THREE: JIANFU PALACE GARDEN BEIJING, CHINA

摘要

First came the reconstruction. Jianfu Palace Garden (Garden of the Palace of Established Happiness), a compound in the northwest corner of the Forbidden City in Beijing, burned down in 1923. The nine pavilions and other structures organized around courts and connected by walkways and gardens had originally been built in 1740 for Qianlong, a Qing Dynasty emperor. He desired a haven from the pressures of court in the 178-acre palace complex now famous for its 800 wood structures. After Sun Yat-sen came to power in 1911, the fire's damage to these imperial traces were ignored. Then, in the mid-1990s, the China Heritage Fund, a nonprofit organization founded by the chairman of the Hong Kong development company, Hang Lung Group, proposed to rebuild it. The fund, led by project director Happy Harun, worked with the Forbidden City Palace Museum on the arduous reconstruction.