved with a map of fourteen hundred stars. Closed on Mondays, booking advised, an hour and a half.

The Bell and Drum Towers 钟鼓楼, 1272 and 1420. At the north end of the axis, the drum tower founded under the Yuan 元, 13th to 14th century and rebuilt by the Ming, and the bell tower behind it holding a bronze bell of sixty-three tonnes cast in 1420, the heaviest old bell in China by the survey's count, kept the city's time for seven centuries: drums at dusk to close the gates, the bell at dawn, until 1924. Climb the drum tower for the best view over the grey roofs of the lanes; the lanes themselves are on the old-town page. An hour, a modest ticket, four hundred metres from the metro.

Coal Hill 景山, the guardian. Directly north of the palace, a hill heaped in the fifteenth century from the earth dug for the moat stands where the geomancers wanted a mountain, and its central pavilion is the highest point on the axis and the only place to see the whole Forbidden City 故宫 laid out below, gold roof after gold roof. On the east slope a stone marks the tree where the last Ming emperor hanged himself on the morning of 19 March 1644 as the rebels entered the city. The ticket is two yuan; go at opening, before the tour groups, or at dusk.

Walk the five in a day, north to south: the towers at nine, the hill at ten, the palace with its reservation, the ancestral temple on the way out, and the Temple of Heaven at four when the light goes long. It is the one day in China where the plan of a city is the sight.

08Stone, Water and Cliff

What are the Potala, Dujiangyan and the Hanging Temple?

Seven places on this page break the rule of the timber frame, and each is the best of its kind: a stone palace on a Tibetan hill, a river tamed without a dam, a temple hung on a cliff, a Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century bath, and three halls where the building matters less than what happened in it.

The Potala 布达拉宫, Lhasa 拉萨. Thirteen storeys of whitewashed stone and earth on a rock above the city, built in the seventeenth century on the site of a seventh-century fort, the winter palace of Tibet 西藏's ruling lamas until the twentieth century and, by the survey's account, the highest palace in the world. Walls lean inward as they rise, windows narrow, the red palace at the top holds gilded tomb stupas, and the whole is a different grammar from anything else on this page. Visits are limited and must be booked a day ahead by the survey's note; two to three hours; foreign visitors travel in Tibet on a permit with a guide.

Dujiangyan 都江堰, 256 BC. Fifty kilometres from Chengdu 成都 and half an hour by high-speed train, a governor named Li Bing 李冰 split the Min River 岷江 where it leaves the mountains with a stone tongue, a spillway and a cut through the hill, and the system has watered the Chengdu plain without a dam for two thousand two hundred years, the oldest working irrigation scheme in the world by the survey's claim. It was inscribed in 2000. Two to three hours, booking advised; the temple to Li Bing on the hill is the viewpoint.

The Hanging Temple 悬空寺, 491. Sixty-five kilometres from Datong 大同 in Shanxi 山西, a row of halls founded under the Northern Wei 北魏 clings to a cliff fifty metres above a gorge on timber beams driven into the rock, the only cliff temple in China built entirely of wood without a cave, by the survey's account, and the only one where Buddha, Laozi 老子 and Confucius 孔子 sit in one hall. The buildings you walk through are Ming 明, 14th to 17th century and Qing; the position is fifth century. Entry is timed and limited; an hour and a half; go early.

Huaqing 华清宫, the Tang bath. On the edge of Xi'an 西安 by metro, the hot-spring palace where the emperor Xuanzong 唐玄宗 bathed with Yang Guifei 杨贵妃 in the seven-forties survives as five pools dug out in 1982, the crab-apple-shaped one built for her among them, the only excavated imperial baths in China by the survey; every building above ground is after 1959. On the hill behind, bullet holes in a small villa mark the morning in December 1936 when a general kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek 蒋介石 here, which the survey records as a turning point of the century. Two and a half hours; the night show is on the page on shows.

Three halls for what happened in them. At Tai'an, the Song hall of 1009 in the temple below Mount Tai 泰山, where emperors fasted before climbing to sacrifice, is ranked by the survey with the palace's own great hall among the three greatest halls in China, and the temple keeps a stone carved for the First Emperor 秦始皇's chancellor in 219 BC. At Xiezhou 解州关帝庙 near Yuncheng, the birthplace temple of the general Guan Yu 关羽, deified as the god of war and wealth, is the largest palace-style temple in China by the survey's account. And in a Beijing lane near Chaoyangmen 朝阳门, the Ming temple of 1444 built by the eunuch who lost an emperor to the Mongols keeps the city's most complete Ming timber, a stolen ceiling now in Kansas, and, twice a day, a small ensemble playing the court music of five and a half centuries ago from its own notation, the only place in China where that is still done, by the survey.

