SUMMER PALAIS

Summer as well as winter, it is nice to spend the day in the beautiful surroundings of Summer Palace and its immense park. The latter is on a surface of about 280 hectares, delimited by a wall wall with few doors; with a huge lake, Kunming Lake, which covers three quarters of the surface and, in the north, a hill called "the hill of Longevity", on the flanks of which palaces and temples stretch up to the top.

History

Successively called "Garden of Golden Waters" under the Jin during the construction of the original palace, then "Garden of Wonderful Hills" while Ming had added the Temple of the Perfect Tranquility, other pavilions and enlarged the lake, it was to Emperor Qian Long (1711-1799) of the Qing the park owes its most important transformations. He was inspired by Hangzhou's architecture, which his mother emulated, Nihulu, had loved, and that is why Qian Long offered him as a gift for his sixtieth birthday the new ensemble renamed «the hill of the Millennial Longevity», standing in the «garden of clear Waves».

At the time, the court took refuge in its secondary residences outside the capital, from the arrival of the summer and its torrid chalks until 1860, where many palaces were destroyed, including the palace of summer. It was to Empress Cixi (1835-1908), the untreatable, but who took the whole thing, that it was a luxury restoration (it diverted money to bail out the imperial navy coffers) and its new name "garden where l l l… the concord is grown. The palace was once again destroyed in 1900 at the time of the Boxer revolt, and Cixi, who was very attached to it, rested it again.

Visit

In order to enter the courtyard, we first come under a large pai, a wooden porch sculpted and painted. In the middle of this double courtyard, you will see a beautiful bronze unicorn, and at the bottom is the room of Benveillance and Longevity, before which you will note four burning bronze incenses representing animals. It is said that the Empress gave its hearings in this Chamber.

Then, by heading to the lake, we arrive at the palace of the jade waves, poetic name for what was for ten years the prison in which Empress Cixi returned the emperor Guangxu trapped in the most complete isolation (he couldn't even see his wife or his concubines) after the failure.' a hundred days of reforms'. You can still see what was the furniture of Guangxu's bedroom.

We then headed to the Garden of Virtue and Harmony, where Cixi had offered, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, a superb theater, with all the modern mechanisms of the time - traps, water games effects… His true passion for theater sometimes pushed her on the boards during performances, under the tasting. It's Guanyin's isment.

Then you will go along the lake for a moment to arrive at the residence of Cixi, the palace of Joy and Longevity. This is where the empress took its summer quarters from June, and it was in this context that it used to be used daily for festins, said, of more than one hundred and twenty dishes and, as it only touched those closest to it, the cook thus had the ones that were the closest to her, she preferred in close proximity knowing that, for the smallest detail she was unpleasant, she was whipping servants and eunuchs, showing boundless cruelty. Notice the furniture in the throne room and some of the old ones.

The shores of the lake are lined with a long covered gallery with four pavilions running on 728 m at the foot of the millennium Longevity hill. We can also go along the shores of the lake, but the main interest of the gallery lies in the 14,000 small paintings that follow it and carefully reproduce historical or mythological scenes, landscapes or floral motifs… real masterpieces that deserve a little time to be admired, even though some have lost their colors and are damaged.

The gallery is cut in its middle by the orderly Cloud Palace, where Cixi used to celebrate his birthdays. There is still a great portrait in the empress's oil. This palace is also the starting point for ascension to the millennium of Longevity (Wanshoushan). A series of doors and stairs that end fairly steep lead through several pagoda of Buddhist worship: Bright Virtue Room, Buddhist Fragrances Pavilion, from which you can enjoy a wonderful panoramic view of the lake. Then a trail climbing through the trees completes this ascent on the Temple of the Perfect Wisdom, a brick building decorated with yellow and green ceramics and housed in Buddha's effigy statuettes.

Returning to the lake, the gallery continues to the famous marble boat, which seems strangely floody, docked on the lake and where, according to history, Cixi liked to organize banquets. There are small pontons from which you can rent canoes and cross the waters of the lake from one bridge to the next. It is the water community that has the most beautiful view of the Wanshoushan as a whole. In winter, you can cross the frozen lake on foot and even indulge in the joys of the ice chair or the skating rink with the many Chinese who walk through the family weekend.

A council, plan a good day to have the time to stroll and drink a cup of tea in a small house in the gardens, to canoe on the lake and admire the diverse plant species that make up the gardens harmoniously along the promenade. The ensemble has been classified as UNESCO's World Heritage Site since 1998.