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Published: November 6th 2010
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Today's highlight - the Summer Palace. This is where the royal family went to escape the heat of summer. In the Forbidden City there are no trees (so that no one can hide and plan a surprise attack. The summer palace had no such problems. It is a truly beautiful place but quite crowded with tourists (and this isn't the busy season).
Our first glimpse of the Summer Palace was over a huge man made lake. This was built by one of the Emperors for his mother's 60th birthday. It is amazing but is only about a metre deep. Take away the modern day speed boat and small boats and it would have been a very tranquil place in which to relax. From across the lake you could see the Summer Palace and the beautiful temple high on the hill. These were our next destination on the tour.
The living quarters of the Summer Palace were quite modest when compared to the Forbidden City but would have been an amazing place to spend the summer. The living quarters were linked to the rest of the Summer Palace by a 700m metre covered walkway decorated with beautiful artwork - this
was so the royal family wouldn't get wet during the summer rain as they walked from one section to another. Once we traversed the many tour groups we made it one of the most interesting parts of the tour - the marble boat.
We were told the story of how the chinese believed that the people were represented by water and the royalty by stone (marble) - if the water sank the marble it meant that the people were very unhappy with the rulers. If the marble floated it meant that there was peace and harmony. The Emperor had a boat made of marble (bottom section) and wood (top section) that permanently floated on the water - this ensured that there was always peace and harmony amongst everyone.
As we left the beautiful gardens of the Summer Palace I couldn't help but think that I would like this as my summer house!
Next stop - the Huong! The Huong is like a little village in the middle of Beijing, where generations of families live in quite simple surroundings. Many of the Huongs have been bought out by the government for quite a good profit to the locals
- in their place are now high rise apartments. This Huong was a few hundred years old and is now filled with the older generations as many young people prefer to live in the modern apartments - I don't really blame them as many of the houses here don't have their own bathroom... instead you need to use the local toilet which we declined to use... It must have been something about the fact that when you went inside the toilet you were confronted by only three walls - there is no door on each toilet. This makes the local toilet block quite a social meeting place for the locals. We went on a Rickshaw ride through the streets of the Huong so that we could get a better look at how the locals lived. This was quite an interesting experience although many of the rickshaws had little or no brakes and there were some near misses.
One of the highlights was the lunch - we were crammed into a little local house (actually it was a double story house with modern fittings - I would say one of the wealthier houses in the area) where we had the
most amazing food cooked by the wife - our tips were her way of making some good money. There was plenty of great local food and it was interesting listening to the owner of the house (who was a Kung Fu Master) telling us about life in the Huong.
We then went and had a quick stop at the olympic centre where we saw the outside of the bird's nest stadium and the water cube. It must have been amazing being here when the Olympics were on.
Our evening entertainment was a Chinese Acrobatic Show. The skills of these acrobats was amazing and it was an entertaining evening. Tomorrow we are heading for Xian.
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