Beijing - Summer Palace

We had been to Beijing from 1Nov to 7 Nov 2008. KC represented his school to promote ANU at University of beijing. We took the oportunity to tour Beijing together. :) Our first trip overseas together.

The Summer Palace 颐和园 is the largest and best preserved imperial garden in China. The Summer Palace is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill 万寿山(60 meters high) and the Kunming Lake 昆明湖 .

Before entering Summer Palace, we had our early lunch at a noodel stall in front of the Summer Palace.
The noodle called 刀削面. The noodle's texture is same as Pan Mee in Malaysia.

The gardent can be historically divided into 3 parts, namely : administration, residence and scenery browsing area.

The administraion area, taking in the Halls of Benevolence and Longevity 仁寿殿 as its principal part

This is the place where the Qing dynasty's dowager empress CiXi dealt with state affairs and received officials.

You'll find alot of bronze statues of dragon and phoenix in front of each important building.

This photo was taken right in front of Halls of Benevolence and Longevity 仁寿殿

Glasses were put on at each door of the main building to avoid tourist from entering. It is very hard to see through since they didn't put on light inside.

Below were what we saw through glasses.

There are alot of Holes at the lower part of each building.

Firewood was burned to keep the floor of the building warm during winter time.

We spent alot of time slowly enjoying the architecture of the buildings and materials which were used to build the buildings.

The residence area mainly consists of the Hall of Jade Billows玉澜堂, the Garden of Virtue and Harmony德和园, and the Hall of Joyful Longevity乐寿堂.

Garden of Virtue and Harmony 德和园 was designed as a threatre for the Empress Dowager CiXi, and consists of a theater building, and two halls, Yiledian(Hall of Nartured Joy) and Qingshantang(Hall of Celebrating Benevolence)

This is the three storey theater buidling 大戏楼. There was performance on the day.

Take a look at the video below:

The 2 halls were used as exibition rooms. You might be interested to know how Cixi looks like. :p
All Pictures below are the original photos which were taken during Qing dinasty.

Kunming Lake 昆明湖 and Longevity Hill 万寿山 form the scenery browsing area.

From the photo, you may see Tower of Buddhist Incense 佛香阁.

The Long Corridor (Changlang), 728 meters (796 yards) in length, is the longest of its kind not only in China but also in the world.

The corridor wanders westward from the Court Area, along the north bank of the Kunming Lake, at the foot of the Longevity Hill.

We walk all the way to Tower of Buddhist Incense 佛香阁.


Below are the view From the Tower area.



We walked all the way to the back of the Hill to Suzhou Market street 苏州街.
The Summer Palace is simply too big and we lost our way to get to Suzhou Market Street.

Luckily we met an old uncle aged around 70. He brought us to the market. Along the way, he kept telling us the history behind each building in Summer Palace.



The Suzhou Market Street (Suzhoujie), located behind Longevity Hill.

Suzhou Market Street 苏州街 was built originally during the reign of Emperor Qianglong to give the emperor and his empress and concubines the experience of shopping in the Water Town in Su Zhou.



The Market is great fun, because the lake serves as the street with the stalls and shops on its banks.

It has all the features of other market streets in Suzhou, a famous 'Water Town' in China.


We had our dinner at SuZhou street and enjoy the scenery and atmosphere there while having our dinner.

We also went to see Marble boat before going back to hotel.

Summer Palace is a great place to go. But you need to be very fit because you'll need to walk alot. haha.... :p

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