09The Imperial Gardens

Which imperial gardens should you see in Beijing, Chengde and Lhasa?

An emperor's garden in China is a landscape with a lake, three islands for the immortals, a hill to climb and a palace to rule from, and the six on this page run from the oldest in Beijing to the highest in the world and to one that was burned.

The Summer Palace 颐和园, 1750 and 1888. North-west of Beijing by metro, the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor built a lake and a hill for his mother's sixtieth birthday in 1750; the British and French burned it in 1860; the empress dowager Cixi 慈禧 rebuilt it in 1888 with money meant for the navy, by the survey's telling, and retired there. It is the largest imperial garden in China by the survey's account, two hundred and ninety hectares, three-quarters of it water, with a painted corridor along the shore of seven hundred and twenty-eight metres and fourteen thousand pictures, the longest in the world by the survey's claim, a temple climbing the hill and a marble boat that never sailed. Inscribed in 1998. Three to four hours, booking advised, a modest ticket; how to spend the day there is on the parks page.

Chengde 承德, 1703 to 1790. Two hundred and fifty kilometres north-east, in the hills beyond the wall, the Kangxi 康熙 and Qianlong emperors built a summer capital where they ruled for half of every year, hunted in the Mongol manner and received the chiefs of the empire's peoples: five hundred and sixty-four hectares by the survey's count, twice the Summer Palace, a lake district, a steppe and a mountain inside one wall, and outside it eight temples built in the styles of Tibet 西藏, Mongolia and Xinjiang 新疆 so that every visiting lord saw his own architecture. The British envoy Macartney 马戛尔尼 was received here in 1793. Inscribed in 1994. Four to six hours, booking advised, and a night in the town.

Beihai 北海公园, 1166. The oldest imperial garden in Beijing by the survey's account, six hundred years older than the Summer Palace, is a lake west of the palace with an island for the immortals crowned by a white Tibetan stupa of 1651, a nine-dragon glazed screen of 1756, and the neighbourhood's own park around it: the survey calls it a local's park rather than a tourist one, and the ticket is ten yuan.

The prince's mansion. Near the lakes north-west of the palace, the mansion built in 1776 for the emperor's favourite, Heshen 和珅, whose confiscated fortune the survey puts at fifteen years of state revenue, became a prince's residence in 1851 and is the best preserved in the city: a garden behind, a treasure house with eighty-eight differently shaped windows, and a stele with the Kangxi emperor's character for good fortune that half of Beijing comes to touch. Two hours, booking advised.

The garden that was burned. Next to the Summer Palace, the Garden of Perfect Brightness 圆明园, the emperors' working residence for a hundred and fifty years, was looted and burned by British and French troops in October 1860 on the order of Lord Elgin and wrecked again in 1900. It is kept as a ruin: lakes, hills, foundations, and the broken baroque columns of the European palaces that Jesuits designed for Qianlong, standing in a field. The survey compares its presentation to the Roman Forum and is right that it is not a reconstruction. Two to three hours, a small ticket, booking advised, a metro station at the gate.

Norbulingka 罗布林卡, Lhasa 拉萨. The summer palace 避暑山庄 of Tibet's ruling lamas from the seventeen-forties, at three thousand six hundred and fifty metres the highest royal garden in the world by the survey's account, is a park of old trees around a series of small gilded palaces, the last built in the nineteen-fifties with a mural of Tibetan history on its walls; at the summer festival the grounds fill with opera and picnics. Inscribed with the Potala 布达拉宫 in 2001. Two hours, a ticket at the gate.

10Suzhou: Nine Gardens, Four Dynasties

Which Suzhou gardens are worth visiting, and in what order?

Suzhou 苏州, in Jiangsu 江苏, has nine gardens on the world heritage list, and they are best read as a chronology: one Song 宋, 10th to 13th century, one Yuan 元, 13th to 14th century, one Ming 明, 14th to 17th century as the Ming left it, and six that reached their present shape in the Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century and later. The rule of the window is the whole lesson: the older the garden, the less is in the frame.

