Summer Palace

Friday June 18, 2010

Today is our last full day here and we decided to go to the Summer Palace, 12km outside Beijing. This is where the Emperor went to cool off in the summer and get away from Beijing, you know a summer camp. I was expecting you know the rustic cabin with iffy plumbing and a roof that needed some work, but this as we all know is not what we found.

The Summer Palace is 10 times times bigger than the Forbidden City, It sits on a huge man made lake. The soil removed from the lake was used to create a mountain overlooking the lake, and of course on the mountain is your usual assortment of palatial buildings and grounds. Who would ever want to go back to the musty hot Forbidden City with nothing but a moat and a 20' wide stream running through it. There are man made islands and bridges connecting the islands. They had farms and weaving shops and pottery shops, and the list goes on.

Of course the “Anglo-French” burned it all down (the wooden bits anyway) after the second Opium War where the Chinese took the foreigners opium, burned it and washed the ashes out to sea because of the damage it was doing to the Chinese people. So the Chinese rebuilt it all and it got burned down again by pretty much the same guys for pretty much the same reasons after the Boxer Revolution. So they rebuilt it all again. I guess they were as advanced at diplomacy back then as we are now..

So after walking the grounds for 6 hours and taking a boat to get across the lake (nice boat with a dragon up front and a pagoda on top), it closed and we had to go. Jake wanted to do some last minute shopping (this is usually where he decides to buy something huge or illegal) but we couldn't find the place he wanted to go (more walking), so one of his teachers called and invited us out to dinner. She took us to a nice place (unlike the places Jake takes me), which I thanked her for. We had a nice long dinner and she practiced English and Jake practiced Chinese, then said our goodbyes and caught the subway before it closed. My dogs are barking and we haven't packed for the plane. Sleep, then pack in the morning.