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.