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John Stubbs, an American historic preservationist, had flicked on his flashlight and was slowly ascending a darkened staircase inside the Forbidden City when he stopped at a dusty paneled wall etched with elegant lines of calligraphy.
"I didn't even see this until yesterday, or two days ago!" exclaimed Stubbs, almost ecstatic, as he stood in the dank, musty air.
The calligraphy was a poem by the 18th-century Qing Dynasty emperor Qianlong, who built the room as part of an intended retirement compound, a private city within the Forbidden City.
For a few days last week, Stubbs and colleagues from the World Monuments Fund rummaged through the restricted Qianlong Garden section and admitted that the experience left them a little giddy. The fund, a private, nonprofit preservation group in New York, has just begun overseeing the renovation of the Qianlong section, a project that should be finished by 2016.
"For us, it is wonderful seeing it this way," Henry Tzu Ng, executive vice president of the group, said during the informal tour, "before 10 years from now, when it is restored."
Anyone who has visited Beijing in the past few years knows that the Forbidden City, the ancient home of Chinese emperors, is in the midst of a total restoration. Plans call for work to be completed by 2020, in time to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the imperial compound.
The refurbishment is part of the selective preservation work in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics. Heavily visited historic sites like the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are undergoing multimillion-dollar face-lifts, even as a few ancient residential neighborhoods are being bulldozed for new development. One such neighborhood, Qianmen, is perhaps a kilometer from the Forbidden City.
The scope of the work inside the high gray walls of the Forbidden City is displayed in the office of Jin Hongkui, the deputy director of the Palace Museum, who is overseeing the overall renovation.
On Friday, he used a red penlight to highlight the different stages of renovation on a large map of the complex, including the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the central structure of the Forbidden City, which is now shrouded in scaffolding.
Jin said the renovation program, which began in earnest in 2002, was focused on finishing the largest public buildings before the Olympics and would restore the entire complex by the 2020 deadline.
He said almost 2,000 construction workers and craftsmen were involved.
"I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the whole world is watching," he said. "We can't make any mistakes."
The craftsmen and workers doing the renovation are Chinese, but Jin said foreign conservationists were providing advice on certain projects. Preservationists with the Italian government are consulting on the work at the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
Jin said the arrangement with the World Monuments Fund was the first major collaboration involving an American conservation group and the Forbidden City. The partnership began in 2003, when the fund committed $3.3 million to restoring the building known as Qianlong's Lodge of Retirement.
Last March, a broader $15 million agreement, which included $5 million from the Chinese side, was announced to restore all 24 buildings and the elaborate outdoor courtyards of the entire Qianlong Garden.
The visit last week allowed conservationists from both sides to discuss the renovation and also gave the Americans a new chance to explore buildings sealed from the public since the last emperor, Puyi, was ordered out of the Forbidden City in 1924. On a gray morning they led a few guests through the private chambers and did not seem bothered by the disrepair. For decades the rooms had been used for storage, and Stubbs seemed tickled that curators still had the keys.
"It is as if the last emperor left in 1924 and this is what has remained," Ng said.
Qianlong, the fifth emperor of the Qing dynasty, ruled from 1735 until his retirement in 1796, then continued as a behind-the-throne presence until his death three years later. He was a major patron of the arts who wrote poetry and collected ceramics. During the 1770s he employed thousands of Chinese and foreign craftsmen to build the complex of buildings and gardens for his retirement.
The Qianlong Garden is only 0.7 hectares, or 1.7 acres, about one percent of the area of the Forbidden City. But Stubbs said the complex had been built with some of the finest examples of Chinese artistry and craftsmanship, as well as European influences.
In one building, Stubbs pointed out a large "moon gate," a wall with a circular opening decorated with bamboo and jade to illustrate an ancient Chinese motif about a virtuous official in a time of corruption. In another room he lifted a sheet of protective covering to find a stack of 16 wooden screens with inlaid jade.
"We knew it was fine," Stubbs said of the Qianlong Garden, "but we didn't know how brilliantly fine it was."
The group is bringing over American conservation specialists in textiles, wood and lacquer to share the latest preservation techniques. Nancy Berliner, a curator of Chinese art with the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, came last week to offer advice on how to interpret and present the rooms for public display.
Ng jokingly said he had already decided which building would be used as the host site for the opening reception in 2016: the Fu Wang Ge, or Hall of Wishes Fulfilled.
He broke away briefly from the tour to lead a guest up a warren of narrow staircases to a third-floor room. It was empty except for a large writing table placed in front of a dust-covered throne.
He said the room must have been a personal sanctuary for Qianlong, and he stepped onto the balcony to look over the yellow rooftops of the Forbidden City and its high gray wall. "This is one of the few spots where he could look above the wall and see the outside world," Ng said.
He said he had discovered the room and the balcony only a day earlier. "We finally went up and up and up," he said of his initial visit. "And we realized we had to show this to somebody."
(C) 2006 International Herald Tribune. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
