Zhu Qiang, a scholar specializing in studies of "Three Hills and Five Gardens", gives a lecture in 2024 at the Summer Palace about the garden complexes.

The Xiangshan Temple, which was a site in "Three Hills and Five Gardens" in ancient times.

Zhu leads people to tour around Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace) last year.

A distant view of Wanshou Mountain at the Summer Palace.

Landscape of Jianxinzhai (Room of Tranquil Heart) in present-day Xiangshan Park.

Millions of Chinese people have watched this scene in classic TV dramas: an old emperor gasping his final words in a grand hall, with princes scheming in the shadows. Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) Emperor Kangxi lay in his death bed, setting off the bitter struggle that finally put Emperor Yongzheng on the throne. Yet few realize Kangxi died not in the Forbidden City, but in a garden northwest of Beijing that has almost entirely vanished.

Historically, the scene took place in Changchun Garden, one of the "Three Hills and Five Gardens", a place Qing emperors increasingly chose to live. Specifically, this name refers to the Xiangshan, Yuquan and Wanshou Mountains, and five royal gardens: Jingyi Garden, Jingming Garden, Changchun Garden, Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace), and Qingyi Garden, or the Summer Palace.

This forgotten landscape became a scholar's life work.

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."

Since 2017, Zhu has led club members to consult ancient maps, court archives, paintings, surveying and mapping data, satellite images, and historical photos to conduct on-site investigations and try to restore the complex.

"We employed restoration research methods, such as cross-referencing historical documents, interpreting aerial images, and applying deductive digital modeling to pinpoint the location of Changchun Garden," says Zhu.

After years of effort, they reconstructed the complex's historical layouts during the reigns of Emperor Qianlong and Daoguang. They gained an understanding of the garden's boundaries, design principles, and inner and outer spatial configurations.

"Restoring the complexes is the most fundamental work to study the area. This restoration is not about rebuilding on ruins, but about using historical analysis and drawing techniques to reconstruct the gardens' appearances in different historical periods precisely, and to use that as a basis for further theoretical research," says Zhu.

Restoration is an ongoing process, Zhu adds. Because written records of Changchun Garden are limited, much must be inferred from textual research, and precision has limits. "As we compare archaeological advances and new findings with historical documents, we will be able to reconstruct the garden more accurately," he says.

In 2022, Zhu achieved his doctorate and was recruited by the Beijing University of Agriculture as a teacher. That same year, the University's School of Landscape Architecture established a studio to research the Three Hills and Five Gardens, where Zhu serves as lead and continues his work with several other teachers and students.

Based on earlier reconstruction efforts, Zhu and his team have contributed to the real restoration of ancient gardens. In 2024, after the Summer Palace repaired its Hall of Nurturing Clouds, a complex originally built in Emperor Qianlong's period for reading amid rising clouds, Zhu's team was invited to design its garden.

With almost no records of the garden's plants, Zhu carefully reviewed the complex's history and insisted on planting varieties that best served its function and the artistic conception, often used in Qing-period gardens, drawing on earlier experience. In this way, the garden was restored as a fine example of the landscape features of ancient imperial gardens, says Fu Jun, deputy dean of the School of Landscape Architecture at the Beijing University of Agriculture.

In addition to restoration studies on parts of the garden area, Zhu's team is researching imperial life in the gardens. For example, through textual research, they discovered how Emperor Qianlong spent his day in Yuanmingyuan during the Lantern Festival, including his schedule, activities and food.

"In promoting public understanding of the Three Hills and Five Gardens, we found that imperial life in the gardens remained largely unknown," says Zhu. "People generally believe the Forbidden City was where the ancient royal family lived and where everything happened, but that is a misunderstanding. The royal family's pursuit of a better living environment drew them to the gardens, where they organized all kinds of activities."

That misunderstanding extends even to those who live in the old garden area, who often struggle to say much about it. Thus, Zhu and his team see public outreach as essential so the gardens' cultural meaning does not fade from memory.

Over the years, Zhu has published three books introducing the gardens, given many lectures online and offline, and compiled school-based teaching materials.

According to Fu, Zhu is excellent at translating obscure academic content into something vivid and accessible to the public.

"He has keen interests in the ancient gardens, and he is very cautious in academic research; things that he was not sure would never be brought to light," says Fu.

After years of studying the gardens, Zhu is impressed by the changes. "Before I was familiar with the gardens, their history was merely words in books, and I didn't think much about the ideas behind their designs.

"But after reading so much historical literature, I gradually came to understand how the landscape changed over at least 800 years," says Zhu. "Generation after generation transformed it, built in the gardens, and took part in farming and water conservancy. It allows me to see our civilization's progress," he adds.

Contact the writer at wangru1@chinadaily.com.cn