The Summer Palace, one of the four famous gardens in China, is located at the northwestern corner of Beijing. Mainly composed of the Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake, based on the scenery of West Lake in Hangzhou, absorbing the designing techniques and artistic conception of South China gardens, it is a large-scale water and mountain garden combining artificial scenery and natural beauty, the biggest and most completely preserved royal garden in China.

The construction in the garden is centered on the Tower of Buddhist Incense, altogether over 3000 pieces of different architectures such as pavilions, stages, buildings, attics, colonnades, and waterside pavilions. The main scenic spots in the garden are divided into three areas: East Palace Gate area is a place for the emperors in the Qing Dynasty to live and handle political events, and is the main location for Empress Dowager Tz’u-Hsi and Emperor Kuang-Hsu to carry out domestic and foreign affairs at the late Qing Dynasty. It witnessed the political situations during that time. East Palace Gate is now the front gate of the Summer Palace, and on the door head and eaves are full of beautiful paintings. Neat yellow door-nails are embedded in the six red broad doors, and a nine-dragon plaque with three golden characters, inscribed by Kuang-Hsu Emperor, is hung under the middle of the eaves. In the slab stone of the red steps on the imperial aisle is engraved with "two dragons playing with a pearl”. It was carved during the Chien-Lung’s reign and is a symbol of the emperor’s dignity. The aisle was just for the emperors and the queens. The living area represented by the halls such as the Hall of Happiness and Longevity, the Hall of Jade Ripples, and the Yiyun Hall, where used to be the living rooms for Tz’u-His, Kuang-Hsu and his concubines. Facing the Kunming Lake, leaning on the Longevity Hill, east to the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, west to the Long Corridor, the Hall of Happiness and Longevity is the main building of the residential area, and the best part in the garden for living and for fun. The back mountain and back lake scenic area composed by the Long Corridor, the back mountain, and the west area, was an entertainment park exclusively for the emperors and queens. The construction is less there and the green is more, the zigzag mountain path, very quiet, very serene, a sharp difference to the magnificence of the front mountain. There are a range of Xizang buildings and a Suzhou Street here, characterized by the South China water towns. The arrangement is efficient and it’s full of esthetic amusement. Of the whole garden, the artistic thought is wonderful. It’s a masterpiece, representing the highest garden art of China.

In 1998, the Summer Palace was inscribed on the World Heritage List by the UNESCO, and the brief description is: The Summer Palace in Beijing – first built in 1750, largely destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored on its original foundations in 1886 – is a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value.”