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48-776: The Palace of Tranquil Longevity ( Chinese : 寧壽宮 ), literally, "peaceful old age palace", also called the Qianlong Garden , Qianlong Palace , Qianlong District or the Palace of Tranquility and Longevity , is a palace in Beijing , China , located in the northeast corner of the Inner Court of the Forbidden City . Construction of the palace began on the Qianlong Emperor 's orders in 1771, in preparation for his retirement, although

96-534: A candidate at the imperial examination questioned the Qianlong Emperor publicly about naming a successor during an official tour in the north, the emperor, then 67 years old, announced in a court letter that "if fate would allow him to live so long, he would abdicate the throne at the age of 85 by Chinese reckoning, which would be in 1796." He "reassured the Chinese people that he had secretly chosen his heir, and that

144-570: A carver of inner skin bamboo was found to carve the deer in relief in the audience hall. The restoration of Juanqinzhai was lauded throughout China and the West as a milestone in the history of restoration, especially in the Forbidden City. The Chinese team even raised another $ 5 million to help with the restoration of the other 26 buildings of the Qianlong Garden. Though he never stayed in Juanqinzhai,

192-503: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from

240-830: A tour of the United States in fall 2010. The 1.5-million-yuan ( US$ 220,807 ) exhibition was first organized and debuted at the Peabody Essex Museum , in Salem, Massachusetts , then in 2011 had stints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and finally, at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee , Wisconsin. The Juanqinzhai is now regarded as one of the only surviving examples of 18th-century Chinese interior design: "only

288-850: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;

336-483: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to

384-469: The Kangxi Emperor , and by extension how paramount public deference to Confucian thought and filial obligations was to the Qianlong Emperor, quite unlike the previous Manchu (non- Han ) rulers that preceded him. This retirement palace was built as an important cultural and political statement, and as gesture of solidarity with Chinese social mores amid enduring anti-Qing sentiment . The details within

432-598: The Kensiu language . Juanqinzhai In 2002, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) began a partnership with the Palace Museum to restore the Qianlong Garden. The first of the 27 pavilions to be restored was the Juanqinzhai, which was completed in 2008. Because of the huge success of this restoration, the partnership has been extended so that each of the other 26 buildings in the garden can be fully restored. Juanqinzhai

480-525: The Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by

528-484: The Old Summer Palace but in Juanqinzhai the murals were likely to have been painted by his assistant Wang Youxue. On the wall the bamboo fence is replicated in paint, and behind it stands a large pavilion with trees and birds. Mimicking the real bamboo fence, the mural also contains a circular "moon gate", where a crane stands watch. On the ceiling is a bamboo lattice motif, interlaced with vibrant grapevines. Here,

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576-759: The People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to

624-622: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝   'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for

672-689: The Forbidden City were locked and forgotten. In 2001, after years of neglect, the World Monuments Fund began a partnership with the Palace Museum in Beijing to restore the Qianlong Garden. The project, which cost 18 million, is slated to be finished in 2019, in time for the 600th anniversary of the construction of the Forbidden City (2020). Juanqinzhai's murals, which are the only large ensemble of eighteenth illusionist painting in China, were removed from their backing, and painstakingly cleaned. After much searching,

720-547: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China

768-418: The Qianlong Emperor never spent a night in his Palace of Tranquil Longevity, and continued to hold on to power. The Jiaqing Emperor reigned only nominally until his father's death on 7 February 1799, making the Qianlong Emperor's actual reign 63 years and 122 days long. That an imperial retirement retreat was built at all is a testament to the significance the Qianlong Emperor placed on honoring his grandfather,

816-494: The Qianlong Emperor still planned the Palace of Tranquil Longevity as his personal retreat, filled with his favorite designs and motifs. From the eastern entrance, the emperor entered a large, two storied audience room, paneled with bamboo and silk screens. On the lower half of the screen is a carving of deer playing amongst pines and rocks, while the top half of each partition is decorated with an intricate, semitransparent silk screen. In

