Summer Palace: Yiheyuan
Trip Start
Jun 04, 2008
1
23
79
Trip End
Feb 20, 2009
Beijing,
China
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The Summer Palace is absolutely huge. There is a very large man-made lake in the center. There is almost a land bridge that goes across the lake the long way. There are a couple of islands out in the middle of it, and there are bridges that lead to those. There are historical buildiings scattered around the area. Epress Dowager, among others, lived at the palace. We walked from the main entry point to the island and back, and then we just started walking around the lake.
It took several hours to get around the lake and we didn't even see all of it. In addition to just walking the shoreline, we checked out pretty much every funky looking building that we passed. It is impressive that the lake is man-made. I can only wonder how many men and how many man hours this took. There were no Caterpillar machines either, I'm sure-just a lot of people with shovels. The lake is probably similar in size to Little & Big Gerber Lakes in Wisconsin, or Calhoun lake and Lake of the Isles in Mineapolis. It is rather impressive for something man-made.
We also visited the marble boat. I think it was something Empress Dowager wanted built (but I get my history all mixed up, so I might be wrong on who built it). It is a rather large boat made of marble and it sits docked along side of the summer palace shoreline. People can't go on the boat, but we stood at a distance and took a couple of shots.
By this time, our morning had become evening, and the sun was beginning to come down. The S&T Museum was scratched for the day, and we just figured we would finish walking around the lake. We got to the "land bridge," a strip of land that divides one large lake into two smaller ones (google maps of calhoun/isles or big/little gerber). This one was a longer and narrower strip of land, and it did truly seem like a land 'bridge.' We had just gotten to that point as the sun really started to set and the moon started to rise, and it turned out to be a really good spot for sunset photos.
By the time we left the Summer Palace, all we had time to do was grab some dinner, grab our luggage, and get to the train station. We got to the train station in perfect Jen and Eric style-we arrived merely 8 minutes prior to departure and there wasn't even a line to get on the train as boarding had already opened up minutes ago.
