Gavin: I've seen this type of walkway before, is it typical of Chinese design?

Hu: Yes, this is a typical famous changlang – there is one in summer palace, its called changlang or Long Corridor. It's one of the typical Chinese architectural styles and is a particularly important part of the Suzhou style gardens. If you think of the Chinese garden as a leaf, the changlang is like the leaves nerves, smartly connecting every part of the garden as a whole.

A more famous example is in the Summer Palace. The long corridor, which Empress Cixi was very interested in, was "designed" during the Qing Dynasty. After the summer palace was built, Cixi enjoyed looking at the view of the water on her left side and the hills on her right as she walked along, but she then started getting tired of looking at the same view everyday. She began to think how to make the view change, how to change the view while she walked. Then one day, it started to rain when she was walking in the garden. Scared that she would be angry because of the rain disturbing her walk someone accompanying her gave her an umbrella. But surprisingly she became very happy and said it was so nice to see the view from under the umbrella. She could finally see a different view without being wet. Then she told the builders about this idea of being under a roof while walking, and soon the famous changlang appeared between Wanshou Hill and Kunming Lake.

Speaking of the "changlang" in Gongwang Fu [Prince Gongs Palace], can you see it is much "slimmer" than the one in the summer palace? It was built longer and slimmer because in Chinese ‘long' is ‘chang' and ‘slim' is ‘shou', together ‘changshou' has the same sound as the word for longevity. This changlang also has 9999 bats (which symbolize happiness), which is more than Summer Palace's.

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