Song: the Blue Wave Pavilion 沧浪亭, 1045. The oldest garden in the city, built by a banished poet on the site of a prince's pleasure ground, is the only one that borrows the canal outside: a corridor with a hundred and eight lattice windows, each a different pattern by the survey's count, runs along the water so that the garden begins before the gate. A pavilion on a hill, a couplet every Chinese gardener knows, and a small ticket, no booking.

Yuan: the Lion Grove 狮子林, 1342. Built for a Chan 禅宗 master by his disciples, it is a labyrinth of lake stone 太湖石, nine paths and twenty-one caves on three levels by the survey's count, the largest old rockery in China, which so pleased the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor that he copied it twice in the north. The architect I. M. Pei's great-uncle bought and restored it in 1917, and the museum Pei built stands next door. Booking advised.

Ming: Yipu 艺圃. The smallest of the nine and the quietest, hidden in a lane inside the west gate, kept its Ming plan because its owners were modest men: a pond, the largest waterside hall in the city standing on it, a few rocks, white walls, and almost nothing else. The survey calls it the best preserved Ming garden in Suzhou, and it is the one to see first if you want to know what the others looked like before the Qing filled them. Ten yuan, no booking, and a map to find it.

The Humble Administrator's Garden 拙政园, 1509 and after. The largest and the most famous, built by a dismissed censor around a lake, is the model of the water garden, buildings set on the water so that they seem to float, every window a picture; the plan is Ming, the density of pavilions and corridors is late Qing. Reservation required by the survey's account, and it fills. Two to three hours, a metro station at the gate.

The Lingering Garden 留园, 1593 and 1876. The textbook of garden space: you enter by a long, narrow, dark passage that opens without warning into a bright court, and the survey calls the sequence the finest in any Chinese garden; in the far court stands a lake rock of six and a half metres said to have been abandoned on the road when the Song emperor's stone-collecting fleet collapsed. Booking advised.

The Master of the Nets 网师园, small and perfect. A garden of eight mu, a tenth of the Humble Administrator's, that the survey calls the perfection of the small garden; its study court was copied in 1980 as the Chinese garden in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and on summer evenings it stages Kunqu 昆曲 opera in its halls for a hundred people. Booking advised; the night ticket is separate.

The Mountain Villa, the couple's garden and the water-town garden. Huanxiu 环秀山庄 is a single half-acre artificial mountain by the last great rockery master, with peaks, gorges and caves, the finest rockery in China by the survey's account, a fifteen-yuan ticket and no visitors. Ouyuan 耦园, of 1874, is two gardens either side of a house built by a retired official and his poet wife, with the best yellow-stone rockery in the city and a water gate for boats. Tuisi 退思园, of 1885 to 1887, is in the water town of Tongli 同里 an hour away, laid out sideways along a pond so that every building stands on the water, the only heritage garden inside a water town by the survey's account; the town ticket includes it and the town is on the old-town page.

Two days is right, the first for the big three and the night opera, the second for the small four and Tongli, and the survey's order is by dynasty rather than by fame.

11Merchants, Borrowed Hills and a Rebel’s Yard

What are the gardens of Yangzhou, Wuxi and Shanghai like?

Four gardens outside Suzhou 苏州 in Jiangsu 江苏 show what happened to the scholar's garden when merchants, an emperor's admiration and a big city got hold of it.

Yangzhou 扬州: the salt merchant's four seasons. In the seventeen-hundreds and eighteen-hundreds the salt monopoly made Yangzhou's merchants the richest men in China, and the garden that the richest of them built in 1818, for three hundred thousand taels of silver by the survey's count, is famous for one idea: four rockeries in four different stones, so that you walk from spring through summer and autumn into winter in an hour. The survey's word for it is showmanship, and the point is that a merchant's garden is a scholar's garden with the money showing. A modest ticket, no booking, in the city centre.

Yangzhou: the last garden of the Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century. Across town, a customs official who had seen the West built in 1883 what the survey calls the first garden of the late Qing: a two-storey covered corridor of fifteen hundred metres that ties the whole garden together in the air, a Chinese garden with Western fireplaces and slatted blinds in its rooms, and the sense of a tradition trying on modernity. Far fewer visitors than Suzhou.

