The Emperor's Secret Garden: Restoring Qianlong's Lodge of Retirement (2010)

The Emperor's Secret Garden is the extraordinary story of the polymath Chinese Emperor Qianlong and the restoration of his forgotten masterpiece. In a neglected corner of the Forbidden City his personal garden housed a Lodge of Retirement; created in his later years the Lodge was the culmination of this exceptional man's life, the crowning artistic achievement of what was then the richest man in the world. At the beginning of this century a small group of experts discovered the long-neglected Lodge - and knew that they had stumbled across one of the world's treasures in desperate need of restoration.