Leadership Insights | Illustrated Lectures: Chengde Mountain Resort: An Architectural Wonder

China abounds in World Cultural and Natural Heritage sites. Among them, the Mountain Resort in Chengde is noted for its historical value and modern significance in terms of ethnic exchanges and integration, adaptation of religion with society, protection and inheritance of traditional culture, and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. It is necessary to protect, inherit and make good use of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and tap its rich connotations, so as to better strengthen the cultural confidence and national spirit of the Chinese people.

Chengde, located in the north of Hebei Province, nestles deep in the Yanshan Mountains. Adjacent to Beijing and Tianjin and connected to Liaoning and Inner Mongolia in the north, it is a major traffic hub linking northeastern and northern China and the “north gate” of China’s capital. Chengde boasts profound cultural heritage as a place where nomadic culture of grasslands, agricultural culture of the Central Plains, royal culture, and ethnic folk culture are blended and converged. It is also the birthplace of the Saihanba Spirit.

Construction of the Chengde Mountain Resort, also known as the Rehe Temporary Palace, lasted from 1703 to 1792. Its size is two times that of the Summer Palace in Beijing, making it the largest existing imperial garden in the world. The Mountain Resort blends the views of both southern and northern China, rolling the beauty of various scenic spots around the country into a single garden. There, visitors can enjoy the elegant scenery of water towns in the Jiangnan region, the vast grasslands in northern China, and the rolling hills and valleys. For this reason, it is hailed as “the best example of Chinese classical gardens”. 

Unlike other royal gardens, the Mountain Resort inherited and developed the traditional Chinese gardening idea of “recreating the beauty of nature with artificial buildings and adapting to and transcending nature”. Architects selected the site and conducted overall design based on natural terrains, and leveraged mountains and rivers in the locality to construct this garden. 

The Mountain Resort features a simple and elegant architectural style, and the eight outlying temples look gorgeous and brilliant, forming a sharp contrast. It is a good example of ancient architecture combining a royal garden and imperial temples as well as an embodiment of national unity and cultural integration. The tangible and intangible cultural heritages in the Mountain Resort and its outlying temples, such as stone steles, murals, porcelain, lacquerware, jade ware, and Buddhist statues vividly record and display the rich and colorful excellent traditional Chinese culture.

As a World Cultural Heritage site, the Mountain Resort perfectly blends artificial and natural sights and bears testimony of the history of China as a unified, multi-ethnic nation. This monument to national unity has transcended the limits of space and time and remains shining with glory to this day.