Author: Zhihang Du, ARCH Volunteer

While watching the Oscar-winning South Korean movie Parasite, one is deeply impressed by the marvelous estate of the rich family. Here, many of the important plot elements develop. The house was designed by a famous Korean architect, and is secluded from the rest of the city by tall grey walls. If you’re lucky to get the chance to visit its garden, you will see shiny green bamboos dancing in the afternoon sunlight, and hear a rustle while the wind combs through the leaves.

Film stills (screenshots) from the opening scenes of Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho.

For thousands of years, people have tried to find tranquility in gardens. They built up walls around the greens to enjoy the scenery without being disturbed. To tell a garden from a park, you just need to check if there are any walls around it. Gardens are usually privately owned, and not open to the public. It is a space that can dispel people and noise away. Meanwhile, parks are open to everybody, and people who are strangers to each other are encouraged to have fun together.

Yuanming Garden is like the garden in the movie except that it is a thousand times larger. It used to be an imperial garden in northwest of Beijing. To say that it used to be imperial, I mean that it could only be enjoyed by one person, the emperor. Nobody else could enter it without the consent of this one man. Of course, the emperor no longer exists, and the garden was turned into a park – now everybody has access and is invited to enjoy it.

Yet, Yuanming Garden’s transition from a private garden into a public park gives rise to a contradiction. Unlike Central Park in New York whose designer knew that it would be for public use from the very beginning, Yuanming Garden was built for the enjoyment of only one person. In Central Park, wide open grasslands provide space for badminton and kites, long bridges and numerous benches were built as places to rest, roads are easy to navigate. In contrast, at Yuanming Garden, there were only a few open lands and most of the land was covered with rare plants and small lakes, there were no benches, only pavilions and halls decorated with the emperor’s personal treasures. Here the roads and streams are convoluted and hard to remember, and only the owner of the garden could confidently lead the guests through the winding paths.

Comparison of the map of Yuanming Garden and the map of Central Park

Thus, even if everybody is now able to walk around Yuanming Garden, few are impressed by it. It is either too boring in the winter or too crowded on warmer days. I felt the same when visiting it 10 years ago and had the same impression the second time, during the autumn of 2016. It was winter the first time I visited the garden. Beijing is of the same latitude as New York and is as cold, but its climate is much dryer. So when I was there, I only saw bald trees and frozen ponds. The second time I went there, the plants were beautiful and the water was splashing, but the garden was loaded with people who came to see the golden leaves. My view was blocked by tourists either eating hotdogs, taking selfies, or climbing up the hills.

I only got the chance to appreciate Yuanming Garden’s beauty one year later in the summer of 2017. The place I interned at was only one bus stop away from the garden, so I’d sometimes take a walk before going home.

Around 5:30pm when I got off from work, the sky was still bright, and I would take the 375 bus there. Most tourists would have left the garden before the evening began, and there would be even fewer people after a rainstorm in the afternoon, so I would be able to wander around almost alone in the 200-year old landscape.

I would usually enter the south gate, turn left and take the western route that was seldomly taken by tourists and walk towards Fu Hai Lake (Lucky Sea), the largest body of water in the garden.

On my way to Fu Hai Lake, I would walk past several smaller lakes. All the lakes were planted with lotus from side to side. Looking around, the lakes were surrounded by willows reaching into the water. Looking beyond, small hills at the outskirts enclosed the willows and the lake, creating a private space. The exit would be hidden between the hills, only reachable after twists and turns. Passing through the narrow exit between the hills, I’d feel the space compressed and the branches of the fig trees reaching for my face from the side. Walking for another one minute, the road suddenly widened, and the hills gave way to another lake — my view would be opened up again.

Different summer evenings, pools of lotus surrounded by willows and gentle hills

Fu Hai Lake is the largest open space of the garden. It takes an hour to walk around it. Here, from spring to winter, morning to dusk, you can always get a different view.

One cloudy late afternoon in the summer of 2017, I was sitting by the lakeshore when the rainstorm came. The sky immediately dimmed, and the other side of the lake became invisible. Wind blew lake water and leaves on my face. Holding my umbrella, I looked around but found no one in sight.

It was 6:30pm now and the nearest gate was half an hour’s walk away. It was dark and chilly by the lake. 250 years ago, someone drowned himself in the water right in front of me. He was angry, sad, and humiliated. As the captain of the guards of Yuanming Garden, he and his soldiers weren’t able to stop the joint army of France and Britain from invading the garden. Three days later, the garden was burned down.

The lake was moaning in the rain. I couldn’t bear the coldness and darkness any longer. Stumbling through the darkness, I tried to navigate my way out among the winding paths hidden by the bushes and blocked by the hills. As I reached for my phone to look for directions, a calm voice appeared in front of me, “South gate? This way.” It was a dog walker. He spoke in authentic Beijing accent, and apparently, he must have seen many “panicking” tourists like me before. I thanked him and followed him out of the garden.

By the time we reached the gate, the rain had almost stopped. Everything outside seemed to have nothing to do with what happened in the garden. The orange lights from the road outside were warm, and people were talking and laughing on the sidewalk. I looked back, and the man with his dog was already disappearing in the darkness of the night.

“Thank you so much!” I shouted to him.

He turned and smiled: “That’s nothing! I live nearby!”

I can always remember his smile, and one year later, I could also confidently say “That’s nothing!” when I led confused tourists out of the garden.

My overall summer experience of Yuanming Garden resembles the one described above: a bit scary at times but thrilling, ending with warmth. It was also from this summer that I began to understand the unique beauty of Yuanming Garden, a huge, complex, and wild artificial land with a bittersweet history. It was like a thick book awaiting my further exploration, which would take place in the winter of 2017.

Fu Hai in the winter, winter stories to come in my next blog post!