864-601: The Qianlong Garden apartments to be restored, the emperor's Juanqinzhai , "retirement lodge" or literally, "Studio of Exhaustion From Diligent Service", was completed in 2010 after a US$ 3 million effort by Beijing's Palace Museum and the American-sponsored World Monuments Fund (WMF). The Juanqinzhai, accompanied by about 100 exquisite Qianlong era artifacts, "sumptuous murals, furniture, architectural elements, Buddhist icons, and decorative arts—almost all of which have never before been seen publicly," began

912-410: The Qianlong Garden was being built, the emperor's passion for art was displayed in the beautiful decoration of the pavilions and halls there. The Qianlong Emperor's grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor , had such a long and impressive reign that intimidated the Qianlong Emperor so much that he refused to out-reign his grandfather. In 1772, in anticipation of his planned retirement, the Qianlong Emperor ordered

960-408: The Qianlong Garden's 26 other buildings and four courtyards." The Chinese have contributed an additional US$ 5 million to extend the project. The entire US$ 18 million , long-term restoration of the Qianlong Garden was initially slated to end in 2017, but now is expected to finish in 2019, in time for the Forbidden City's 600th anniversary in 2020. Inside the decorative walls are 27 structures, though

1008-465: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,

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1056-519: The WMF lists 24 sites on its restoration map, including apartments, pavilions, gates and more. As restoration continues, more of the buildings of the Qianlong Garden are expected to be opened to the public for study and tours. As of 2012, few have studied the apartments of the Qianlong Emperor's retreat, aside from the Juanqinzhai in the Palace's fourth courtyard, where restoration began in 2007. The first of

1104-474: The beautiful screens that decorate the reception room and the theater room. Each of the embroideries were carefully sewn by hand, even the unique double-sided transparent screens in the audience hall. Like the paper, a trial and error process was used to produce the brocade on the various thrones and tables. It took many tries to replicate the Qing dynasty "cloud brocade" which was used extensively in Juanqinzhai. Finally,

1152-400: The center of lower level sits a formal throne, embroidered in imperial yellow and flanked by traditional Chinese couplets. Behind the partitions is an enfilade of rooms, filled with calligraphy, artworks, and mirrors. On both floors, the emperor had a set of private rooms and thrones, each filled with natural light, due to the semi-transparent silk screens, which also appear on both levels. On

1200-528: The choice was safely written down." His decision to "withdraw into leisure" was made to avoid breaking the record of his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor , as the longest ruling emperor of China (61 years, 318 days), an important act of filial piety for the conservative Qianlong Emperor. Although he pledged to retire, and took the title of Retired Emperor after officially yielding the throne to his son (the Jiaqing Emperor ) after 60 years, 124 days of rule,

1248-436: The conservators found a source of paper for the new backing. This paper was made using traditional materials rather than modern techniques, which is revolutionary for a Chinese restoration. In China, "historic preservation usually entails razing a structure and replacing it with a brightly painted replica." In Suzhou, the same city where the Qianlong Emperor himself ordered silks, dozens or workers labored extensively to produce

1296-591: The construction of a small retreat. These small buildings were much different from the monumental buildings in the Outer Court and were much more intimate. However, these buildings remained as dignified and noble as the governmental buildings, as they would be still be the home and office of the Retired Qianlong Emperor. After the completion of the imperial residence, the emperor prepared to move into his new home. The Qianlong Emperor abdicated in 1796, leaving

1344-457: The emperor himself never moved into the palace. Its beautiful apartments, pavilions, gates and gardens feature "some of the most elegant spaces at a time widely considered to be the pinnacle of Chinese interior design." Throughout the Qing dynasty , the palace was almost never used, largely because of the Qianlong Emperor's imperial decree ordering his retirement retreat remain unaltered. In 1778, after

