The courtyard of the Chuxiu Palace, shaded by an old cypress, is lined with verandas of green and red columns and decorated with bronze dragons, deer and pagoda-shaped incense burners on stone pedestals. One of the Western Six Palaces, it was lavishly redecorated for the fiftieth birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi, who lived here and gave birth to the future Tongzhi emperor in 1856.