Beijing - Day 1: The Summer Palace

Our final stop in China is a four-day visit to its capital, Beijing. This time I’ll spare my long-suffering readers and post each of our four days in Beijing separately. Just too much has been seen and done to stuff it all into a single narrative. With luck, by the time I compose the last installment, the fog of memory won’t have caused me to have forgotten everything, not that this would be possible with all that we have seen and done.

First, our accommodations. I thought our hotel in Chengdu, the St, Regis, could not be matched, but our suite in the “China World Summit Wing” comes close. Our room may not have had the classic decors of the St. Regis but it made up for this with a 73rd floor view of Beijing, including a 109 story skyscraper, the vessel-shaped Zun. Beyond a minor complaint about the inconveniently (and, in the case of the USB port, non-functioning) sockets, the room was perfect, from shower and sinks to bed and living area. The hotel is from floors 64 to 76 or so, with restaurants and other hotel facilities above this to the 80th. (The ground floor bank of elevators go from 1 to 64 and to the top floors. At level 64 one changes to a separate bank of elevators for the hotel rooms. All elevators were quick to arrive, so the arrangement was fine.

Day and night view from our 73rd floor suite.

The Zun and the “underpants building”, our guide’s description, from street level. 

Left: Inside Beijing’s newest airport. Right: On the way into town, we passed the “Bird’s Nest”, of Beijing 2008 Olympics fame.

But back to day one. We arrived in the late morning from Xi’an at Beijing’s newer Daxing airport, farther out of town than the older Capital International (from which we will fly out of in four days). On our way into town we stopped on to tour the Summer Palace. This is China’s largest (at 720 acres) and best preserved imperial period park and the summer retreat for the imperial family and court during the late Qing dynasty. (This was China’s last dynasty, the Manchus, for those trying to keep track.)

At one point, Empress Dowager Wu Zetian (perhaps most commonly remembered as the Dragon Empress and quite literally the power behind the throne, curtain and all) diverted much of the navy’s budget  to enhance the garden and palace.

The Seventeen Arch Bridge and the Buddhist Fragrance Pagoda

Left: The Marble Barge of the Dragon Empress, actually wood painted to look like marble. Right: An entrance to the walkway 

The undersides of the walkway structure roofs were strikingly painted. Right: The opera house.

As always, I enjoy viewing the costumes worn by visitors, although Richard, our guide, said that most of the costumes were of Manchurian and not Chinese heritage.

Our first evening’s supper was taken in the 80th floor bar, where the free flow of alcohol and platters of hors d’oeuvres were sufficient for the evening’s meal. We did not use two generous coupons for an ordered meal we were given. Little did we know then that these coupons would more than suffice for the two other evening meals not scheduled to be provided by Viking. 

Up for the next day, the Temple of Heaven.