1392-663: The emperor's decree that the site not be altered by future generations, the eighteenth-century equivalent of a landmarks preservation law." The Qianlong Garden is currently undergoing restoration in a new partnership between the Palace Museum in Beijing and the New York-based World Monuments Fund . To tackle the myriad challenges of such a unique restoration, including assessing the Qianlong Emperor's idiosyncratic mixture of Han, Manchu, and European materials and techniques and battling centuries of dust and decay,

1440-431: The emperors. After the emperors death, an edict was produced ordering that no one could rebuild or change the designs of the garden, preserving it untouched. This edict is one of the main reasons that the original eighteenth century interiors remained in the Juanqinzhai and other buildings of the garden. When the last emperor was removed from the Forbidden City in 1924, the doors of the Qianlong Garden and many other halls of

1488-504: The first suite completed, the Juanqinzhai , is "somewhat of a milestone" in China, where, according to The New York Times , "historic preservation usually entails razing a structure and replacing it with a brightly painted replica." Beijing's China Daily lauded the achievements of the Juanqinzhai, and reported that "The results have been so successful that the WMF, a private, non-profit New York-based preservation group, has extended its alliance with Chinese cultural officials to restore

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1536-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from

1584-507: The lavish, two-acre walled retreat further affirm the Qianlong Emperor's love and affinity for Chinese culture , and are indicative of his decorative, architectural, and landscaping tastes, as well as his intentions and goals for China. Despite the Qianlong Emperor never having moved into his retirement suites, they were not damaged by other inhabitants or looters in the intervening centuries; "the garden has remained virtually unchanged since its initial construction, thanks in no small measure to

1632-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as

1680-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In

1728-975: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often

1776-665: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as

1824-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as

1872-517: The project brought together the (American) WMF's "well-practiced conservation techniques" and Chinese experts' "deep understanding of the Qianlong Emperor's architectural tastes and decorative predilections. The supporting cast includes aging artisans whose rarefied skills somehow survived the Cultural Revolution , when traditional craftsmanship was considered bourgeois and worthy of punishment." The partnership's "slavishly faithful restoration" of

1920-432: The room has a warm and informal feel, the ideals of the Forbidden City are still present in the room. Like the columns in the main halls in the Outer Court, the faux bamboo is made of a rare nanmu tree, painted to look like bamboo. Despite this expensive touch, the pièce de résistance of the room are the floor-to-ceiling trompe-l'œil murals hung here. Such trompe-l'œil murals were introduced by Giuseppe Castiglione in

1968-406: The successive residential palaces of the Qianlong Emperor in the Forbidden City can make any claim to preserve many components of an original secular interior of the pre-1840 period." Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by

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2016-476: The throne to his son, who would reign as the Jiaqing Emperor . However, between 1796 and 1799, the Qianlong Emperor continued to effectively rule China behind the scenes, and the Jiaqing Emperor was emperor in name only. Despite the creation of the beautiful gardens and buildings of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity, the Qianlong Emperor never moved into his new suite, and remained in the traditional residence of

2064-627: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with

2112-970: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write

2160-509: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being

2208-423: The western half of Juanqinzhai is the "Theater Room". In this section, a small pavilion equipped with a stage is surrounded by a bamboo fence and is faced by another two-floored viewing platform, from which the emperor could watch theatrical performances. The pavilion and fence bring to mind the outdoors, and the warm colors of the bamboo and the light from the windows bring the feeling of summer into this room. Though

2256-571: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c.  200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c.  the 5th century . Although

2304-474: Was built as part of the Palace of Tranquil Longevity in the Forbidden City. The Qianlong Emperor ruled from the Forbidden City in Beijing, where he presided over the zenith of the Qing Dynasty. Art and architecture flourished during his reign and China reached a new peak of wealth and culture. The Qianlong Emperor's passion for painting, sculpture and embroidery extended to his palaces. Even late in his reign, when

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