The New Yuanming Palace on Hengqin Island is a full-scale recreation of the Qing-dynasty garden complex that British and French forces destroyed in 1860. The original Yuanming Yuan was considered the greatest achievement of Chinese landscape garden design; this version, opened in 1997, recreates its palaces, pavilions, waterways, and formal gardens on 120 hectares using traditional materials and techniques.
The result is simultaneously impressive and melancholy in the way of all faithful reconstructions: technically accomplished, historically informative, and irresistibly haunted by its relationship to the thing it is not. The park is large enough to spend a full day walking — regular boat rides cross the internal waterways, and the reconstruction is genuinely detailed rather than approximated. The experience is most interesting for visitors who have seen the ruins of the original in Beijing; without that reference point, it reads as an unusually well-executed historical theme park.