News Article

Over the decades of his long reign (1736-'96), Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor of China, found the time, when not expanding his empire's territory or knitting together its divergent ethnic groups, to decorate his Tranquility and Longevity Palace in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City.

After the Qianlong Emperor died in 1799, his trove was neglected for many years, until the Palace Museum (as the Forbidden City is now called) and the World Monuments Fund began restoring it.