First Day of touring – Summer Palace

Today we drove to the northwest part of Beijing city to tour the Summer Palace grounds. This site started as royal gardens in the 1700s, and was further developed in the late 1800s as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi, a particularly powerful woman of her day.

Today, the walk from the street to the front gates swarmed with tourists and vendors. The vendors were particularly persistent and aggressive. Maybe “No, thank you” in English sounds like “Maybe, if you try really hard to convince me” in Chinese. If we wanted Rolex-style watches, Gucci bags, postcards, corn on the cob, popsicles or slide whistles, we were in the right place.

The amazing features included Kunming Lake, which was dug by hand (2 sq km), and Longevity Hill, which is 60 m tall and made from the dirt excavated from the lake. The palaces, temples, courtyards and statues were beautiful, although you could not enter most buildings. The tallest building was a tower with a large Buddha inside it where some people were praying, and fruit was set on a counter in front of it. You weren’t allowed to take photos inside, although there was a gift shop set up to sell things to the tourists.

We splurged on a ride across the lake in a dragonboat (10 yuan or less than $2 Canadian). Before supper, we stopped at a pearl store, where they taught us about different qualities of pearls and how to select them. Supper involved many different and delicious dishes. I enjoyed them all except for a tofu soup, tasted like musty socks to me). Sky’s favourite was fish (served with head intact) and rice.