Nanjing Presidential Palace (Entrance at 288 Changjiang Road) 南京总统府（长江路288号入园口）

Welcome, everyone, to the Presidential Palace in Nanjing. Today I'll be guiding you through the complex in this order: Gatehouse → East and West Waiting Rooms → Grand Hall → Second Hall and Bazi Pavilion → Qilin Gate and Bureau of Political Affairs Building → Zichao Building and Presidential Office → Fuyuan Garden → Exhibition on the Qing-Dynasty Liangjiang Viceroy's Yamen → Taiping Heavenly Palace Display → Executive Yuan → Xuyuan Garden → Sun Yat-sen's Provisional Presidential Office → Sun Yat-sen's Private Residence → Taiping Lake and the Stone Boat. Let's step together into this six-hundred-year-old complex.

Let's start with the basics. The Presidential Palace is located at 292 Changjiang Road, Nanjing, covering roughly 90,000 square meters — about the size of twelve standard football pitches. What makes this place truly exceptional? Few buildings in China have lived through the complete succession of four different regimes the way this one has — it was a Ming-dynasty princely residence, a Qing imperial yamen and touring palace, the Heavenly King's Palace of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and finally the Provisional Presidential Mansion, the Nationalist Government headquarters, and the Presidential Palace of the Republic of China. Over six hundred years, many of the defining events of modern Chinese history took place here or were bound up with this site. The saying goes: "One Presidential Palace, half a history of modern China" — and it's no exaggeration.

Now, the building you see in front of you is the defining landmark of the Presidential Palace — the Gatehouse. This three-story Western classical portico was completed in 1929. Take a good look at the eight tall columns across the facade — these are Ionic columns, a signature element of ancient Greek architecture. On the morning of April 24, 1949, soldiers of the People's Liberation Army occupied the Presidential Palace and raised the red flag over this gatehouse, declaring the liberation of Nanjing. So this structure is not just an architectural landmark — it is a witness to one of the great turning points in modern Chinese history. Photography tip: For the best full shot of the gatehouse, stand on the pedestrian walkway on the south side of Changjiang Road directly opposite. At around 8:30 a.m. just after opening, the morning light comes in from the southeast and the white columns stand out beautifully against the sky. Now, let's walk through the gatehouse and enter this place they call "half a history of modern China."

Now that we're through the gatehouse, look to your left and right — those two rows of low, grey buildings are the East and West Waiting Rooms. They are over two hundred years old, making them some of the oldest structures in the Presidential Palace. In the Qing dynasty, the east wing housed the offices of the bureaus of personnel, revenue, and rites — overseeing civil appointments, finances, and state ceremonies; the west wing held the offices of the military, justice, and public works bureaus. Think of them as the provincial government departments of their day. Officials working here would have spent their days buried in stacks of documents. During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period the rooms were converted into waiting areas for officials seeking an audience with the Heavenly King, and in the Republican era they became barracks for the Palace guard regiment. Notice the grey-tiled gabled roofs and the deep, narrow bays — this is the classic architectural style of a Qing-dynasty yamen.

Now let's continue forward to the most important space in the entire complex — the Grand Hall. Look up at the center of the hall: the plaque hanging there reads "All Under Heaven Belongs to All" — written in Sun Yat-sen's own hand. This spot carries enormous historical weight. On the night of January 1, 1912, it was right here in this hall that Sun Yat-sen took his oath of office as Provisional President of the Republic of China, ending more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China. You should also know that during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this same spot was the site of Hong Xiuquan's Golden Dragon Hall — even more imposing than what you see today. When Qing forces retook the city they burned it to the ground, and it was rebuilt on the original foundation in 1870, during the Tongzhi reign, by Zeng Guofan. So the ground you're standing on right now has been stood on by a Ming-dynasty prince, a Qing-dynasty viceroy, the Heavenly King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the first Provisional President of the Republic of China — one foundation, four dynasties' worth of history. There is no other place quite like it in all of Chinese architectural history.

Photography tip: Stand inside the Grand Hall directly below the "All Under Heaven Belongs to All" plaque and shoot upward — the gold characters against the dark wooden beams have a real sense of historical depth. If you have a telephoto lens, try stepping back to the entrance and shooting through the hall. Between nine and eleven in the morning, sunlight angles in through the south gate and casts long shadows across the grey brick floor — a beautiful shot.

