Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden

This is a recent park, not an ancient site, and its own description says so: it sits in the eight-dynasty capital of Kaifeng and reproduces the Chinese scroll painting Qingming Shanghe Tu at one-to-one scale. It has been open to the public since 1998. The park's own figures put the site at over 540 mu with 150 mu of water, more than 400 imitation ancient buildings and over 30,000 square metres of classical garden architecture; the Henan provincial government gives slightly larger numbers of about 600 mu and 180 mu of water, and the discrepancy is worth keeping in mind. The centrepiece is the Hongqiao Bridge, a columnless arch over the park's Bian canal built on a two-level plan, with pedestrians and horses above and goods and boats below.

Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden

Photo credits and rights
  1. Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden: the bridgeWindmemories · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗ Display and thumbnail images resized and converted to WebP.