Holiday Friday - Summer Palace

Adventure of getting there ans away

Whereas before I had already gone on the subway and sometimes on the bus, but never for really big distances, I decided to try to go to Summer Palace fully with public transport. This poses a challenge in China because there is a subway plan, but no bus plans at all.

All you have is some Chinese signs at the bus station which tell you where the bus is supposed to stop. Even during the bus ride all announcements are only made in Chinese.

So first thing that happened was that I got on the wrong bus although I had asked in my "best Chinese" whether it was going where I was planning to go. So I had to improvise. Some time the bus stopped at some subway station and I just got off.

But I finally made it there. The 1.5 hour trip on the public transport cost me 40 RMB (which equals 0.40 EUR). And the nice thing about public transport is that you get in touch with Chinese people. So I got to know a mother with her child. They were trying to learn English pronunciation by reading some words and sometimes they asked me for the right pronunciation . And I got to know another Chinese woman with whom I exchanged mobile numbers in order to enable further meetings.

Yi he yuan - The Summer Palace

Actually, the Chinese word "yuan" means garden or park and this is really what Summer Palace is: not really a palace but a wide area of park and Chinese garden.

The specialities there are:

- the world's longest colonnade (Wandelgang) with a huge variety of traditional paintings

- a lake with islands, bridges etc.. The lake was covered with ice and the scenery very beautiful

- Chinese gardens

- longevity symbols everywhere (long life)

I personally think that Yi he yuan is even more interesting than the Forbidden City. It attracted me like the Great Wall and I know I shall go there again and see what it's like in the different seasons (winter, spring, summer).

But just see the photos to have an impression yourself.

Have a nice weekend.