Over the years, Zhu Qiang, deputy director of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Beijing University of Agriculture, has dedicated himself to researching the Three Hills and Five Gardens, bringing the garden complexes back to life, digging into their historical value, and promoting them to the public.
Born in Beijing in 1992, Zhu was attracted to the gardens as a high school student. He watched a documentary about Yuanmingyuan in 2008 and became absorbed in the complex's restored landscape, which was created with 3D technologies. Still, he braved the cold wind to visit the complex days later, but was disappointed by the bleak scene.
"How did this once prosperous garden complex come to be like this?" he wondered. His high school teacher encouraged him to explore further, planting a seed in his heart.
In 2011, Zhu enrolled at Beijing Forestry University as a landscape architecture major, turning his curiosity into a profession. In 2015, he pursued a master's degree in landscape architecture and entered the field academically.
By then, the Three Hills and Five Gardens had become an established academic subject, yet some individual gardens, their design principles and their conservation still awaited exploration. An internship on Tsinghua University's digital restoration project at Yuanmingyuan in 2013 showed Zhu how digital technologies could empower traditional historical research.
"I found there was much room for further research, which I had great passion for," Zhu recalls.
Zhu also established a students' club in 2015 to research and popularize the Three Hills and Five Gardens, aiming to bring them back to modern life.
During their research, Zhu was drawn to Changchun Garden, the first detached imperial complex built outside the Forbidden City. It stood for nearly 120 years at its peak before vanishing, leaving only remnants of two temple gates outside the western gate of present-day Peking University.
"Changchun Garden is less studied than its counterparts because of the scarcity of historical materials," says Zhu. "Its sites are difficult to trace, almost entirely buried by rapid urban development, making it difficult to identify its original boundaries."