Through the Grand Hall, we arrive at the Second Hall. Unlike the Grand Hall, which was a place of formal government business, the Second Hall functioned more like a reception room. In the Republican era, foreign envoys came here to present their credentials, and dignitaries met for protocol formalities before formal negotiations. Now look carefully at this building — it has something quite unusual about it. The front is Chinese in character: red columns, grey tiles, a classic Qing-dynasty hall. But the doorway set into the north wall is a Western portico — an arched stone frame with European mouldings. How did this East-meets-West combination come about? In the early Republic, the authorities wanted visiting foreign dignitaries to see something more "modern," so a Western-style portico was added to the north side of the Second Hall. This stitching together of Chinese and Western elements perfectly captures the tensions and aspirations of that era — holding onto tradition while reaching for the wider world.

Through that Western portico we come to the Bazi Pavilion. Look down at the coloured pebblestone steps in front of you — count them: they fan out to the left and right, forming the shape of the character "ba," meaning eight, which is where the pavilion gets its name. The steps are beautifully detailed, with white, ochre, and grey-blue pebbles set in geometric patterns. In 1917, Vice President Feng Guozhang built this single-story Western-style building on the site of a fire-damaged structure, and he had the steps laid in this distinctive eight-shape to give distinguished guests a dignified send-off — when visitors departed, the host would stand at the Bazi Pavilion entrance, with two lines of people arranged on the fanning steps, and the photographer would set up directly in front. So standing on these steps and looking south, you have a direct sightline through the Grand Hall all the way to the Gatehouse — this was the prime spot where Republican-era leaders posed for their farewell photographs. Feel free to strike a pose here yourself and enjoy the treatment once reserved for heads of state.

Continuing north from the Bazi Pavilion, we've reached the site of what was once an important gateway — the Qilin Gate. The gate itself is long gone, but look at the ground here and you can still make out where it once stood. It was a pair of heavy vermilion wooden doors, and it operated by a strict rule: kept shut at all times, requiring everyone to go around the sides — the doors were only opened when Chiang Kai-shek himself arrived. In the early 1950s the gate was demolished because it obstructed traffic, but the foundation traces remain. Picture the scene: Chiang Kai-shek's motorcade approaching from the south, an aide rushing ahead to push open those two heavy wooden doors, the convoy driving straight through — in its day, this was power made tangible in ritual form.

Behind the site of the Qilin Gate stands the Bureau of Political Affairs Building. This two-story European-style structure from the 1920s passed through several sets of hands — it served as the offices of warlord Sun Chuanfang's military government, then as the Nationalist Government's Secretariat from 1927, then as the Bureau of Political Affairs from 1948. Look at the windows on the east side of the second floor — that was the office of Chen Bulei, Chiang Kai-shek's chief political strategist. Chen Bulei was the pen behind Chiang's voice: a great many of the key documents and speeches of that era came from his hand. He worked in that small room for nearly twenty years, bent over his desk deep into the night. Standing here, it's worth asking yourself: how many decisions that shaped China's future were drafted in this quietly unassuming little building? History doesn't always announce itself from grand towers. Sometimes it accumulates in the lamplight of quiet corners, one late night at a time.

What you see in front of you is the tallest and most central building in the Presidential Palace — Zichao Building. Completed in 1935 and five stories high, it was one of the tallest buildings in Nanjing at the time. Why "Zichao"? The Nationalist Government Chairman in office when the building was constructed was Lin Sen, whose courtesy name was Zichao — so the building was named after him.

Follow me up to the second floor, where we'll find the most significant space in the entire complex — the Presidential Office. It occupies the southeast corner of the second floor: a three-room suite. The center room is the formal office. Look at the desk calendar — it is permanently set to April 23, 1949. This is not an oversight. It is deliberate. That was the day the People's Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River and Nanjing fell. The desk still holds an old-style telephone, writing materials, and a stack of official documents — everything left exactly as it was.

The east room is a rest room, with a single bed and simple furniture. The west room is a study and reception room, with a portrait of Sun Yat-sen on the wall. The three-room suite is not large, and the furnishings are far from lavish. You might wonder: was this really all a head of state got? The Republican era at least maintained an official culture of modesty — especially in the years after the War of Resistance, when the country had barely begun to rebuild and Chiang Kai-shek himself was keen to project a restrained image.

