The Summer Palace

I held out hope that the Chinese Imperial families were still right about their Summer Palace being a cool retreat from Beijing. Maybe it was hundreds of years ago, but the Summer Palace was sweltering today.

The choices to get there were a 50 cent public bus without a/c that takes an hour, which all the tour books recommend, or 30 minutes in a nice cool taxi for $6. Easy call for me! So, I set out with water, coke and my audio-recorded tour to see the whole place before I passed out from heat exhaustion!

The Imperial retreat was created in 1750 as a monument to traditional Chinese garden design and construction. The guiding principle was that "the works of man should match the works of God." They certainly designed a breath-taking combination of gardens and places from which to enjoy them!

The Summer Palace spans about 3 square kilometers surrounding Lake Kunming. It was actually destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1860. The Empress Dowager Cixi, who controlled the Chinese throne for almost half a century, rebuilt the Imperial retreat with funds that were allocated to build a modern Navy. One of the many stories of her audacity was that she also created a huge marble ship pavilion to have dinner on -- with the misappropriated Navy funds. She was supposed to be a Buddhist and built lovely gardens and retreats, but in truth countless subjects were killed just for making her angry. Another beautiful bridge I saw was the result of her foolishness. Apparently, she got scared from shadows on the bridge which she thought were snakes. She had large carved lions added to the bridge to scare away the snakes rather than admit is was a shadow.

I took a boat from one side of the huge complex to the other to explore further. Just as I thought I might not make it one more step in the heat, I saw a beautiful restaurant. I had a fabulous, cool lunch of sweet/sour pork and was able to continue exploring. I walked along the worlds longest covered walkway (in the Guinness Book of World Records-ha!). It ran by the lake and was elegantly painted with hundreds of tranquil scenes.

The grounds of the Summer Palace were heavenly. I saw some huge pink lilypad ponds, medium sized bonzi trees baring apples, and beautiful large stones that created serene hideaways. There was a large Opera stage because Empress Cixi loved the Chinese opera, and many wonderful halls for meditation. There were also hundreds of ancient art pieces to see in the museum. I could just picture them spread out across this great property on stands to add man-made beauty to the delightful gardens everywhere! It was a great day picturing the grand Imperial lifestyle of yesteryear.