The Summer Palace - Part 2 - Treasure Gallery

Hidden in the forests surrounding the lake are numerous other Gates, and Halls, and Palaces. The Wenchang Tower is the largest of 6 gate forts in the Summer Palace garden.

The gate leads to a pretty little courtyard that includes the Treasure Gallery, a series of small buildings with their own courtyard in the Hutong style.

Each of the buildings houses a different type of Chinese art or sculpture and their are buildings dedicated to Porcelain, Jade, and Bronze. I'm going to show you a few of the more interesting pieces. I don't have a story for each of them, I just thought they were pretty.

The porcelain pieces were stunning, and extremely detailed.

Note the Swastika symbols on this last piece (circa 1600, pre-dating the Nazi's by more than 300 years).

The jade was really hard to photograph (the lighting and glass panels created horrid reflections), so I really only got one good photo there. Many of the jade pieces were tablets with carvings in them, but there were also many traditional sculpture. This one includes a piece of red coral.

The bronze hall was the most disappointing. I had thought that there would have been lots of interesting bronze sculpture, but this was the best I could find.

Here is a painting, supposedly created by the Empress Dowager Cixi (more on her later).

This is a carving done in ivory, the detail is just amazing.

Here is another carving done in bamboo, again, the detail is extraordinary, there are dozens of tiny people in this boat

Lastly, outside the gallery there is a frieze in the wall depicting a Phoenix (the symbol of the Empress) and a Dragon (the symbol of the Emperor).