Today's post is the 2nd in a series about Beijing. This one is all about the Summer Palace. It's an amazing display of architecture, human engineering and artistic beauty (warning: you're going to see the word "amazing" several times in this post). As its name implies, it was used as a summer residence by the Chinese imperial rulers. A little vacation cottage, to get away from it all...but not too far away. It's located on the western edge of Beijing, and isn't that old - compared to other structures in China. It was build in the 1750s...an "infant" when compared to the Forbidden City or Great Wall.
Inside, you'll find a man-made lake that is astonishingly huge. I tried looking through a thesaurus, to try and find the right words...but you're just going to have to trust me. The original pond was enlarged...let's say completely redone... so big that it was actually used as a reservoir, transporting water from the west, into Beijing. The body of water is know known as Kunming Hu Lake. It's impossible to give you a sense of the size of the lake. I decided to just snap pictures near the shoreline:
That gate in the picture is gold...beautiful, shiny gold. You can take boat rides across the lake, and see a variety of bridges and beautiful landscaping throughout the palace grounds.
I just had to keep reminding myself that this was created...none of it was natural. The bigger structures are located on a hill, just up from the lake:
This is called Longevity Hill, and the structure at the top is called the Hall of Fragrance. I hope that wasn't because people smelled bad ; )
Another shot of the Hall of Fragrance
Getting through the Summer Palace can take an entire day. I kept a pretty brisk pace, and it was still a workout. Throughout the grounds, I found art and sculpture that was amazing:
This would look great in my front room
The detail work on the buildings is also breath-taking. You can tell that the imperial family really did live here, given the amount of work that went into things like simple corridors.
Stay tuned for more posts on Beijing....
2 comments:
Wow--I think AMAZING kind of sums it up ; )
I don't even want to tell you how little time we get when we go to the Summer Palace. We'll just get glimpses, so I'm glad you did this post.
Great synopsis. Thanks.
This is great - I love being reminded of all the amazing places I was able to visit when Rhonda & I visited China. One of the things I remember our guide telling us about the Long Corridor is that one of the emperors (I don't remember which one - I'll have to check my journal from that trip) had the corridor built for his mother because she loved to take walks and he wanted her to be able to take walks and be protected from the weather. And then he commissioned artists to paint the corridor so his mother would always have beautiful scenery (as if the scenery around her was not beautiful enough). I don't know if this is really true but that is what I remember him telling us - like I said I'll have to check my journal and see if I am remembering correctly - sounds good though - don't you think?
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