Chengde Mountain Resort in the context of "Chinese gardens"

Hebei is a province in North China. It is China's sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It borders Shanxi to the west, Henan to the south, Shandong and Liaoning to the east, and Inner Mongolia to the north; in addition, Hebei entirely surrounds the direct-administered municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin on land. Its population is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, and 0.3% Mongol. Varieties of Chinese spoken include Jilu Mandarin, the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, and Jin Chinese.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (771–226 BC), the region was ruled by the states of Yan and Zhao. During the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), the region was called Zhongshu. It was called North Zhili during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and simply Zhili during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). The modern province of Hebei was created in 1928. Five UNESCO World Heritage Sites can be found in the province: the Great Wall of China, Chengde Mountain Resort, Grand Canal, Eastern Qing tombs, and Western Qing tombs. It is also home to five National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities: Handan, Baoding, Chengde, Zhengding and Shanhaiguan.

The Xianfeng Emperor (17 July 1831 – 22 August 1861), also known by his temple name Emperor Wenzong of Qing, personal name Yizhu, was the eighth emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the seventh Qing emperor to rule over China proper. During his reign, the Qing dynasty experienced several wars and rebellions including the Taiping Rebellion, the Nian Rebellion, and the Second Opium War. He was the last Chinese emperor to exercise sole power.

The fourth son of the Daoguang Emperor, he assumed the throne in 1850 and inherited an empire in crisis. A few months after his ascension, the Taiping Rebellion broke out in southern China and rapidly spread, culminating in the fall of Nanjing in 1853. Contemporaneously, the Nian Rebellion began in the north, followed by ethnic uprisings (the Miao Rebellion and the Panthay Rebellion) in the south. The revolts ravaged large parts of the country, caused millions of deaths and would not be quelled until well into the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor's successor. Qing defeat during the first phase of the Second Opium War led to the Treaty of Tientsin and the Treaty of Aigun, the latter of which resulted in the cession of much of Manchuria to the Russian Empire. Negotiations broke down and hostilities resumed soon after, and in 1860 Anglo-French forces entered Beijing and burned the Old Summer Palace. The Xianfeng Emperor was forced to flee for the imperial estate at Jehol, and the Convention of Peking was negotiated in his absence.

Chengde, formerly known as Jehol and Rehe, is a prefecture-level city in Hebei province, situated about 225 kilometres (140 mi) northeast of Beijing. It is best known as the site of the Mountain Resort, a vast imperial garden and palace formerly used by the Qing emperors as summer residence. Its local dialect is also known for being the closest to Standard Chinese, which took several inspirations from the Chengde dialect. The permanent resident population is approximately 3,473,200 in 2017. At the end of 2024, the total resident population of the city was 3,285,700, a decrease of 16,500 from the end of the previous year. The urbanization rate of the resident population is 59.77%.