Step inside an emperor's inner world

Visitors must knock three times before entering the wooden gate. After a brief pause, it creaks open. Standing inside is Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) Emperor Qianlong, the 18th-century ruler whose reign marked the period's height of territorial advantages and cultural confidence. With a slight gesture, he invites his guests to step into the garden he built for his retirement.

The emperor exists only as light.

Digitally projected onto a screen, Qianlong serves as the unlikely host of A Garden Within: An Immersive Light and Shadow Exhibition of the Qianlong Garden, which opened to public on July 9 at the National Library of China in Beijing. Through holograms, interactive projections and virtual reality, the exhibition offers something even visitors to the Palace Museum still cannot fully experience.

Built between 1771 and 1776, Qianlong Garden, officially known as the Garden in the Palace of Tranquil Longevity, was conceived as a private retreat for the emperor after his planned abdication.

Spanning roughly 6,400 square meters in the northeastern corner of the Forbidden City, the garden unfolds through four successive courtyards containing 27 buildings, each distinguished by elaborate decorative schemes and some of the Qing court's finest surviving interior craftsmanship.

For generations, however, the garden remained almost entirely inaccessible. Only last September, as the Palace Museum marked the 100th anniversary of its founding, were visitors allowed inside following years of painstaking conservation.

Even now, public access is limited to the first two courtyards. The innermost sections remain closed due to the fragility of the historical buildings and the artworks they contain.

"Fortunately, the exhibition makes up for that limitation," says Su Yi, deputy director of the Palace Museum. "It re-creates the spaces and preserves the atmosphere the emperor intended — a landscape that appears shaped by nature despite being meticulously designed."

The first gallery re-creates Yanqi Gate, the ceremonial entrance to the garden. Beyond it stands an exquisitely detailed architectural model built using traditional Qing-era paper-modeling techniques. Every pavilion, corridor and rock formation has been reproduced to scale, down to individual trees, including one that occupied a particularly important place in the emperor's imagination.

According to records, the Chinese catalpa tree was originally slated for removal during construction. Qianlong refused. Instead, he ordered a nearby pavilion to be moved about a meter north so the tree could remain untouched. The building was later named Guhua Pavilion for the blossoms of the ancient catalpa. More than two centuries later, the tree still flowers each year inside the Forbidden City.

That quiet relationship between architecture and nature becomes one of the exhibition's most contemplative moments. Visitors settle onto cushions laid across the gallery floor and look through digital windows into the garden beyond, inviting viewers to take a moment, as Qianlong once did, to watch the ancient catalpa complete its quiet cycle, year after year.

The exhibition also offers glimpses of Qianlong beyond his public role as emperor.

As a devoted collector and patron of the arts, Qianlong admired Lanting Xu (Orchid Pavilion Preface), the celebrated fourth-century essay by the calligrapher Wang Xizhi, which tells of a gathering where scholars floated wine cups along a winding stream (known as "qushui liushang"), drank, and composed poetry whenever a cup came to rest before them. Inspired by the story, Qianlong commissioned a 27-meter meandering watercourse inside his own garden.

This custom is digitally re-created. A projected stream flows across the gallery floor beneath stands of bamboo. Virtual wine cups drift with the current until visitors reach out their hands, whereupon they glide gently into their palms.

"The exhibition reminds visitors that Qianlong was not only an emperor," says Wang Zhiwei, deputy editor of the Palace Museum Press and the exhibition's chief curator. "He was someone with personal interests, hobbies and pleasures."

The watercourse, in particular, illustrates how literary customs became part of the emperor's private world. For young visitors, Wang adds, it also offers an opportunity to memorize passages from Wang Xizhi's famous text.

More broadly, Wang Zhiwei says, the imperial garden reflects the cultural landscape of the Qing empire. Southern Chinese aesthetic traditions appear throughout the garden, revealing the artistic and cultural exchanges that took place across the empire.

That cultural synthesis extends to the garden's interiors. The exhibition highlights decorative techniques, such as mother-of-pearl inlay, marquetry and carved lacquer preserved throughout the complex, many of which are now recognized as part of China's intangible cultural heritage.

The final gallery replaces projection with immersion. Wearing virtual reality headsets, visitors wander through a complete digital reconstruction of the garden.

One woman lingers after the experience ends, still holding out her hands as digital flower petals disappear.

"It feels like the garden represents Qianlong's inner world," she says. "People come and go, but the seasons never stop changing."

A question printed on the exhibition seems to give voice to the emperor: If you were given a space no larger than this, how would you create a world of your own?