The 2026 Summer Palace Lotus Festival opened July 8 at the Summer Palace in Beijing, running through August 31. This year’s edition features four new lotus-themed handicraft workshops that blend hanfu accessory-making with garden culture, creating an immersive summer experience for visitors.
At the science education exhibition area, the Summer Palace launched four hands-on activities. The first — “Silk Charm” silk round fan workshop — revives traditional silk-reeling techniques. Participants craft fans adorned with lotus patterns, carrying the lake’s ambiance in hand. The finished fans double as photo-ready hanfu accessories for garden strolls.
The second workshop — “Brocade Soul” Song brocade lotus ornament — uses ICH-certified mulberry silk Song brocade material. Participants create lotus-shaped Buyao dangling hairpins and hairpins — core accessories in everyday hanfu styling. Song brocade, inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, lends its natural luster and refined patterns to each piece, delivering a classical Eastern aesthetic.
The third activity focuses on herbal sachets: participants sew natural lotus seedpods with mugwort and mint by hand, echoing the lotus-picking poetry from the “Gengzhi Tu” (Pictures of Tilling and Weaving). The finished sachets serve a dual purpose — summer mosquito repellent and calming aromatic pouch. The fourth workshop introduces lotus-themed cloisonné ornaments, applying the dot-enamel technique on copper bodies to capture lotus blossom contours in miniature enamel.
The Summer Palace’s Kunming Lake covers three-quarters of the garden’s total area. Its lotus beds trace back to the Yuan and Ming dynasties, historically famed as “Lotus Raindrops on Crimson” — one of the “Ten Views of West Lake.” Currently, aquatic plants including lotus cover nearly 250,000 square meters on the lake, with the dominant White Lotus variety from Baiyangdian in full bloom. The densest lotus growth appears west of the West Dike, accessible by boat from the Seventeen-Arch Bridge area toward the “Six Bridges West” scenic zone.
A standout attraction this year is the “Waterside Flower Bank” landscape at Yanshang Studio, where White Lotus blooms frame a mixed flower border of lilies, plantain lilies, coneflowers, daylilies, and African lilies — creating layered Chinese-style garden scenery against ancient architecture. Twenty-plus new lotus varieties in potted displays supplement the natural landscape across three lake venues.
During the festival, the Summer Palace also hosts parent-child lotus science education programs and online lectures from the Summer Palace Research Institute.
By incorporating round fans, hairpins, Buyao, and sachets into hands-on workshops, this year’s Lotus Festival offers hanfu enthusiasts a way to engage with traditional culture beyond simply “wearing hanfu in the garden” — making a personal accessory that carries the memory of a summer at the Imperial Garden.
