There thronged various architectures on the southern slope of the wanshou Hill, related and orderly. The Foxiang Pavilion compound stand in the middle, side by pavilions and buildings of varied shapes. The 782-meter Long Corridor connects them with each other. In this way, the scenery appears more orderly.

The Long Corridor was firstly built in 1750, destroyed by the war of 1860 and then restored to the present state in the Emperor Guang-xu's reign. It originally functioned as the shelter for the empress and concubines when appreciating the beauty of Kunming Lake on rainy and snowy days. The longest corridor in China now, the Long Corrid-or starts from the Yaoyue Gate and reaches the Shizhang Pavilion, equal to length of 273 rooms. Taking the shape of a soaring bat, the Long Corridor composes the traditional chinese picture offering birthday felicitati-ons, couples with the peach-like Kunming Lake.

There are four octagonal double-eaved pavilions representing the four seasons of the year respectively from east to west. People will not easily find the topographical difference when go up and down the steps of the four pavilio-ns. To the south of the eastern and western sections of the Long Corridor stretch two shorter corridors, reaching the two waterborne architectures: Duiou Pavilion and Yuzao Pavilion. There is also another shorter corridor to the north of the western section of the Long Corridor, connecting a three-story octagonal architecture. This kind of design does not only boost the beauty of the Long Corridor but also support its weight according to mechanics. Thanks to its unique structure, the Long Corridor could stand the over 200 years of weathering.

Walking along the Long Corridor, tourists can appreciate the changing natural scenes of the Kunming Lake and Wanshou Hill as well as the over 10,000 colored paintings on the corridor, a perfect union of natural beauty and cultural aesthetics. The colored painting is a kind of ornamental art of Chinese wooden architectures, belonging to the Su variety. This variety has no fixed style, relying on the painters' own creativity. When building the Long Corridor, Emperor Qianlong sent the painters to Hangzhou to sketch the scenes there. According to different proportions, their sketches were painted on the corridor. Therefore, the paintings mostly depicted the scenes of the Suzhou and Hangzhou cities. Its topics fell into a vast variety of categories: landscape, flowers, birds and human figures, etc. Among the altogether 14,000 colored paintings, the most enchanting are those telling stories of ancient histor, classical literature, legends and characters of traditional operas. It's kind of fun to learn these touching stories. The Long Corridor was appraised as the longest gallery of the world for its unique architectural style and varied paintings.

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