Yiheyuan (New Summer Palace)
The summer palace is situated 15km's northwest from Beijing, also known as 'The Museum of Royal Gardens' it is the largest & best preserved royal park in China. The Summer palace radiates with grandness of Chinese traditional horticulture, landscape & art. The construction started in 1750 & initially it was a royal garden, for royal families to rest and entertain guests. In the Qing dynasty it became the main residence for the royal family.
When we first arrived entering through the massive perimeter gates on the north entrance, we were greeted by the usual ticket booths, massive lines, people pushing & novelty shop owners yelling "hello hello hello". To be honest, we were both still feeling a bit rough from the other night & this was the last thing we wanted to do.
After buying our ticket & entering the official palace grounds, my first observation was the dirty lake, the dust & the Repair work that was being done to the stairs, a bridge & a section of building. After walking through the front garden area we came to a hill (Longevity hill) with stairs leading up to a building complex, a complex of towers, pagodas, temples & large halls with the traditional tiered roofing, gold tiles & green, blue & red detailing. It was a bright display of traditional buildings that you would expect to see in a Chinese temple or palace. As we walked between the buildings admiring the detail, we had to walk over and through some rock passages that connected the buildings. We couldn't enter any of the buildings and all the windows & doors had been permanently sealed over. Past the buildings we walked back down the other side of the hill heading towards the lake.
We quickly realised the palace perimeter was a lot bigger than we first thought. I have attached a map that might help to comprehend how big the palace grounds are. We spent a few hours walking in the various courtyards, entering a few temples sitting by the lake, admiring the art work and the beautiful Chinese Plants & trees, a lot of which are blooming & showing off new pink flowers of various shades.
Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)
After we had spent enough time at Yiheyuan, though you could easily spend a full day here, we took a walk to Yuanming Yuan, also known as the 'old Summer palace' only located 8 km's north west from from Beijing & east of the present day Summer palace. Before we went to the old summer palace, I had not done any previous reading & I wasn't sure why there was 2 palaces & why one was old & the other was new, I didn't really think too much about it. The old Summer palace was a beautiful big scenic park, no big crowds, no loud noises, it was where we found our Zen in Beijing. It mostly consists of gardens, trees, lakes and smaller ponds connected by various traditional Chinese bridges.
We found a seat next to a lake with some swans, in the sun and shared a packet of chocolate chip biscuits while enjoying the wind in our hair and the smells coming from the flowers. Beijing has really turned on its charm for us, a perfect day of sun, a slight cooling breeze & minimal pollution haze. It was absolute bliss. We spent quite a few hours exploring the gardens loving the feeling of being in nature, pretending like we couldn't hear the distant car noises from the road.
While exploring we noticed a lot of ruins, huge slabs of marble and stone lay in heaps and there was huge sections fenced off and slightly overgrown. We also noticed the distinct lack of a palace & I started to wonder if there was a story of destruction hidden in the beautiful garden. On arriving at our hostel, I was quick to start reading into the history of the Yuanming Yuan, the terrifying truth of what I read was very wicked, shows an atrocious indifference to life from both sides which is deeply saddening. Reading these facts brought to life a true horror. In October of 1860, during the second opium war, 3500 British and French soldiers stormed the palace grounds, looted an estimated 1.5 million ancient relics, then captured hundreds of the emperors slaves, courtiers and maids locked them in the palace and then burned it to the ground. After 3 days, all that was left was ash & ruins, where once stood a splendid, magnificent palace & garden, which boasted the most invaluable & extensive art collection in the whole of China. This act created one of the most enduring, deepest and demoralising wounds of China's history. The act was a direct retaliation of the imprisonment and torture of negotiating delegates, sent on the Qing dynasty's surrender. The command to savagely and completely destroy the palace was given by a British high commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, a man that was said preferred revenge instead of peace. James M'Ghee, chaplain to the British forces, writes, he shall "ever regret the stern but just necessity which laid them in ashes". He later writes "a sacrifice of all that was most ancient and most beautiful”. The beautiful gardens endure and house the vacant slabs of marble & stone, ruins of the palace and are a harsh reminder of very horrific past events.
- Alli
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