Wuxi 无锡: the garden the emperor stole. At the foot of Huishan 惠山 by the old town, a garden of the fifteen-hundreds, rebuilt under Kangxi 康熙, makes its mountain by borrowing the real one outside the wall and doubling it in a pond, the finest example of borrowed scenery 借景 in China by the survey's account; the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor visited on every southern tour and in 1751 had it copied into the Summer Palace 颐和园, where the copy still stands. An hour, and the old town of Huishan next door is on the old-town page.

Shanghai: the garden in the middle of the city. In the old walled town of Shanghai, a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century official built a garden for his father in 1559; four hundred years later it is surrounded by the towers of the city, the bazaar and the temple of the city god, and it is the oldest thing in Shanghai by the survey's account. Inside is one of the three most famous lake rocks in the south, and the hall where a rebel society made its headquarters in 1853. The rock and the pavilions are best at opening; the bazaar around it is on the shopping page. An hour and a half, a modest ticket, a metro stop.

What the four add to Suzhou's lesson is the second half of the rule of the window: the frame stays the same, and what people put in it tells you who they were.

12PreeChina, and What It Is Not

What does PreeChina arrange for old buildings and gardens, and what needs booking?

• Old buildings in China are a driving problem and a booking problem, and both are what we do.
• The Shanxi 山西 week. The one trip on this page that nobody offers and everybody who loves buildings wants: Nanchan 南禅寺 and Foguang 佛光寺 from Wutai 五台山, the wooden pagoda and the Hanging Temple 悬空寺 from Datong 大同 in Shanxi with the caves from the grottoes page, Jinci 晋祠 from Taiyuan 太原, Yongle Palace 永乐宫 and the Guan Yu 关羽 temple from Yuncheng, Guangsheng 广胜寺 on the way. Six days with a driver who knows the village roads; the two Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century halls have no bus.
• The Beijing axis. One day, north to south, the towers, the hill, the palace with its seven-day reservation, the ancestral temple 祖庙 and the Temple of Heaven; a second day for the Summer Palace 颐和园 and the ruins next door, or for Chengde 承德 as an overnight.
• Suzhou 苏州, in Jiangsu 江苏, in two days. The nine gardens in dynastic order, the night opera at the Master of the Nets 网师园, and Tongli 同里 for the water-town garden; Yangzhou 扬州 and Wuxi 无锡 as a third day for anyone who wants the merchants and the borrowed hill.
• The stone ones. The two Wild Goose pagodas and Huaqing 华清宫 in Xi'an 西安 folded into the tomb and grotto days there; Zhaozhou 赵州桥 and Longxing 隆兴寺 as a day from Shijiazhuang; Lugou 卢沟桥 Bridge as an afternoon from Beijing.
• The reservations, as the survey has them. The Forbidden City 故宫 seven days ahead with a passport; the Humble Administrator's Garden 拙政园 required; the Potala 布达拉宫 a day ahead and limited; the Hanging Temple timed; the Altar of Agriculture 先农坛 closed on Mondays; Chengde, the Summer Palace, Jinci, Dujiangyan 都江堰 and the Lion Grove 狮子林 advised; everything in the Shanxi villages open, cheap and empty. We check each rule the week you travel.
• What this page is not. It is not the temples page, which has the same halls as living monasteries where that is what they are; here Foguang and Longxing are buildings. It is not the parks page, which has the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven 天坛, Beihai 北海公园, Yuyuan 豫园 and the Suzhou gardens as places to spend an afternoon among the locals. It is not the tombs page, the grottoes page or the old-town page, which have the graves, the caves and the streets these buildings stand among. And it is not a page that grades restorations: where a hall is a design of 1959 or 1992 we say so, and where a plan is Tang and the timber is Qing we say that too, and leave the judgement to you.
• One record, now settled. The wooden pagoda at Yingxian 应县木塔 is not a World Heritage 世界遗产 Site. It entered China's tentative list in November 2012, the step a country takes before it nominates anything, and it sits in a serial nomination of Liao timber buildings alongside Fengguo 奉国寺 that is still being assembled. It has been a nationally protected monument since the first list of 1961, and Guinness World Records certified it in 2016 as the tallest wooden pagoda in the world. An earlier survey we used said it was inscribed in 2024. That was wrong, and this page no longer says it.