A Day at the Summer Palace – Beijing

Since I’d already spent 10 days in Beijing last year and saw many of the major highlights and markets, the one place I hadn’t ventured yet was the Summer Palace.

At the entrance into the Summer Palace

To be honest, when I was here a year ago, I had no idea that the palace was both as large and as nice as it is. And since it is so big, I figured to spend the better part of a day there which is exactly what I did. My friend and I left out early morning and took the subway straight to the palace. And at only 2 RMB (about 35 cents) to take the subway to anywhere in the city, it’s one of things that makes Beijing so great.

The Summer Palace in Beijing

Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill at the Summer Palace

After getting inside the palace, I was quickly off snapping pictures. With such amazing architecture, it was hard not to. And if you’ve been following me well enough on this blog so far, you know I can’t leave you without some interesting (and random) facts and history on the places I visit. So here is a little background on the Summer Palace…

Some dancing going on at Kunming Lake

Some of the detail you’d see on the walls and ceilings in many of the structures throughout the palace

The palace is the largest royal park in China and construction on it started back in 1750. It is essentially made up of two main parts… Longevity Hill, which has an elevation of about 200 feet (60m). And the other is Kunming Lake, which covers over 2 square kilometers. Both the hill and the lake were entirely man-made as the dirt from the excavation of the lake was actually used to build the hill.

The Summer Palace’s original purpose was to be a place for entertainment for members of the royal family. It later became a primary residence for family members during the Qing Dynasty. It was not opened to the public until 1924 and in 1998, the Summer Palace was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We ended up spending about 5 or 6 hours in the palace though I imagine you could spend more time. There was even an option to take boats out onto the lake. They have two boat options too. A larger boat that holds 20+ people and also an option to hire a smaller boat that holds 4 people. The smaller ones looked like paddle boats but apparently have small engines. However, we opted out of both since we were on a pretty tight backpacker’s budget and they seemed overpriced. And apparently we weren’t the only ones that thought they were overpriced by the looks of this sign!

To “Complain about the prices, call….” (This was on the ticket window)

The only thing I’d wished we could do while here was catch the sunset over Kunming Lake. Unfortunately, they close the Summer Palace at 5pm during the winter months (and 6pm during the summer months). Either way, it’s still a great place to visit while in Beijing and I’d recommend it over some other places I’d seen while here…