My second day in Beijing! I seriously feel like I’ve been here a week. I don’t even remember what I used to do for a living.
Today was another ambitious itinerary, albeit a simple one with only two items on it. First, the Summer Palace, a vast retreat for the poor emperors who got bored of the Forbidden City in the summer and wanted to spend some time near Kunming Lake, closer to nature (who can blame them!). From what I gathered, the main settlement is old, but the current complex only took form in the 18th century, which feels practically modern within the scope of Chinese history. Its most famous occupant was Empress Dowager Cixi, who governed as her husband’s regent for some time, until he tried to claw his power back, at which point she staged a proper coup and imprisoned him in his own retirement palace? There are people who know what they want!
The palace is quite far from central Beijing; the metro would have taken us an hour and a half (!), so we took a Didi, and even that was like forty five minutes. The huge park area has three different gates, but the main one is the East Gate, and that’s where the car eventually dropped us off. Here again I noticed this uniquely Chinese phenomenon where the entrance was absolutely packed with people but didn’t feel oppressive or claustrophobic. In Europe a crowd this size would be unmanageable, but here the line for tickets only took a few minutes, same for the line to scan our tickets and walk into the park proper. A result of there being a billion people in the country is that one gets used to being around people, and while people definitely push past you when they please, no one is stressed or confrontational about it. I can already tell my sense of personal space has diminished!
So anyway, about the visit itself: if you look at the map, there are buildings and sightseeing spots all around a big lake, so you could theoretically spend all day touring this one place, but in practice the most notable buildings are all clustered relatively close to the East Gate. The first building you encounter is the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, noteworthy for the pockmarked rocks that are reportedly meant to evoke the ones in Suzhou, as well as the dragon and phoenix statues, representing the emperor and empress respectively (the phoenix ones are closer to the entrance; I don’t know whether to read something about Cixi’s grip on power into this).
From here, we checked out the Summer Palace Museum, which holds a frankly unimpressive collection of historical artifacts. The only thing that stuck out to me is that Japan gifted a steamboat to China for its help in the Sino-Russian war, built to measure to fit in the Summer Palace’s lake, and it was used until it got so old that it broke and sank to the bottom of the lake… whence they fished it out, restored it, and apparently put it on display somewhere around the park!
From there, we followed the shore of the lake counter-clockwise, with hundreds of people going in either direction -I have simply accepted that all my pictures will have people in them; instead of seeing it as an imperfect picture, I tell myself that this is my experience of this place as I lived it.
Of note along this wall is the Long Corridor, which is… well, you get the idea, a very long (730 meter) covered walkway that connected Cixi’s residence with the official buildings in the compound, all painted and decorated with bright colors.
A side note on the quality of guidebooks today: my Lonely Planet China guide (the very latest edition, mind you) makes a point of telling you that there is absolutely no food or drink sold within the Summer Palace so make sure you bring water and a snack. Well, there are not one but multiple places selling iced tea, hot dogs, ice cream, all around but especially in the area around the Hall of Jade Waves. At one point I saw a sign that I recognized so I said out loud “Nai cha!” (Milk tea) and four Chinese people immediately whipped their heads in my direction to judge me. I guess I need to work on my pronunciation!
After the long walk along the long corridor, we arrived at the Hall of Dissipating Clouds, which is a beautiful collection of buildings with glazed orange tiles giving it a distinct look from the rest of the architecture.
Most importantly, this is the starting point to climb A LOT of stairs up to the Tower of Buddhist Incense, and then the Hall of the Sea of Wisdom, which sit at the top of the hill and offer gorgeous views of the entire Summer Palace.
The weather until this point had been suffocating, about 30°C with not a single cloud in the sky, the sun beaming down mercilessly on us. I am not ashamed to walk around under an umbrella and a three-inch layer of sunscreen when it’s like this, but it still got really hot.
Here at the top of the hill, however, there was finally a bit of a breeze, which makes it an ideal resting spot if you can find somewhere to sit in the shade.
After meeting the imposing statue of Guanyin (or Kannon, the goddess of compassion) and her twenty-three arms, there’s nowhere else to go except back down the way you came, just watching your step a lot more!
Like I said, if we had wanted to, we could have simply continued walking around the lake all day, but it was the perfect time for lunch, we were already tired, and we felt we had got a good enough idea of the Summer Palace, so we said goodbye and went out of the park again through the East Gate, to eat at a dumpling restaurant right outside. They had an English menu, thankfully, so in a mix of broken Chinese and English I managed to place an order. I was shortly after served a plate of 15 chive and egg steamed wonton for the equivalent of about €3. Honestly, they looked extremely unappetizing -like semi-translucent raviolis with no sauce- but they were actually pretty good. Although the steamed wrap was bland, the vegetables seemed to have been sautéed with soy sauce and were quite tasty. They also offered a sauce just labeled “Vinegar” which to me tasted more like gyoza sauce (which, if you didn’t know, is just 50% vinegar 50% soy sauce, plus a drop of sesame oil or chili if you feel like it, so don’t buy it when you can easily make it at home!). I was able to eat 10 dumplings before I got too full to continue!
The afternoon plan was to go to the Temple of Heaven, which is about the farthest attraction from the Summer Palace, but it’s closed tomorrow, and anyway sitting in a car with the AC on for an hour sounded like a pretty good deal after the long morning. Sure enough, it did take us a full hour to cross Beijing at 14:30, and it cost only RMB95.90, or €12.32. If I took an Uber for an hour back home I’d have to take out a loan!
So, after a very long ride, the experience at the Temple of Heaven began the same way, with a ton of people going through a pretty painless queue to get a ticket and then walk into a beautifully landscaped park, full of cypress trees. We went through the North Gate, which meant walking almost face first into the proper Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, Beijing’s iconic round, blue-tiled temple.
I’ll be honest, when I was planning this trip I considered skipping this place entirely. I thought: if there’s only this building to see, and I can’t go into it, so I can just look at it, then do I need to go? Am I good just seeing a picture?
Well, I’m glad I decided to go! It’s true that the temple is the one thing to do here, but the park itself is a lovely walk under the shade of the cypresses (and eventually also ginkgos, lush and green before they turn bright yellow in the fall), but the temple is gorgeous in person. The colors are stunningly vibrant when the glazed tiles reflect the setting sun and there’s so much detail to appreciate.
From photographs I know the inside is colorful too, not that I could check for myself. I did look, but it was so bright outside and so dark inside that I couldn’t really make out anything and the throngs of people fighting for a spot outside the roped gates didn’t exactly entice me to stay until my eyes adapted.
After a full tour all around the temple, we continued towards the south half of the park, whose main attraction is the Imperial Mound, a huge square with a round, raised altar in the middle. The construction itself is interesting, but it’s not terribly fun as a sightseeing spot, because when you’re in it you can’t really appreciate its size or detail, especially with how packed it is.
So that was our day! By the time we eventually walked out of the park and into a busy city road it was close to 17:00, closing time, but we couldn’t take another step so we took another long Didi back to the hotel, where writing these lines and planning tomorrow’s itinerary will keep me occupied for the rest of the evening!
Update: I did take a break to go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, where I had a nice Burma-style fish. I found it funny that just like at the Luckin Coffee yesterday, here too they had Basque cheesecake! It truly transcends borders!
This Is A Lake 