The covered corridor represents a typical architectural style in Chinese landscape gardening. A long, belt-like structure, it is a roofed walk with low railings or long side benches. Providing people with shade from the sun and protection from the rain, it not only adds beauty to the general scenery but plays a useful role as well.

Chinese covered corridors fall into many varieties, but roughly they may be divided into youlang which links two or more buildings, qulang (the zigzag corridor), huilang (the winding corridor), hualang which is used for the display of potted flowers, and shuilang which borders on lakes or goes over ponds.

It is the general consensus that at the top of all classical corridors must be listed by any standards the Long Corridor in Beijing's Summer Palace, a unique treasure in the art of gardening arrangement. An exquisite winding structure of 728 metres, it stretches its 273 bays between the hill and the lake, broken at intervals by four double-eaved, octagonal pavilions, which represent the four seasons of the year. All its beams are painted with coloured pictures of landscapes, human figures, flowers, birds and scenes of historical and popular stories. These paintings total more than 40,000 in number, and the visitor would need eight hours just to linger two seconds before each picture.

Famous private Chinese gardens, located mostly in the southern provinces, likewise, are often ornamented with corridors. In Suzhou's Zhuozhengyuan (The Humble Adminitrator's Garden), part of the winding corridor is erected over a pond and has been described as a "rainbow over water". With its reflection in the water, sometimes ruffled by a breeze, it is a favorite spot for visitors to take snapshots of themselves.