Chengde's Mountain Resort

Here's a little more about Chengde I forgot to add to the earlier post..

Chengde in Hebei Province is a scenic summer resort about 250 kilometers northeast of Beijing. As well as the Buddhist temples (see previous post about Chengde) there is also the "Mountain Resort", which was also built during the Qing Dynasty. This rare scenic spot was discovered during a hunting trip and over the course of eighty-seven years the construction of a temporary palace known by the name "Mountain Hamlet for Escaping the Heat" took place, it was completed in 1792. The palace is enclosed by a wall over ten kilometers long, which rises and falls with the mountain ridges. It is the largest and best-preserved imperial palace outside of the capital and China's largest imperial garden, covering an area of over 5.6 million square metres .

Qing emperors often spent several months a year here during summer to escape the heat in the capital city of Beijing and the palace zone in the southern part of the resort was therefore designed to resemble the Forbidden City in Beijing. Many other scenic spots around the resort's lake area were copied from famous landscaped gardens in south China. For instance, the main building on Green Lotus Island, "Tower of Mist and Rain," (Yanyulou) is a copy of a tower in Nanhu Lake at Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province and some other features have been based on Hangzhou's famous West Lake.


Left: Building of the palace grounds.
Right: One of the apparently 90 towers/pavilions at Mountain Resort.

The resort is enormous and you can wander around it all day from spot to spot seeing gardens, lakes, streams, bridges, towers, pavilions, a stupa, wildlife, even a Mongolian yurt park. There are 72 designated 'scenic wonders' in the resort all named by Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong during whose reign the resort was constructed.

Near to the Southern entrance, I spent some time watching locals practicing tai-ji or Diabalo, a spinning, humming wheel that revolves on a string attached between two sticks. Some of the tricks on display were highly impressive, including flinging it back and for between people. Sadly, watching them has not enabled me to even get my damn diabolo even spinning yet.


Left: Yanyu house The "House of Mist and Rain" at Mountain Resort
Right: A bridge over the frozen lakes at the Mountain Resort

Chengde

Next stop, Chengde. Nearly skipped it as I had been feeling a bit "templed out", which I think is the appropriate phrase among Asian travellers' parlance. I found that every temple I went to see recently, whether it was Buddhist or Taoist, was just like every other one in China, no real variety in design, layout, artwork etc. except for Tiantan (Temple of Heaven) which is a little different (round instead of rectangular) and which I revisited as I remember it being fairly interesting last time. But when I went to the train station to ask about train tickets, I found there was one (just 2 in fact) available for next morning and tickets to Datong were not so easily available. So, despite a very early start, I decided to take it, as train tickets were still like rocking horse shit to get hold of at the time with Spring Festival traffic still in full flow.

Well, it turned out to be a good decision.. At last there was some variety in the temples, a breath of fresh air amongst the smog.

Chengde is home to the 'Eight Outer Temples' lying around Chengde. Originally, twelve were built but now only eight remain. Of the eight, one is closed to the public, but I managed to see seven, plus the imperial summer village, a summer retreat for emperors during the Qing dynasty which together filled most of a busy two days.

Left to Right: Pule Si, Anyuan Si, Puning Si.

Pule Si (Temple of Universal Happiness) is shaped rather like the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, with a round two-tiered roof, and is located on a hillside, in a remote spot that feels like the the middle of nowhere. Above which is the entrance to the area's park grounds, which seemed very difficult to get into, officially anyway. Numerous women outside kept trying to sell me second-hand tickets, and kept running after me, grabbing at me and shouting angrily when I refused to buy based on the fact the ticket was used, had no stub and were no cheaper than the official price anyway, I saw no point. But, when I reached the gate, the ticket man, took my money and had no ticket to give me anyway, he also pointed out the gates were closed and gave some signals which I did not understand. I eventually gave up, though it would have been quite easy to just walk through the trees into the park area, but by then I was fed up with the hassle.

Anyuan temple was closed, but I found a metal gate pulled to and latched by a metal bracket which I managed to unlatch and sneaked into the grounds at least to see the main building, but could not get inside.

Puning Si (Temple of Universal Peace), a Tibetan temple, which was a little varied from the Yonghe temple in Beijing, very colourful, prayer wheels, prayer flags, plus a temple whose outer and inner railings were completely covered in padlocks, the purchase and addition of one, is supposed to bring good luck. In the main hall is the huge 23m golden statue of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, with 42 arms and supposedly the largest wooden statue in the world.

Left: Outdoor Buddhas at Puyou Si.

Centre: Main building of Xumifushou temple.

Right: Putuozongshengmiao,the mini Potala Palace.

Puyou Si next door was strange, as you enter the grounds there are rows of buddhas all around, sitting outside and there were no halls. Whether it is always like this or is being reconstructed I don't know.

Xumifushou is a Mongolian style temple modelled on the Tashilunpo Monastery in Shigatse, Tibet, with large grounds, a colourful red building and some impressive dragons on top of the main hall. Here, once inside the main building area, my every act was closely scrutinised by a member of the staff. Photos of statues indoors were as usual banned, but I was surprised that when I tried to take a photo of a sign, just to note some details, my escort growled at me and almost took my camera away, amusing.

Putuozongshengmiao (Temple of Potaraka Doctrine) occupies 220,000 square metres and is by far the largest of all the temples and is based on the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Inside the main building you can get a bit lost wandering around the halls, pagodas and terraces, but there is quite a lot of interesting stuff on display as well as murals and of course the Tibetan and Chinese style decorations and some great views of the surrounding countryside from the roof terrace.