Step to the window and look down. Two tall Indian cedar trees stand in front of Zichao Building — planted here by Lin Sen himself. Note carefully: the tree on the right died in 2011, but the dead trunk has been left standing in place, like a natural monument. Some say the two cedars symbolize the rise and fall of the Nationalist Party on the mainland — one living, one dead, a coincidence that history provided. That completes our tour of the central axis. Now let's head to the Eastern Zone.

Turning east out of Zichao Building, we head first to Fuyuan Garden. The garden you're walking into now looks delicate and refined, but it has quite a story — it is, in a sense, a garden that came back from the dead. During the Qing dynasty this was the east garden of the Liangjiang Viceroy's Yamen — after a long day of reviewing documents, the Viceroy would stroll through the covered walkways here, perhaps meet a trusted confidant. When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom took over, Hong Xiuquan expanded it into the east garden of the Heavenly King's Palace — larger, more imposing. But in 1864, when Qing forces stormed Tianjing, the entire garden was destroyed.

What you see today — the pavilions, the pond, the covered corridors — was rebuilt in 2002 based on Qing-dynasty paintings and historical records. It is not a complete restoration, but it follows the essential principles of Jiangnan official garden design: rockeries chosen for their thinness, wrinkles, hollows, and permeability; a pond shaped along irregular, naturalistic banks; corridors and bridges linking the various features; winding paths leading to quiet corners. Here's something worth knowing: the Qing Viceroy's Yamen had two gardens — one to the east and one to the west, a pair of symmetrical green lungs. This was an extremely rare arrangement for an official compound of the time, and it speaks to the exceptional standing of the Liangjiang Viceroy within the Qing bureaucratic order. After Fuyuan Garden, we'll move on to the most historically substantial exhibitions in the Eastern Zone.

Please step into this courtyard — this is the Exhibition on the Qing-Dynasty Liangjiang Viceroy's Yamen. Of all the chapters in the Presidential Palace's six-hundred-year history, the Qing Viceroy's Yamen had the longest run — over two hundred years. But what exactly was "Liangjiang"? It doesn't refer to two rivers. It refers to two provinces: Jiangnan and Jiangxi. Jiangnan — which covered what is today Jiangsu, Anhui, and Shanghai — was the wealthiest region in China; Jiangxi was a major grain-producing area. The Viceroy of Liangjiang governed the richest and most productive territory in the empire, which made this post, quite literally, the keeper of the Qing dynasty's treasury and granary — the most powerful provincial office in the land.

Look at that portrait of a Qing-dynasty Viceroy in full official dress, and the mandarin hat and peacock feather in the display case. A Viceroy held first rank — just below the Grand Secretariat in the court hierarchy. This exhibition recreates the scene of the Viceroy's Grand Hall: a desk at the center, "Silence" and "Make Way" placards flanking either side, a screen behind decorated with crashing waves and mountains. Picture the men who once sat at that desk: Lin Zexu, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, Zhang Zhidong — each one a figure whose name fills half the pages of late-Qing history. They sat in this very position, reviewing documents that had flowed in from three provinces, making decisions about taxation, water management, salt administration, and military affairs. On the left side of the exhibition hall you'll also find a restored reception hall and confidential study — the study was where the Viceroy reviewed sensitive documents and held private discussions with trusted advisors. The advisor system was one of the defining features of Qing officialdom; many of the era's most consequential decisions were first conceived in rooms exactly like this one.

Coming out of the Viceroy's Yamen exhibition, we walk into the Taiping Heavenly Palace Display. In 1853, Hong Xiuquan led his Taiping forces into Nanjing, renamed it Tianjing, and massively expanded the Liangjiang Viceroy's Yamen into the Heavenly Palace — also known as the Heavenly King's Palace. Do you have any sense of how large it was? The records say it stretched "more than ten li in circumference, with walls several zhang high" — several times the size of the Viceroy's Yamen before it, making it one of the largest palace complexes in the world at the time. That said, "palace" is perhaps a generous word — the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's construction was constrained by resources and time, and much of what was built involved expanding and redecorating existing structures rather than starting from scratch. Grand in appearance, but not always as solid as it looked.

