Prince Gōng’s Mansion 恭王府
柳荫街
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of North, Around the Back Lakes
You get rather more for ¥20 here than you do at the nearby Guō Mòruò Museum: green and leafy gardens, pools and pavilions, rockeries, winding pathways, and an assortment of fairly well-kept halls often connected by winding passageways that are shorter versions of the Summer Palace’s Long Corridor, and similarly decorated. The mansion is thought to have provided inspiration for some of the settings in the classic A Dream of Red Mansions or The Story of the Stone (see Grand View Garden), or possibly the layout of the mansion was inspired by the book; scholars disagree. Some of the gardens are designed to be landscapes in miniature (including a rocky recreation of the pass at Shān Hǎi Guān through which the Manchus invaded China); others simply have frilly bamboo or roses, and gardeners wander around with long-necked watering cans.
If travelling independently go in the morning, as tour groups seem very densely concentrated in the afternoons, and tour guides wield megaphones. If you are with such a group you’ll be served tea in the three-storey Grand Opera House, its interior brightly painted with patterns of wisteria, and shown opera excerpts and acrobatics (¥60 per head for groups).
The site underwent massive renovation and expansion before the Olympics, with a new main entrance on the south side, opened in 2008, giving on to a wilderness of brand new old halls. The secret policemen once quartered here were finally driven out to new premises, supposedly at a cost of ¥100 million, and the halls they occupied rebuilt from the ground up. These contain minor displays on the life of Prince Gōng and on princely palaces in general. One courtyard contains café tables with sunshades. For a little more atmosphere, move swiftly on, through a two-storey building and a ‘Western-style’ gate in the manner of the Jesuit ruins at the ‘Old’ Summer Palace and rear of the Wànshòu Sì. There’s a map on the back of the ticket.
Beyond, the halls are set on three axes, but wandering paths through moon gates, around piled rocks, and through gardens make the whole site seem rather larger and more complicated. The elegant Hall of Tranquillity and Goodness has a board with the Kāngxī emperor’s calligraphy but is now a jewellery shop. Exciting as it sounds in English, The Peak of Self-Enjoyment is merely a 5m-high rock garden that can be climbed by several winding routes. One pavilion in the middle of a small lake is reached by an ingenious bridge of boats, and a group of halls at the rear of the site have their columns bizarrely painted in imitation of bamboo.
The palace was once the home of a notorious Manchu officer-cum-official called Hešen, or Héshēn (和珅) in Mandarin, who prospered from 1775 towards the end of the Qiánlóng emperor’s reign. At 25 he was showered with an extraordinary combination of promotions and titles for one so young, and gossip had it that he was the 65-year-old emperor’s catamite. He used his ever-increasing number of revenue-generating offices to amass millions by charging for favours and by fiddling the accounts of military costs on the various rebel-suppressing campaigns that became necessary due to poor local government, religious problems, and corruption at lower levels. Once Qiánlóng nominally retired in 1796 to avoid out-reigning his venerated grandfather Kāngxī, Héshēn’s power grew as Qiánlóng effectively continued to reign using him as the instrument of his will.
Héshēn was often ill and, having been failed by Chinese medicine, took the highly unusual step of summoning the Scottish Dr Gillan, who accompanied the Macartney embassy of 1793. Gillan diagnosed rheumatism and a hernia, and fitted him with a truss. When Qiánlóng died in 1799, his son, the Jiāqìng emperor, finally took full control and forced Héshēn to commit suicide.
In 1851 the Xiánfēng emperor granted the palace to Prince Gōng, his younger brother, who was later to sign the 1860 Conventions of Peking on the emperor’s behalf. This agreement reconfirmed the rights of foreign powers to station permanent ambassadors in Běijīng (already granted in 1858) and additionally leased Kowloon to the British, permitted Chinese emigration (hitherto illegal) on British ships, opened Tiānjīn for foreign trade, and granted yet further indemnities. Prince Gōng was later a founder of the first Qīng Foreign Office and well known to the inhabitants of the Legation Quarter.
For more on princely mansions in Běijīng see Princely Privileges.
▶ Gōng Wángfǔ, Liǔyīn Jiē, t 8238 8149, www.pgm.org.cn, 7.30am–4.30pm, Mar 16–Nov 15; 8am–4pm, Nov 16–Mar 15. ¥40. m Běi Hǎi North (Line 6), exit B. b as for b to 北海北门: 13, 42, 90电车外环,
90电车内环, 107电车, 111电车, 118电车, 609, 612, 623, 701.
Qián Hǎi Xī Jiē runs north from Píng’ān Dàdào just west of the north entrance to Běi Hǎi Park to the Guō Mòruò Museum. Walk on and turn left (still Qián Hǎi Xī Jiē), and the new south entrance to Prince Gōng’s Mansion is on your right. Or walk north from the bus stop up Sān Zuò Qiáo Hútòng (三座桥胡同).
Turn right out of the entrance and go straight on (slight wiggle) to follow the route of In the Depths of Many Flowers in reverse. Or carry on round to the right following the mansion’s outer wall and you’ll soon pass the premises of the Sìchuān Restaurant. Turning right (east) around the top of the palace compound and continuing east and north where necessary, you’ll soon reach the Hòu Hǎi, or Back Lakes. To your right, beyond a long string of tawdry second-rate bars, the Yíndìng Qiáo (银锭桥, Silver Ingot Bridge) crosses the narrow link between the Hòu Hǎi and Qián Hǎi, and across it there’s the long-established roast meat restaurant, Kǎo Ròu Jì (烤肉季), which like the Sìchuān Restaurant is a lǎo zìhào (老字号, ‘time-honoured brand’). Turn left for the Former Residence of Soong Ching-ling and other sights on the north shore of the Hòu Hǎi; or go straight on and almost immediately fork right into once-quiet Yāndài Xiéjiē (烟袋斜街), also now filled with further bars and souvenir shops (but look up for signs of ancient woodwork above the patina of modernity at ground level). The rebuilt daoist Guǎnfǔ Guān temple-museum is here (on the East Bank of the Hòu Hǎi walk). At the end turn left for the Drum and Bell Towers.
Next in North, Around the Back Lakes: Princely Privileges (story)
Previously: Guō Mòruò Museum
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