The Summer Palace in winter
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
103
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Beijing,
China
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Royalty built this place to escape the summer heat of the Forbidden City. It is mostly a lake, which the Emperor had expanded and apparently used to oversee naval exercises. There is a large temple complex and the emperor's apartments.
We climbed up through the imposing front entrance to the top of the hill overlooking the lake
summer palace entrance
. We peeked into the Buddha Temple. You could tell it was a Buddha Temple because the outside was entirely covered with little tile buddhas. In green and yellow no less. We descended to the lake. In the summer this must be a nice place to stroll around. In the winter its just cold. There were some advantages though. The entire lake was frozen and Chinese tourists ignored the "Don't step on the ice" signs and wandered out onto the lake to play around. We walked down the Long Corridor, which was wonderfully painted with various scenes (and true to its name, very long) to see the infamous marble boat. It was a boat, and it was made of marble. Supposedly an Empress used money earmarked for the navy to revamp the Summer Palace. The marble boat was her "navy." Pretty, but fairly pointless as boats go.
My favorite part of the Emperor's apartments was his giant rock sculpture. Some random rich dude had managed to haul it halfway from God-knows-where before he ran out of money and had to leave it. This thing must have taken an army to move it. The Emperor then finished the task and had it moved here. It claims to be the largest rock sculpture in China. I don't see why you would need a bigger one.
roof decorations
We also broke the rules and walked out on the lake. Erin was showing off and skidding everywhere. She got hers when she (in a very satisfying fashion) fell flat on her back, much to the amusement of the Chinese people around us.
We climbed up through the giant pagoda that dominates the hillside. The actual pagoda contains a giant sculpture of a woman with a couple arms too many. We had reached our cold limit so we made our exit. Erin couldn't resist checking out the nearby McDonalds, where she couldn't order anything because it was all in Chinese. She eventually managed with the help of a friendly Korean. We hopped on the bus and decided to take it all the way back to our hotel. It took quite a while, but we had a nice rest and it was warm in there. More importantly, we had a seat. We managed to recognize our street and get off right in front of our hotel. A successful day if I do say so myself.
~Travis