Look first at the Heavenly King's throne at the center of the room — carved dragons, gilded lacquer, imposing in every way. This is a reconstruction based on historical records; the original throne was consumed by fire long ago. But notice this: between the throne and the Grand Hall there was originally a gate called the Gate of True Divine Radiance, where visitors first offered worship to God before being admitted to the Heavenly King — a spatial embodiment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's theocratic system. Around you are also reconstructions of the Heavenly King's study, inner palace, and confidential chamber. In that innermost confidential chamber, Hong Xiuquan dictated many of the edicts that shaped the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's fate. The great strength of this exhibition is making the logic of political power visible in physical space — from the Grand Hall to the throne, from the confidential chamber to the inner palace, the route you walk through this display is itself a map of how authority flowed. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom lasted only fourteen years, but it was the largest peasant regime in Chinese history and dealt the Qing dynasty a blow from which it never fully recovered — and it became an important historical reference point for the later Xinhai Revolution.

Now let's move deeper into the Eastern Zone to visit the Executive Yuan Complex. This group of buildings consists of a north building, a south building, and a central administrative hall. The south building was completed in 1934, designed by the prominent architect Zhao Shen. Look at the facade — clean horizontal lines, orderly rows of rectangular windows, a flat roof. This is the classic style of Republican-era public architecture, shaped by the influence of Western modernism. The north building is slightly older, dating from 1928, and has an air-raid shelter beneath it — a quiet reminder that this was not a peaceful era.

What was the Executive Yuan? Think of it as the equivalent of today's State Council — the highest administrative body of the Nationalist Government, responsible for everything from the interior, foreign affairs, and finance to education and transport, overseeing the full machinery of daily government. When war with Japan broke out, the Executive Yuan moved with the Nationalist Government to Chongqing. During the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, the building was taken over by the puppet government's ministries of Railways and Communications. In 1946, with the War of Resistance won and the government returned to Nanjing, the Executive Yuan moved back in. One building: witness to the humiliation of foreign invasion, and to the dignity of return.

Walk through the corridor that runs down the center of the building. The officials of every ministry once walked these same floors, files under their arms, moving at pace. These hallways, staircases, and lobbies are almost entirely undecorated — because the Executive Yuan valued efficiency over spectacle. That "function first" design philosophy was actually quite forward-thinking for its time.

Coming out of the Executive Yuan, we cross the central axis and enter the Western Zone. The garden in front of you is called Xuyuan — also known as the West Garden. Take a moment and just feel the shift — doesn't it feel completely different from the Eastern Zone? Rockeries, ponds, a zigzag bridge, pavilions, ancient trees: every few steps reveals a new scene. This is quintessential Jiangnan garden design.

Xuyuan's history is even more layered than the Presidential Palace complex as a whole. In the early Ming dynasty this was the back garden of the Prince of Han's residence — Prince Zhu Gaoxu, the second son of the Yongle Emperor; the garden's name, "Xu," comes from the character in his name. In the Qing dynasty the Liangjiang Viceroy took it over as his west garden. Both the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors stayed here during their southern tours — if an emperor was going to stay somewhere, it had to be extraordinary. During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan incorporated Xuyuan into the west garden of the Heavenly King's Palace and undertook substantial new construction. So every rockery, every stretch of water you see here may carry the traces of three successive periods of building — Ming, Qing, and Taiping.

Follow me along the covered walkway on the west side and look at the lattice windows set into the walls — square, round, fan-shaped, plum-blossom-shaped, every one a different pattern. Look through each window and the garden view shifts and recomposes itself: this is the Jiangnan garden technique of "a new scene with every step." Xuyuan is not a large garden, but through the interplay of walkways, lattice windows, and rockeries, it feels considerably larger than its actual footprint. This spatial sleight of hand is the signature skill of Suzhou garden design, and Xuyuan uses it with real confidence. Now let's walk toward the heart of the garden and its centerpiece.

We've arrived at the soul of Xuyuan Garden — Taiping Lake. Look carefully at its shape: it's not the typical rectangle or circle you might expect, but a vase form — the neck at the northeast, the base at the southwest, about 500 meters around. Why a vase? The word for vase in Chinese sounds like "peace," so the shape carries a wish for stability and lasting peace. From the Ming-dynasty prince to the Qing Viceroy to the Taiping Heavenly King, every successive owner of this garden poured that same hope for an enduring realm into this "peace vase."

