Building up a legacy

Documentary sheds light on the 200-year history of a family at the forefront of designing and constructing imperial landmarks, Wang Ru reports.

In 1860, on a devastating night when Anglo-French forces were looting and burning Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, Lei Jingxiu, who worked as head of the Yangshi Office, the imperial architectural design institute at that time, was anxious to hear just what exactly was unfolding.

Risking their lives, he rushed to the office in Yuanmingyuan with his son and colleagues, salvaged architectural archives and models related to imperial architecture of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and got them back to his house.

Their courageous efforts saved the archives from being destroyed. The surviving records played an important role for architects to study the designs and construction of Qing imperial architecture decades later, and have enabled people of the present time to get a glimpse of the past glory of the imperial garden.

The story is recounted in the five-episode documentary Yangshi Lei, which was produced by the TV series and documentary center of the China Media Group, and broadcast on the documentary channel of China Central Television in March.

Yangshi Lei was a family of architects prospering during the Qing Dynasty. Many of its members worked as chief architects for the Qing court and designed buildings which are now world cultural heritage sites in China, including the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Eastern and Western imperial Qing tombs, and the Mountain Resort in Chengde, Hebei province.