Day 6: The Summer Palace

Hello. 

Yesterday we went to the Summer Palace, North of the center of Beijing. Emperor Qian Long built this palace for his mother. She had a very long life which ended 80 years after her birth, and so there are many tributes to longevity found in this palace. She also loved to travel, so the Emperor ordered that this palace be built to imitate different scenic parts of China, similar to Las Vegas, if that analogy can be made.

The first thing one sees upon entering the palace is a canal and a bridge. The canal is lined by buildings with shops. This is a reconstruction of a real street from the city Suzhou of the Jiangsu province. This is often called the Venice of Italy, so I think it is appropriate to name the bridge the Rialto Bridge.

The "sidewalks" are literally sidewalks, only one meter wide (at most) with no railing separating the pedestrians from the water. One our adventurous walk, we came across a snack shop that sold Chinese yogurt.

It was very good. It was liquid enough to drink with a straw and was serves in white ceramic jars. The tops were covered by a piece of paper secured by a rubber band. We pierced the paper with the straw and enjoyed the yogurt. It tasted a lot like sweet buttermilk. After finishing, we returned the ceramic jars to be refilled and covered with new paper tops. Later, I noticed many more food vendors selling this delicious yogurt.

The shop was at most 6 square meters, but the owner nevertheless invited us to sit inside to enjoy the yogurt (and probably also to return the jars to her). Inside was a traditional old-fashioned Chinese restaurant menu:

There seems to be a resemblance.

The idyllic Chinese pastoral scene consists of a body of water and a hill or mountain beside it. Therefore, this canal was created artificially to provide the body of water, and the land removed in its creation was used to provide the mountain beside it.

And it was quite a little mountain. We climbed the other side of this mountain to reach the top of yet another Buddha temple and saw that this little palace was actually its own little world. This side looked out onto a lake which connected to the Venice-like canal. There were many boats one this lake. The view was spectacular. The lake is called Kunming Lake and resembles the lake of Kunming town in another province of China.

The shore of this lake on the side of the mountain is lined by a very long corridor which was burned down during the Opium Wars by the Anglo-French Alliance and rebuilt later in the 1800's. 

The corridor.

Some locals.

The Buddha temple that we climbed to.

During the climb. I no longer look like a newly-minted tourist, right?

The view from the top.

Back by the lake.

In the middle of the lake, Opposite the hill with the temple as a man-made island with a 17-ach bridge connecting a promenade to it. This bridge was featured in the National Geographic recently, I believe.

 The Bridge.

The temple seen from the island.

On the island.

We took a boat back from the island to the hill and exhausted, returned home to a beautiful view from Cece's apartment.

The boat.

The view: sometimes smog can help make very nice sunset photos. 

And dinner that Cece's parents cooked. The potatoes in the back are cooked in vinegar and are a very traditional country dish. They are delicious.

These are my favorite dessert from China so far: red-bean-stuffed pastry. Mmmmm

Cheers,
Nina.

Day 5: Buddhas and more Buddhas.

Today we went to see the Lama temple. Lama is a branch of Buddhism. This temple is North of the city center and was originally a palace for prince Yong of the Qing dynasty (princes did not live in the Forbidden City -- they lived in their own palaces but served in the Beijing court). As emperor, the prince converted this palace to the Buddhist temple that it is now. Like the Forbidden City, the temple has an axis of symmetry. When entering, there are two towers on the sides: the Eastern one is the bell tower and the Western one is the drum tower. 

After entering, one hits a series of mini temples each with their own set of Buddha statues. The first one has three three presences of Buddha and going from left to right, they are the Buddha of the past, present and future (kind of like the three ghosts from A Christmas Carol -- funny how different cultures can come up with similar concepts). This mini temple was lined on the sides with 18 statues of  Arhats (nine on each side, I'm not sure what they actually are).

There were also temples off on the side with statues of Kings (like Buddha angels) such as those of   Hell, health and one of wealth. There was someone ardently praying by the King of Wealth.

One mini temple on the axis of symmetry was a study where active monks would sit to dispute and discuss their religion. At the center was a pretty big golden Buddha. 

We weren't allowed to take photos inside of any of the central buildings, but eventually I gathered up the courage to sneak several shameless photos because we came across the last temple containing a 60-foot Buddha:

Incense was burning everywhere and people came here to pray and brought more incense which they burned as they prayed. It is believed that the spirits of the Lords and Kings ("Buddha Angels") reside in the burning of the incense.

I found a lot of things in this temple to remind me of Indian culture. This makes sense as the Buddhist religion spread North to China from India and must have dragged with it certain Indian cultural aspects. 

Another really interesting thing was the written text in this temple. It was written in four languages: Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchurian, and Han. The Manchurian, Han and Mongolian are present because these were the ruling cultures in China (their symbols were also heavily present in the Forbidden City), and Tibetan is present because Lama Buddhism (specifically Lama) came to China through Tibet.

Note the four languages on the blue tablet above me. 

Me at the entrance.

The street outside the temple had a gate to a street of hutongs. Originally, this is where students took their entrance exams for universities. 

Now monks-to-be also study to pass the exams required to become a monk in a temple. Monkhood is a rather desireable position, even though monks cannot get married, and there is a lot of competition to get into the better temples such as the Lama temple. 

The street outside the temple.

A hutong.

By the entrane to the temple is a shop. This is to be expected, as the tourist souvenir business here is very busy. However, this shop is more than that. Every object in the shop was blessed by a monk from this temple. Therefore if you believe in these things, this is quite the souvenir shop. 

On this street, we stopped by a tea shop called Wu Yu Tai.  Founded in 1887, it turns out that this is the oldest tea shop in China existing today! Now it is a chain and I am excited to try out the tea!

After the tea shop, we went to the third market: the Pearl Market. I wanted to get decorative souvenirs, and besides pearls, this market is known for it's souvenir goods. Cece's mother joined us there and I am very grateful that she did. Although Cece is good at bargaining, as I learned the other day, her mother proves that it is an art. She's known one seller for a long time, so we went directly to him and I got an incredible price on what I got. Cece's mother did not even have to talk much. It was as though her sheer presence was enough to not only get great prices, but also a royal treatment.

I am afraid of going back to the States and looking through stores there. I might start bargaining at Trader Joe's and Macy's.

After that we went home for a break and our ambitious plans of maybe going to a Chinese Hooters (neither of us had been to a Hooters in America and we're both very curious how they would pull it off in China ...) fell through when I passed out for several hours on my bed. Oh well. It's been a big day.

Cheers,

Nina.