Now look out to the center of the lake — that "boat" sitting on the water is called Buxi Zhou, the Unmoored Boat. It isn't a real vessel. It's a structure built entirely from green stone, carved and assembled to look like a boat, with fore and aft cabins, elaborately decorated. It is the oldest individual structure surviving in the Presidential Palace. During the Qianlong reign, Liangjiang Viceroy Yin Jisan had it built specifically to welcome an imperial southern inspection tour. The Qianlong Emperor came, was delighted, and gave it its name himself: Buxi Zhou — the Unmoored Boat.

The name comes from a passage in the Zhuangzi: "Having eaten one's fill, one wanders freely, drifting like an unmoored boat" — free-floating, without anchor, without care. But when the Emperor chose the name, there was a second layer of meaning at work. The Tang Emperor Taizong had famously said: "Water can carry a boat, and water can capsize a boat." The ruler is the boat; the people are the water. The Qianlong Emperor wanted the Qing empire to be like this stone boat — permanently moored on Taiping Lake, unmoved by any storm. And then history played its joke: more than a hundred years later, the Taiping Army swept into Tianjing, and Hong Xiuquan sat on this very stone boat to review his dispatches. Ninety-odd years after that, the People's Liberation Army took the Presidential Palace, and the red flag went up over the Grand Hall not far from where we're standing now. The stone boat remains. The world it was built for is long gone.

Photography tip: The best angle for photographing the Unmoored Boat is from the north bank of Taiping Lake — the boat's reflection falls whole into the green water, with weeping willows and the grey-tiled white walls of Xuyuan behind it. Between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon on a clear day, the light and water-surface reflections are at their best.

Walking west from the Unmoored Boat, we come to Sun Yat-sen's Provisional Presidential Office. This building looks nothing like the Chinese-style structures we've seen elsewhere — it's a single-story French Renaissance Revival building, facing south, with pale yellow walls and arched windows. The late-Qing Liangjiang Viceroy Duanfang had it built and gave it an elegant name: Baohua An, or West Flower Hall.

On January 1, 1912, Sun Yat-sen began his ninety-two-day term as Provisional President right here in this building. Ninety-two days may seem brief, but what was accomplished in those ninety-two days set the direction for China's next hundred years. Let's go inside. The center room is Sun Yat-sen's office — writing instruments, document folders, and a teacup arranged neatly on the desk. It was here that Sun Yat-sen signed the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China, laying the legal foundation of China's first democratic republic.

Walk further in, and you reach the small conference room. On January 21, 1912, the first cabinet meeting of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was held in this room. Stop and think about that — in a room barely forty square meters, a group of revolutionaries with an average age under forty sat debating how to build a brand-new nation. No template to follow. No stable budget. The security of the capital itself uncertain from one day to the next. But they did it. Before you leave, step out to the plaza in front of the building and look at the seated bronze statue of Sun Yat-sen — completed in 2011. Sun Yat-sen sits in a high-backed chair, his gaze fixed on the distance. Follow that gaze, and you're looking straight toward Zichao Building.

And that, everyone, brings our tour of the Presidential Palace to a close. From the Grand Hall and Zichao Building along the central axis, to the Viceroy's Yamen and Heavenly King's Palace remains in the Eastern Zone, to Xuyuan Garden, Sun Yat-sen's office, and his private residence in the Western Zone — we've followed the route through six hundred years of history.

What makes the Presidential Palace so remarkable is not any single artifact or any single building. It's the layering — the weight of a Ming princely estate, the authority of a Qing Viceroy's yamen, the ambition of a Taiping Heavenly King's palace, the aspirations of a Republican government, each stratum preserved rather than erased, stacked one on top of the other like geological deposits. So when you stand in the Grand Hall and look up at the "All Under Heaven Belongs to All" plaque, the ground beneath your feet may rest on the very column bases of Hong Xiuquan's Golden Dragon Hall. And when you walk the covered corridors of Xuyuan Garden, the ancient ginkgo tree beside you may be the same one that sheltered the Kangxi Emperor from the summer heat.

That is the Presidential Palace — a building you can read layer by layer, all the way down. Thank you for listening, and we wish you a wonderful time in Nanjing.