Shuxiang temple was also seemingly closed, but somebody spotted me and let me in a side wooden door, next to some buildings where he and some others clearly lived. After haggling over the price, I made it in for an acceptable charge and was shown around. This was home to a trio of Buddhas sitting on ancient beasts.

Left: Prayer wheels on the first level terrace of Putuozongshengmiao's main building.

Centre: A traditional Chinese New Year dance festival in street nearby to Puning Lu.

Right: Prayer flags at Putuozongshengmiao.

Shanhaiguan - The Other End of The Great Wall

Around three months ago, I was at the Western end of "The Great Wall" (长城) at Jiayuguan (嘉峪关), <Read about Jiayuguan here.> now I have reached the Eastern end of the wall at Shanhaiguan (山海关). The town of Shanhaiguan (meaning 'The Pass between the Mountain and the Sea') was built during the Ming dynasty to defend the Eastern end of the Great Wall from the barbarians to the North. The main site in the old city is The First Pass Under Heaven (第一关下天) is a fortress built into the city walls as an entry point to the 'Middle Kingdom' (中国, Zhongguo), the literal translation of the Chinese name for China.

The old city dates back to 1381 but is currently under a bit of renovation, in fact, to be fair, it's like a war zone. The main north-south road which according to my guide book had the only places to eat, bike rental shops and internet access, currently has but a handful of buildings still standing, the rest on both sides is almost all rubble and a couple of building shells. Strangely there does not appear to be anything going on at all !! So I have no idea how long it has been like this, though it is probable there are no signs of work due to Spring Festival holiday. So when something happens there I don't know, but from some of the large posters scattered around some temporary walling built on some of the demolished roadsides, the aim is to rebuild Shanhaiguan into a"World class tourist Site", by the dubious sounding processes seen on three separate posters, described as "Setup a age-old city", "Build Orient Legend of World" and "Deduct Ancient Culture, Describe New Legend" Whether setting up an "age-old city" or "building a legend" are ethically correct I am not sure.


Left: Me at one of the fortress towers of the "First Pass Under Heaven".
Centre: This is the "First Pass under Heaven".
Right: Is this the best "Bank Of China" building anywhere?

Anyway, the fortress is impressive, you can walk a few hundred metres in both directions along part of the walls and see the full extent of the fortress and it's grounds. At the far end of the wall is "Lao Long Tou" (Old Dragon's Head), another fort, which has been overly re-constructed into a bit of a theme park, but has the impressive sight of the end of The Wall, coming to its end a few metres into the sea. There is also a temple, dedicated to the sea god, also on a pier a few metres out into the China Sea.


Left: A toilet building, one of the few left standing in Shanhaiguan's old town main street.
Centre: "Lao Long Tou" (Old Dragon's Head), the Eastern end of The Great Wall.
Right: Like I had done earlier, a few people got stuck a while in this maze.

The highlight in the area though is undoubtedly JiaoShan (角山) a section of the Great Wall a few kilometres north of the old city. I walked there from town and found you could walk most of the way along a grass covered mound about 4 metres high, which is a part of the original wall. As you approach the Jiaoshan site you can see the reconstructed section of the wall climbing impressively up the mountain ahead. At the site the path is blocked so I jump down off the wall, head to the entrance, pay and off onto the newly stoned and pretty steep climb up the mountain. The steps and slopes are at time very steep and you need a good pair of legs with you. You can climb the reconstructed section for around half an hour and then it is (nowadays) blocked. But if you continue up the footpath towards the temple at the top, follow the signs that faintly say 'Great Wall', (it seems there has been an attempt to wipe it out as currently they seem to want to restrict people from continuing along this part of the wall), you reach a section further up that is in its original form, untouched, crumbling, damaged, but undoubtedly original. Along this section you can clamber a further 30 minutes or so to the top of the mountain from where you have great views of mountains, a lake and the continuation of the wall with passes and towers weaving their way down and up another steep ascent in the distance.

Overall this is a great place to visit the Great Wall. There is the reconstructed part which gives a good impression of how it must have been originally, the crumbly original part with damaged towers, grass and plants growing around, a taste of the real wall and at this time of year at least, it was very quiet, just a few people climbing their way up the paths and nobody getting in your way. There is also a lovely peaceful Qixian temple at the top of JiaoShan near to the cable car stations which was a nice place to sit and rest for a while, while locals came and gave their thanks and offerings to the Buddhist shrines. Finally, a bonus is the lovely clean fresh air environment in the mountains as proclaimed on one sign, "The best oxygen area in negative oxygen ion" !


Left: The reconstructed wall at JiaoShan. (I made it as far as the second peak to the right)
Centre: The original, un-restored part, looking down from near the top.
Right: Archway at "The First Pass Under Heaven" fortress.

This leads me to a final note about Shanhaiguan, that is the abundance of beautifully worded, rather Confucianist sayings on signs scattered around their sites. Here are a few samples:

"You are beautiful when you are smiling,
You are good when you are sight-seeing,
You are terrific when you are behaving yourself."

"Civilize your language,
refine your behaviour."

"Be a spreader of civility,
be a protector of morality."

"This is our home and everyone should cherish it."

"Please don't chuck stones down the mountain"

"Take away the beauty of your memory,
but leave behind the beauty of your heart."

"Safety is mankind's best friend" (I always thought it was supposed to be a dog!)

"Politeness is your elegance,
kindness is your happiness,
humility is your virtue"

"Leave nothing behind except your footprints,
take nothing away except your pictures"

"A small step backward of yours,
a giant step forward of our civilization"