GREAT WALL - SUMMER PALACE

After a reviving lunch, we drove to the Summer Palace which turned out to be my favorite spot in Beijing. As its name indicates, this is where the Emperors spent the hot season. It is a huge park around a vast lake, with domesticated but characterful nature and superb architecture. The pavilions and temples were rebuilt several times after various pillaging by the British and the French. The incredible "Long Corridor" at the Summer Palace is more than half a mile long.

The last Empress, Cixi, spent a lot of time at the Summer Palace where she kept her nephew, the Emperor, a virtual prisoner. Among Cixi's excesses was the construction of a peculiar marble boat using Imperial Navy funds. Soon after her death, China was a precarious republic.

	This is my friend Mao Rong. Like many Beijing students, he is eager to practice his English, and he does so by taking foreigners to the sights. We had an exhausting and unforgettable day together: we were the first car at the Great Wall, and the last car at the Summer Palace. Mao Rong had borrowed a book from an official tour guide and he was a fount of knowledge. I also managed to find out a lot about the concerns of smart young Chinese people. We went to the Mutianyu section of the wall, not as restored and crowded as Badaling, and not as remote as Simatai. For the most part, the drive was dull, except for beautiful mountains as we approached the wall. It takes one thousand steep steps to reach the wall proper at Mutianyu. At the top I was seeing stars. After recovering, I was impressed by the scope of the Great Wall. The Mutianyu section was devised in the 14th century as a defense from attacks on either side. Sentries communicated from one watchtower to another with smoke signals during the day and lights at night.



After a reviving lunch, we drove to the Summer Palace which turned out to be my favorite spot in Beijing. As its name indicates, this is where the Emperors spent the hot season. It is a huge park around a vast lake, with domesticated but characterful nature and superb architecture. The pavilions and temples were rebuilt several times after various pillaging by the British and the French. The incredible "Long Corridor" at the Summer Palace is more than half a mile long. The last Empress, Cixi, spent a lot of time at the Summer Palace where she kept her nephew, the Emperor, a virtual prisoner. Among Cixi's excesses was the construction of a peculiar marble boat using Imperial Navy funds. Soon after her death, China was a precarious republic.

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