Beijing’s original Summer Palace, the Yuanmingyuan (daily 9am-6pm), is a thirty-minute walk north of Beida, on the route of bus #375, which you catch from a terminus just north of Xizhimen subway stop, or bus #322 ,which leaves from a terminus outside the zoo. Built by the Qing Emperor Kangxi in the early eighteenth century, the palace, nicknamed China’s Versailles by Europeans, once boasted the largest royal gardens in the world with some two hundred pavilions and temples set around a series of lakes and natural springs. Marina Warner recreates the scene in Empress Scarlet and golden halls, miradors, follies and gazebos clustered around artificial

The Dragon hills and lakes. Tranquil tracts of water were filled with fan tailed goldfish with tel escopic eyes, and covered with lotus and lily pads; a superabundance of flowering shrubs luxuriated in the gardens; antlered deer wandered through the grounds, ornamental ducks and rare birds nestled on the beside’s , however, there is little enough to hang your imagination upon. In 1.860 the entire complex was burnt and destroyed by British and French troops, ordered by the Earl of Elgin to make the imperial court eason
during the Opium Wars. There are plenty of signs around to renfind you of this, making the park a mounment to Chinese xenophobia. Of course they’ve got a point, but it is annoying, especially when fired up locals confi’ont visiting foreigners. The park extends over 350 hectares but the only really identifiable ruins are the Hall of Tranquillity in dtc northeastern section.

The stone and marble remains of ~ountains and columns hint at how fascinating the original must once have been, with its marriage of European Kococo decoration and Chinese mod’s. The government is jazzing the place up with a programme of’ restoration and construction, but this remains an attraction wholly eclipsed by the new Sunnner Palace .

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