Ancient Chinese Architecture Series, Imperial Gardens

The imperial gardens were elegant resorts for all forms of entertainment. Rapid developments in Chinese society, the economy and the arts lent great impetus to the construction of elaborate and elegant imperial parks, while the technical virtuosity of the waterways and a preference for exotically formed rockeries produced enchanting and constantly changing man-made worlds. The genre reached its zenith with the uanmingyuan garden, generally accepted as one of the finest of its kind ever created in China.