Summer at the Summer Palace
Hi everyone! Or dajia hao as they say here. I just spent seven fruitless hours working on a 2,000 piece puzzle so I'm hoping the posting of this blog is the antidote to total, crippling self-loathing :)
Since we last talked, I visited the Summer Palace (in Beijing) and a village called Cuandixia (about a 3 hour drive from where I live). Both jaunts were amazing, and I’ll share some photos from the Cuandixia trip in my next post. For now, the Summer Palace (a.k.a. Yiheyuan. Sort of pronounced like ee-huh-you-ann).
Looking out at Beijing from the Summer Palace's back side. Note the figurines on the roof and the stamps on the ends of the roof-tiles.
We went with a group of friends two weekends ago on a perfect weather day. We hired a guide who asked us to call her “Square”—a nickname she told us she earned with her physical shape. We protested, and she showed us a picture of herself that was supposed to illustrate her former squareness, but that to us looked pretty normal and not "square." So don't let her name fool you! Like a lot of young people in Beijing, her style was on point—her shirt had a torso-length black and white picture of Marilyn Monroe’s face on the back and she carried a purse with a picture of Audrey Hepburn on it. The park was crowded, but it was no sweat keeping track of Marilyn. Side note on fashion accessories: most women here carry parasols to protect their skin from the sun—a fact that I, a religious SPF 150 user, very much appreciate. One downside is that parasol-dodging becomes a full-time job in crowded public places :)
Closeup of traditional painted wood lattice work, called dougong (dough-gong). The pieces fit together with joinery—no glue, nails, or fasteners are used.
Square took us through the Summer Palace complex and across Kunming Lake (on a boat), which took about two hours altogether. Even so, we didn’t get to everything—we’re talking about a big park. The thumbnail history: Emperor Qianlong had the palace built in 1750, hiring 100,000 workers to get the job done. The area had already been a royal garden and Qianlong converted the site, building the palace and expanding Kunming lake (which now makes up three quarters of park). The location and shady grounds made the palace a sweet summer getaway for the court when Beijing’s heat got too overbearing. In the 1860s the palace was rampaged by French and British forces, and after being restored was once again damaged by foreign soldiers in 1900. It’s now in good shape once again, and is, deservingly, a World Heritage Site.
Beside the Seventeen Arch Bridge, across the lake from the Summer Palace.
It’s worth reading the full history of the palace, but some of the fun facts I came away with are: the palace once housed 3,000 concubines for the emperor and 3,000 eunuchs to guard them (eunuchs because the emperor wasn’t keen on other dudes getting involved with his ladies). To keep the concubines entertained in what was essentially a (albeit gorgeous) prison, they built a shopping street on the palace grounds. In one building we saw an ornate clock displayed in the window, flanked by two vases. Square told us that clocks (not watches) are considered bad luck, but because this one was given as a gift to the Empress Cixi, it was kept on display. The vases were placed on each side to counteract the clock's bad vibes.
Looking up toward the palace from the lake side.
My tiny mind was blown (as it continues to be here) by the amount of thought that went into the design of the Palace. Everything—down to the imprints on the roof tiles, the number of figurines on the roofs, the number of arches in the bridge across the lake, the situation of each building, and the paint/glaze colors—has significance. This is no slipshod construction. There's some interesting historic info here, along with more in-depth descriptions of the park's features if you're interested.
The Marble Boat. Built by Emperor Qianlong in the 1750s, the boat's base is marble and the rest of it is wood painted to look like marble. It was destroyed in the 1800s and rebuilt by Empress Cixi in a more western style (read her story if you're looking for a thriller, it's nuts).
Coincidentally, in my mandarin classes I had just learned how to say, “The scenery at the Summer Palace is especially beautiful,” and now I can vouch for that phrase—it is truly stunning. Here are a few more photos.
I'll leave you with this moment of translation confusion. Thanks for reading!
