[Billy]

Beihai Park is said to be built according to a traditional Chinese legend. The story is that once upon a time there were three magic mountains called 'Penglai', 'Yingzhou' and 'Fangzhang' located to the east of Bohai Bay (to the east of China). Gods in those mountains had a kind of herbal medicine which would help humans gain immortality.

Consequently, many emperors in the feudal age of China constantly sought those mountains. For example, Emperor Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 B.C.), wanted to live an eternal life and had sent people to look for the magic mountains but they failed. Then at his palace, he dug a large pool and piled up three earth hills in it to imitate the circumstances described in the legend. Emperor Wudi, the fifth emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C. - 8 A.D.) did similar things.

It was believed that different mountain-water combinations in ancient Chinese architecture led to totally different effects. So from then on, almost every emperor during the succeeding dynasties would build a royal garden with one-pool-with-three-hills' layout as a fairyland near his palace. Beihai Park was surely built after this traditional style: the water of Beihai (North Sea) with Zhong Nan Hai (Central and South Seas) is the Taiye Pool; the Jade Flowery (Qionghua) Islet, the island of the Circular City and the Xishantai Island represent the three magic mountains.

Actually, Beihai Park was initially built in the Liao Dynasty (916 - 1125) and was repaired and rebuilt in the following dynasties including Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing (1115 - 1911). The large-scale rebuilding in the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911) generally established the present scale and pattern of Beihai Park. In 1925, the park was first opened to the public, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world every year.