The Summer Palace

On our last day in Beijing, we went to the Summer Palace in the morning.  The Summer Palace was really close to our hotel.

Upon exiting the bus, we were seiged by people wanting to sell us stuff.  Special price for you!  Special price for You!  The Chinese always say this to foreigners.  One lady was trying to sell me a hat.  I was already wearing one, my NYM hat.  I took it off and I said back to her, special price for you!  Special price for you!  It's funny, when you say the exact phrase back, the context is now slightly changed and then the Chinese sometimes have a look on their face like they have no idea what I just said.  I just repeated what she was saying and now it's like,  all is lost.  Funny.  Then there was this man who kept haggling us to buy something from him.  We were walking to the Palace and he was right there, step-by-step with us.  One of the things he wanted me to buy was a little red book of quotations by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.  I thought...hhmmm, quotations from the old man?  How much I asked?  85 kuai he said.  I laughed and started to walk away.  He was trying to get my attention again.  Some of the book in English he said.  I looked it over.  Some of it indeed was in English (also Chinese).  It looked pretty cool but not for that amount.  50 kuai he said.  20 I said.  25 he said.  15 I said.  He did not want under 20 and I was not going higher than 15.  This is all as we walked.  I never stopped walking and he kept following us.  I kept telling him 15 or sell it to someone else.  Just as we got to the gates, he grudgingly sold it to me for 15 kuai mumbling to himself.  You see, in China, when Chinese are haggling you to buy something - especially on the street, just show them the $ and they cannot resist the sale; it's like cocaine to them.  There was no way he was going to let me walk away with me showing the 15 kuai.  He wanted it, badly.  Could I have gotten him down to 10?  Probably, but 15 (less than 3 USD) seemed fair and I was content with that.  I thought it would be good reading for my long upcoming overnight train ride.  I then thought, boy, wouldn't it be funny to have this in my carry-on luggage when I come back home to the states?  What are you doing with this?  Who are you trying to convert?  Blah/Blah/Blah...

Back to the Palace, the Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) literally means "Gardens of Nurtured Harmony" I was informed.  The Palace is the largest and best preserved imperial garden in China.  The Palace was used as a summer residence by China's imperial rulers - as a retreat from the main imperial palace known as the Forbidden City.  It's in the country-side yet close to the city.  Longevity Hill dominates the  grounds as well as the Kunming Lake.  I did not know that the lake was man-made and that the excavated soil was used to build the hill.  Pretty cool stuff.  There's palaces, gardens, pavilions, temples, halls, bridges, rocks, trees, paths, ponds, and the lake.  It's a big time tourist attraction as well as a recreational park.  The area really started to be built around 1750.  It was razed to the ground by Anglo-French forces in 1860 and then rebuilt in 1886 by the Qing dynasty.  It served as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi and she oversaw the reconstruction and enlargement of the Palace.

The main building is the Tower of Buddhist Incense.  The tower sits on a 66 foot stone base and is 165 feet tall with 3 stories.  It's easy to see and the pics serve as justice.  I read that the Summer Palace is suppose to represent China's ideals of harmony between man & nature.

We headed back to our hotel around noon for lunch, to pack, and to take 1 final shower as it was really hot that morning at the Palace.  The buses to take us to the train station for our overnight train would leave around 5pm.  We still had 4+ hours to kill so a few of us decided to take taxis to downtown area/lake of Beijing for lunch and to hang out...