Day 16: The Summer Palace

Today I went out to the Summer Palace.  The Summer Palace is a massive, 700-acre complex where the Chinese emperor would spend holidays, getting away from the city for a while.  Today, Beijing has expanded so much that the Palace is now considered inside Beijing, though it is a ways out from the city.  Out front, only one guide approached me, and wouldn’t go under 100 RMB, so I decided to try the automatic guide, which was 40 RMB.  In the end, the automatic guide did pretty well.  You put the earphone on, and as you approached different locations it would start talking about them, meaning you could take whichever route you like.  It came with a few recommended routes based on time to complete.

The entire complex was very neat, and I liked it better than the Forbidden City.  Instead of being a compact complex designed like a city, it is spread out, with lots of countryside and beautiful landscapes between the buildings, of which there are far fewer.  The buildings are built in a similar style, but I felt that they looked more lavishly decorated, with elaborate paintings integrated right into the buildings.  The complex consists of a main hill and a lake.  The biggest, and central building, the Temple of Burning Incense is built on top of the hill overlooking the lake.  Some other buildings are on the hill near the temple, but many more are down closer to the lake, either east or west of the temple.  Along the lakeside is the Long Corridor.  This covered walkway is the longest in the world, at 728m (0.45mi).  It is not completely straight, so you cannot look down the entire length, but there are straight sections more than 100 yards in length, which look huge by themselves.  Like the temples themselves, the corridor is elaborately painted, with each crossbeam overhead containing an entire unique painting.  My auto-guide said that the 100 stairs up to the main temple were “daunting” and may make me tired.  All I could think was, “Only 100 stairs?  Sounds great!”  I can attest that the stairs were not daunting, nor even very tiring compared to the Himalayas.  Simply walking around the grounds, seeing the temples together with nature, was great.  Unfortunately, Beijing’s pollution is back in full force after being lessened by the hard rain before we arrived, meaning smog lowered visibility greatly.

Near the entrance of the palace.

Looking across the lake towards the main building and Buddist shrine.

The Long Corridor

Random people aren't always the best photographers, but I got what I could.

A nice little bridge.

The Temple of Burning Incense.

These stairs are "daunting?"

These are slightly more daunting, but still not bad.

A view of a part of the complex.

A small shopping street.

Coming out of the Summer Palace, I declined a taxi driver that wanted to negotiate a price, and found one that would use his meter.  I wanted to go to the Hutongs next.  I did not know much about them, other than that they are traditional Chinese houses, where many locals still live today.  Greg told me that when I got there, I could walk around and see things and that everything would be “obvious.”  The driver dropped me off at a lakeside surrounded by many bars and restaurants.  A road and walkway surrounded the lake, with Hutong roads heading off away from the lake.  I walked around the lake, but unfortunately all of the Hutongs had large gates, which were all closed.  There were some small doorways that opened up into the Hutongs, but all I could see inside were people renovated buildings, so I did not enter.  I finished walking around the lake, and looked in some of the stores and restaurants, but never did get to see in a Hutong.  Perhaps, I went at the wrong time, or even to the wrong place.

A hutong

This evening, Odett took us out to a great dinner once again.  This time, we went to a roast duck restaurant called Quanjude Roast Duck.  There, Odett ordered for us, and like before, the food kept coming.  We had shrimp and walnuts, sweetened eggplant, mashed potatoy tofu, some kind of cold tofu, spicy venison, soup that tasted somewhat like chicken noodle, and, of course, roast duck, which could be made into a wrap.  There was tons of food, and no way we could finish it all.  I liked pretty much all of the dishes, though the duck and eggplant were probably my favorite.  To drink, I got a flower tea, which was made from jasmine.  It wasn’t terrible, but I found it somewhat bland, tasting of leaves and water (which, I suppose, is what tea is).  It was a very good meal, but what I found interesting was how different and unrelenting everything was.  Normally, when you have something new, it is along with something else you already like.  With this meal, everything was new, so there was no common staple to fall back on, I just had to keep eating this very different food.  At the end of the dinner, we got a certificate that says we ate the 148,017,677th duck since the chain opened in 1864.  I’m definitely glad I went.

They sliced the duck right in front of us.

Our meal