SPL#1 - Beijing Trip (4-11Mar 06) Day 4

Gonna visit Summer Palace, otherwise known as Yi He Yuan in Chinese today. Xia met me at the hotel at 10+am, drove to the hospital where his father was working, and handed him the car keys. We would be taking public transport to Summer Palace later. Presumably his father must have needed the car.

So anyway we decided to take bus number 320 to Summer Palace. And trust me, their bus services are far worse than Singapore’s. Almost every bus that passed was packed to the very maximum. And it wasn’t even peak hour. I can imagine having to fight my way up buses every day of my life. That would be unbearable - I hate being in crowded places. When our bus finally arrived, it was expectedly crowded as well. We boarded the bus and started hoping such a crowded bus would not give rise to the possibility of pick pocketing. After an hour’s ride, we finally arrived at the popular tourist destination.

So here we are!

And it can be crowded...

But don't ask me why this section is so empty

It was past 1pm when we arrived at Summer Palace. Originally, it was Emperor Qianlong who ordered the building of Yi He Yuan during his tenure as Emperor, and summoned skillful, ingenious artisans from all over the country to carry out this construction work in honor of his mother's birthday. However, it was destroyed by Anglo-French allied forces in 1860. Several rebuilding works were carried out since then, and Summer Palace of today is more or less the same as the palace rebuilt in 1903.

And the rebuilding doesn't stop there...

We bought entrance tickets, and then tried to find a place to dine as we had not had our breakfast, and were starving. There were several stalls near the entrance selling tidbits and cup noodles, but what we needed was proper, cooked food! After wandering aimlessly for some time, we managed to locate a restaurant selling delicacies emperors of old used to enjoy. But this didn’t come cheap - the set meal cost us RMB300 altogether.

Hmm so the emperors of old survived on these

A closer look at some of the dishes

After lunch, we continued our exploration of this unique place. It must have been the most scenic attraction I’d been to during this trip, and it was also the place where I took the most photos. About 50 of my 150 photos were captured here. I also managed to dress myself up in emperor robes - but this came at a cost obviously!

Ya ya okay, I know. Now stop laughing already!!

Climbed up a hill and was rewarded with wonderful scenery, overlooking the entire Summer Palace and its surroundings. Whenever tired, we would find benches to rest on and enjoy having the lovely cold breeze blow in our faces. We did not buy entrance tickets to Suzhou Street, so we boarded separate cabs home after further strolling around for some time.

A paranomic view of the surroundings

It was 5pm+ when I arrived at the hotel. Packeted two of my favourite dishes “Tang Chu Li Ji” and “Jing Jiang Rou Si” for dinner. Then, as I enjoyed the food in my hotel room, I watched the DvDs that I had bought the other night. This was the ultimate enjoyment. Good food to go along with great movies. What more can one ask for?