A traditional Chinese-style landmark is being renovated in Duisburg, Germany, to mark 40 years of ties with the Central Chinese city of Wuhan, Fang Aiqing and Liu Kun report.

Astrid Stewin (middle), director of the Duisburg Zoo, with her colleagues, receive animal-shaped sculptures, sent from Wuhan, to feature in the restored Chinese-style garden at the zoo in March. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

At the Duisburg Zoo, a garden with its flora-pendant gates, pavilions and an arched stone bridge offers an immersive way to experience a classic Chinese garden.

The Yingqu Garden has stood as a symbol of friendship between Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, and the German city of Duisburg, on the confluence of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, since 1987.

Wuhan is where the Yangtze and Hanshui rivers meet. The two cities have similar morphology. It’s wonderful that they became the first pair of sister cities between China and Germany.

Jiang Donghua, a retired carpenter who helped build the garden in Duisburg 35 years ago

Initially, the garden was presented as a gift from the city of Wuhan. Now, as the "sister cities" celebrate the 40th anniversary of ties this year, engineers from both cities are working together to restore the garden. The project is set be completed in July.

The garden is about the size of a football pitch, with typical Chinese architectural elements, such as the widely applied mortise-and-tenon structures decorated with stone lions, trails, streams and rockeries. The garden's florae comprise bamboo, weeping willows, water lilies, metasequoia and wintersweet trees. The metasequoia and wintersweet trees are Wuhan's representative plants.

The garden was first constructed at the Wuhan Zoo, before it was pulled apart, packed into 14 containers, transported to Duisburg, reassembled, and finally opened to the public in 1988.

According to Astrid Stewin, director of the Duisburg Zoo, the garden has around 800,000 visitors a year and is well-known in the city and across Germany. It's been a window for local people to view Chinese culture for years.

"I was very excited when the Chinese garden opened. I was a child then," said mayor of Duisburg Soren Link in a 2018 interview.

He remembered seeing red-crowned cranes, red pandas and deer from China there. He said his generation of Duisburg natives grew up learning about Chinese culture from the garden.

The classic Chinese-style Yingqu Garden at the Duisburg Zoo has an arched stone bridge across the lake and is home to bamboo, weeping willows, water lilies, metasequoia and wintersweet trees. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The Duisburg Zoo, built in 1934, is among the largest zoological gardens in Germany. Since the Wuhan Zoo was established in 1985, it has been drawing on the experience of its Duisburg counterpart.

Retired carpenter Jiang Donghua was in the Chinese team of 10 people, comprising carpenters, construction workers, a painter, a design engineer, an interpreter and managers, that went to Duisburg 35 years ago to put the garden together.

"They're making purlins with cedar this time. Hopefully the wood can last for a century. We used spruce back then because it was difficult to purchase cedar," Jiang recalls.

The Chinese team worked with the Germans for around three months there. The daily workload was tough, due to the duration of visas. Back in Wuhan, it had taken over a year to build the prototype of the garden. They would arrive at the construction site at 7 am and finish work by 5 or 6 pm, followed by a meeting to discuss the progress.

Jiang says they were asked by local journalists whether they volunteered to work overtime as the law ruled that the upper limit of weekly working time was 35 hours, and they answered yes, because they had to finish the construction in time "for the sake of the two countries' friendship".

Workers operate machines at the zoo to restore the Chinese garden earlier this year. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The following day, the Chinese team was happy to read in newspapers that their work had been recognized.

In Duisburg, he says they were impressed by German people's "rigorousness toward work". It had been raining before they started. There was waterlogging in the foundation ditches and tree holes, which could have led to the decay of the wooden structure. The German team soon got the machinery to drain the water and baked the ditches with a flamethrower, Jiang says. He found being meticulous improved efficiency and later in his career, Jiang developed the habit of planning ahead.

It was not until they toured Duisburg when the garden was about to be completed that Jiang realized the basis of the "two industrial cities' friendship".

"Wuhan is where the Yangtze and Hanshui rivers meet. The two cities have similar morphology. It's wonderful that they became the first pair of sister cities between China and Germany."

Jiang says he enjoyed touring the "well-managed and orderly" German city.

Discussions about the restoration of the garden started in 2014, and the two sides worked out the renovation plan from 2019 to 2020. After 30 years, the glazed ridge and roof tiles were damaged, parts of the purlins were missing, marble guardrails needed to be polished, the water circulation of the artificial lake wasn't too good and the plants needed to be pruned according to Chinese-garden style.

A pavilion by the lake in the garden. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Hu Songbing, general manager of the garden construction company affiliated to the Wuhan Landscape and Ecology Group, says that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese landscape experts are unable to visit the German city, but have sent the needed construction material and are providing advice online.

A China-Europe freight train carried about 40 metric tons of material and, after 42 days, arrived in Duisburg on March 25. Duisburg, which has the world's largest inland port, is the first stop in Europe for a majority of freight trains from China, and is one of Germany's most closely linked cities with the Asian nation.

The materials included over 10,000 glazed tiles made by traditional craftspeople that the Wuhan team made quite an effort to obtain. They are rarely sold these days.

"Glazed tiles are a representative item of traditional Chinese architecture. They add the touch that brings such gardens to life," Hu says.

Scores of factories turned down their request to custom make the tiles before one in Hunan province, which provided some of the materials three decades ago, promised to have veteran craftsmen specially design the moulds and make the tiles, according to Chen Ge, the purchase manager.

It took two months to fire the tiles with pottery clay, and to glaze, especially fish or dragon-shaped tiles on turnup eaves, as well as the polygonal pyramid roof of the landmark Xiangxue Pavilion. The craftsmen had to ensure a consistent color and style, which demanded skill and experience.

The materials also included copper turtle, snake and crane sculptures, a two-meter-tall Taihu Lake stone and an ancient-style stone lantern. One of the sculptures looks exactly like the one at Wuhan's landmark Yellow Crane Tower, built during the Three Kingdoms period (220-280).

Contact the writers at fangaiqing@chinadaily.com.cn