Purple Bamboo Park 紫竹院公园

About Purple Bamboo Park

Three connected lakes, islands, small hills, and bridges create changing viewpoints through extensive bamboo planting. The park’s design uses earth excavated from the lakes to balance the higher ground around them, making the relationship between water and land part of the visit. Follow a linked shore-and-bridge circuit and stop within the bamboo groves rather than treating the park as a single lake to circle. The Changhe River along the north adds another water edge to the setting.

The three main lakes are recorded as having formed in 1159, and during the Ming dynasty the Wanli Emperor built a garden on their bank in 1577, after which bamboo was planted there. The present park was established in 1953, taking its name from a Buddhist temple on the grounds, 'Fuyin Zizhuyuan' (福荫紫竹院), and is administered by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry.

The park covers 47.35 hectares, of which 15.89 hectares is water, with the Nanchang River (南长河) and the Shuangzi Canal (双紫渠) running through it. More than ten thousand bamboo plants, in as many as 50 species, are planted to form the park's scenery, and an art museum is located within the grounds. Two Hong bridges (虹桥) cross the lakes, one between Qinglian Island (青莲岛) and Mingyue Island (明月岛), and a west causeway, Xidi (西堤), crosses the Big Lake with the Yide and Yuebo bridges at its ends.

What to look for

• Bamboo groves: compare the planting forms and the way they screen or reveal lake views.
• Lake bridges and islands: follow the crossings that connect the three bodies of water with the small hills.

Location & getting there

Getting to Purple Bamboo Park

The matched listing gives No. 45 Baishiqiao Road and places the park southwest of National Library subway station.

• Use the Baishiqiao Road side as the arrival reference, then choose a lake circuit from the park map.