After breakfast, you will visit the exquisite Summer Palace. In the afternoon you will be escorted to the airport for your flight to your next destination. Upon arriving in Chengdu, your personal guide will meet you and escort you to your hotel.
In the morning we checked out of the hotel early and headed out to the Summer Palace. Unfortunately traffic was exceptionally bad today because it was a Chinese holiday, so not only are the tourists driving and visiting tourist locations, but so are the locals and even some not so local Chinese folk. Because of the extra time we spent trying to get to the the Summer Palace we ended up with even less time spent wandering around and enjoying the fantastic scenery.
The Summer Palace (simplified Chinese: 颐和园; literally "Gardens of Nurtured Harmony") is a palace in Beijing. The Summer Palace is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill (60 meters high) and the Kunming Lake. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is water. The central Kunming Lake was entirely man made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill. In the Summer Palace, one finds a variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures.
In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value." It is a popular tourist destination but also serves as a recreational park.
Today's Summer Palace is more or less the same as the palace rebuilt from 1903. After the success of the 1911 Republican Revolution, the Summer Palace was opened to the public. Then, after the last Qing Emperor PuYi was thrown out of the Forbidden City in 1924, the Summer Palace was turned into a park, which has become a popular and relaxing destination for both domestic and international tourists.
The Summer Palace is a place that you could definitely spend all day at on a beautiful spring day. However, most tourists, ourselves included only spend a few hours touring the palace grounds. Most tourists, again ourselves included, don't even bother to go inside any of the buildings as much of the contents have been removed and the interiors have been left unrestored. Only the living quarters still hold the finery of kings, queens and concubines.
The Chinese often speak of the Summer Palace with distaste. Not because it is lacking in beauty, the whole place is stunning, but because it represented the Empress Dowager Cixi who is seen as a villain and responsible for the collapse of the Qing dynasty. She is often seen as wasteful, flippant and manipulative by many Chinese, though she may or may not have been. But when you walk through the Summer Palace you can't help but wonder how much money was wasted on the Marble Boat or the Long Gallery.
Other than the natural beauty of the Summer Palace the Long Gallery is the most famous area. It is also one of my favorite places, the rest of the Summer Palace has spectacular views on a grand scale, but the Long Gallery is filled with so much minute detail you could spend days wandering its length and never see the same thing twice.
The Long Gallery is on the the longest galleries in the world, seven hundred twenty-eight meters (796.2 yards) in length. It begins at the Yaoyue (Inviting-Moon) Gate and ends at the Shizhang Pavilion, the Long Gallery ingeniously links Longevity Hill with Kunming Lake.
It consists of two hundred seventy-three open rooms (resembling a covered walk way) with various paintings, long corridors are broken up by four octagonal pavilions, each symbolizing a season. Long Gallery was constructed along the natural terrain of Longevity Hill and the turns of Kunming Lake, offering a picturesque view with each step. In 1755 when Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) built the gallery, he ordered artists to go to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province to sketch the scenery there. Upon their return they painted 546 paintings of West Lake landscapes in the Long Gallery.
The themes taken from historical figures, landscapes, flowers and birds can be seen as a miniature representation of the breadth of Chinese art. Appreciating the intricate paintings, stories, myths and legends gives visitors the chance to learn a lot about the five-thousand-year-old Chinese culture.
Our visit this trip was a bit more crowded than last time, with tourists filling up the hallways and group leader flags spoiling so many of my pictures. You were almost forced to move along the corridors in some places by the sheer flow of traffic. But I still enjoyed seeing so much Chinese symbolism all in once place. You see depictions of bats, children, fish, peaches, cabbages and depictions of things like the Monkey King. You see landscapes, portraits, legends and historical depictions. If you can paint it, it is painted. If you have enough room to place an actual painting, it has a masterwork covering it. So much attention to detail, so much time spent painting (and as years went on, repainting) all of these works of art.
I think the Summer Palace would be an amazing place to see through out the seasons, and perhaps even better on a day with fewer people. But even when it is crowded or when you have less than ideal weather, it is hard to miss the grandeur of the place. The cultural significance is easily felt, though imagining the place almost empty except for royalty is hard to do with the ever present press of people. It would be the perfect place for quiet reflection, if only you could ever find a moment of peace to enjoy it in such a crowded location!
----Lunch
----Plane
---- Dinner
-The Summer Palace: Located on the northwestern outskirts of the city, it was an imperial summer resort of the Qing Dynasty. With its perfect layout, magnificent buildings and enchanting landscape, it is the most splendid classical garden in China.
Accommodations: Tianfu Sunshine Hotel, Chengdu (4 star)
Phone: (86)28-86922233
Fax: (86)28-86948796
Address: 2 Tai sheng bei Road, Chengdu 61007 Sichuan.
Web: http://www.tfsunshinehotel.com