Beijing Summer Palace

The Summer Palace locates at the western suburb of Beijing, 20 kilometer/12 miles away from city center, it has a history of over 800 years. In 1115, when the Jin Dynasty made Beijing (then called Yanjing) as its capital, it built an imperial palace (the Golden Hill Palace) on the present site of the Summer Palace, In 1750 (Qing dynasty), Emperor Qianlong spent 4.48 million tales of silver (140,000 kilos of silver) building the Garden of Clear Ripples (original name of the Summer Palace) in 15 years and changed the name of the hill to the Longevity Hill to celebrate his mother’s birthday. He also named the lake Kunming Lake because he wanted to follow the example of Emperor Wudi (156BC-87BC; reigned 140BC-87BC) of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) who had trained his navy centuries before in Kunming Pool in Chang’an (somewhere near Xi’an today).

But unfortunately, in 1860, the Anglo French allied forces invaded Beijing and burned down the many imperial gardens including the Summer Palace. In 1888, Empress Dowager CiXi had it restored with the funds (30 million tales of silver or 937,500kilograms) intended for the development of the navy and renamed the garden as the Summer Palace. In 1900, it was plundered again, this time by the invading troops of the Eight-Power Allied Forces (Britain, Untied States, Germany, France, Tsarist Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria). Several temples and halls at the back of the Longevity Hill were destroyed. Only one temple remained, the Temple of Sea of Wisdom, a stone structure. In 1903, the Empress Dowager spent a fabulous sum of money to have the palace reconstructed again. The Summer Palace of today is more or less the same as the palace rebuilt in 1903. After the last Qing Emperor Puyi was thrown out of the Summer Palace in 1924, this place was turned into a park. But the admission charge was very high, about the piece of a bag of wheat flour, equivalent to 60 yuan now.

Since the founding of PRC in1949, the Chinese Government has restored the Summer Palace several times and numerous trees and flowers have been planted. In 1980s, the Summer Palace received more than 200,000 visitors in a single day.